Frame & Reference Podcast - 185: "The Singers" & "Didi" Cinematographer Sam Davis

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Today I'm absolutely thrilled to have Sam Davis on the program, here to talk about his work on the new short "The Singers" (which he both shot and directed) as well as last year's film Didi which he DP'd. Enjoy!F&R Online ► https://www.frameandrefpod.comSupport F&R ► https://www.patreon.com/FrameAndRefPodWatch this Podcast ► https://www.YouTube.com/@FrameAndReferenceProduced by Kenny McMillanWebsite ► https://www.kennymcmillan.comInstagram ► https://www.instagram.com/kwmcmillan

Hello and welcome to this episode 185 of Freeman reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Sam Davis, DP of The Singers, as well as Didi, which we're talking about right now. Enjoy. yeah man you guys absolutely killed that movie thank you thank you we had no we had no expectations of that movie getting you know the exposure that it ended up having I think it was if you had told us before we shot that like you know the old the best thing that would come from it was premiering at Sundance we would have lost our minds you know so just kind of continue to surprise us and give you

gave and gave them. It was sort of the indie dream. Yeah, well, and the fun part for me, I think me and my sister went and saw it. And we're both from Napa Valley. So that entire, like, Bay Area experience, obviously we're not Asian, but like that whole experience resonated so aggressively with us.

Down to, like, the attention to detail was crazy. Like the radio station that they're listening to in the car. was live 105 like that was the one that's amazing like even like i don't i i'm from michigan i i i i never knew that that was a you know a specific detail so yeah yeah we we were literally me and my sister like started shaking each other they're like they fucking nailed it you know they didn't know anything that's amazing was the director shang uh shone shone long yeah um i didn't know he was from fremont or anything so we were just you know in cold yeah it's pretty pretty cool yeah that and did you also grow up like shooting skate stuff

and stuff because i had david's no not at all i wasn't a skater um i grew up i grew up i grew up i'm from a small town i heard you talking about being from a small town also um from a small town in michigan outside of outside of lansing 1500 people or so and um i just grew up um i wasn't necessarily like steeped in the arts as a kid you know i think i'm a bit of a unique case in that sense like i didn't see the godfather until i was at USC you know at 20 or 30 24 years old yeah but like that was that just wasn't a thing you know my parents um pretty sort of like it was it was like a cliche midwestern upbringing my dad is like a teacher and football coach and um and actually they're the the first films i made were with the high school football

program video camera. So I'm like steal that, you know, it would be laying around and and go make little movies with my friends and stuff and just kind of started from there. And it really at a pretty young age that I wanted to be at Cellmaker. So kind of dedicated my life to it from, even though there wasn't a thing where I grew up, like it's just not it's not a thing that you did, you know, pursued the arts, pursue a career in the arts. And but I did because I had supportive parents, you know. Right. And,

you're right. Yeah, did the, because small towns I've always described, I've got to stop dropping this pen. Small towns tend to have what I call the crab bucket mentality. You may have heard,

you know, where it's like anytime anyone tries to do anything that goes against the kind of, what tends to be, at least around our age, like kind of a sad, like trying to escape the crabb They want to pull you back in.

So if you want to get into the arts or whatever, generally in these smaller towns, the community around you will be like, don't, you know, don't try to be cool. Don't try. Did you experience that? I didn't necessarily feel, no, yeah, I didn't, I didn't experience that. I just experienced that I, you know, I had that there was a sense that I was doing something that, you know, there weren't models, you know, before me from, from my hometown. on and going to Hollywood or, you know, pristine a career and film or the arts. I didn't really experience any resistance from, you know,

from the community. Everyone was actually pretty supportive where I'm from. So, yeah, when my parents especially, not really supported. Really, really encourage my brother and sister and I all to kind of pursue whatever we wanted, even so it was outside the box. Did all three of you end up going to arts or was it like, engineer. Yeah, my brother's a sports broadcaster. He's the voice of the Dodgers, actually.

No shit. Yeah. Yeah. So, and my sister's a writer. He's writing a book right now, and she's, she's, she's been youngest of the three. But we sort of joke that we were like the three, the three forms of word, written word, picture word, and spoken word. We kind of cover the, the, um, the gamut as siblings, which is, which is bizarre considering where we're from. You guys need to get like a big statue of the like the three monkey. You know, the here, no evil see no evil monkey.

Yeah, yeah. That's the three of y'all. In our hometown right next to the, the one stoplight and the bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Dude, speaking of, yeah, the, the, the, something you'll know of me is I'm going to jump around a lot. But in the, in the singers, that bar you guys shut in reminds me so much of the one bar where I grew up with all the, really?

with all the yeah including all the dollars on the ceiling except the ceiling's way up there it's like it's like a you know it's two and a half story building that's all air oh cool oh they get them up there i you know i think i i i always wondered as a kid and then i think they told me i couldn't be making this up but i'm pretty sure they said that people would like put like a thumbtack in the dollar and then put like a roll not a roll but like maybe like a couple quarters behind the thumbtack and then twist it up and then just spike it you know and then when really the ceiling did all come out that's amazing yeah yeah yeah it was a good location which good location a lot of help from the art

department to kind of make you what it is like the dollar bills weren't there before we shot um those and shit there was yeah there's a lot of work that went into it but it was filled with like LED sco and you know club keynote like very modern sort of uh lots of tv screens and we we um we felt like those sort of broke the spell so we took like half a day just remove all modern tech and kind of send it back in time yeah

where'd you all film that La Habra outside of L'A La Habra Moose Lodge they were great first time they had allowed anyone to film there and maybe the last we'll see but yeah no they were

they were really accommodating let us come in kind of take over the space for a few days, which is great, because with it contained short like that, I mean, you really need to be able to kind of, like, hunker down. You know, we were able to walk away at the end of a day and kind of lived there for a few days.

So, you know, that I was sent the deck. Obviously, I watched the shit, but, uh, there, none of, that was all like first time actors, first, no script. You just, like, found it on the day. I assume there was, well, so. There was, there was an outline in that the film was based on a short story. I was written in 1850 by a Russian writer named Ivan Turginoff.

And I came up on the story in a book called Swimming a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. It's like a sort of storytelling, storytelling book that came out just a few years ago. And I, I read the story and was just inspired by it generally. you know, I liked it and thought, you know, I wonder if that could be, I wonder if that could be a sound someday. I think it's specifically inspired by just like the,

I think the theme of like diamonds in the rough and all these sort of crusty old souls in a bar revealing themselves as these amazing talents. And then, and also the idea of like just vulnerability and connection through art. And stood out to me. So it kind of got me,

you know, I read it before I went to bed. And when I went to go to sleep, I just like checked my phone. And as I often do, sort of went into like a little internet wormhole where I was looking. The first thing I saw was a viral video of Mike who ultimately would play the bartender thing in the subway station in New York. And I kind of like, you know, I watched it and I was like, my God, this guy's incredible. I didn't really put the pieces together and I just scrolled a couple more videos

and I must have been on like some viral video singing sensation algorithm or something and a couple of videos later there was a view of Judah who plays the, he's the Australian guy who won the Voice Australia and I started thinking you know what if

what if we did like a modern adaptation of this story but all the guys in the bar are these unknown but insane talent, singing talents. How cool would that be if we sort of merge intermeshed this, you know, hundreds-year-old story with like these, you know, TikTok stars? And the idea was kind of borne out of that. And then I was up for hours after that, just continuing to find, you know, not only singers, but people like Tio Rigo who dances.

in the middle of the film just kind of stands up out of the blue and starts dancing he has a viral TikTok channel where you announce your own channel where he in his in his frown like these like these phone dancing videos

so yeah the idea was kind of born out of that moment so yeah again I'm trying not to I'm trying to go linearly here so talking because I'm just excited about the idea of like how do you talk to all these people, you know, Dea, but starting off with, like, pre-production on that. Like, so you have the idea, you, you're directing and shooting it and editing it?

Yes. Yeah. So, so, yeah, like, what, how did you sort of decide, like, all right, it's easy to say, I want to make that, but, like, what were some of those first steps, like, true steps? First steps were casting, really. I spent like over a year, you know, just trying to, because there's one thing to find these guys on YouTube or TikTok, Instagram, but all of them were like, you know, undiscovered talents, really. There were, there were these guys who, you know, maybe posted videos to their social medias, but weren't like, they certainly didn't have agents. They were difficult to track down, which in a way was exactly the type of personality we were looking for.

That was the whole point. You know, we wanted these to be sort of these diamonds in the rough. And it took a long time. It took over a year probably just to make contact with. And we were looking at different pairings of people. It wasn't that we, yeah, we're exclusively going after the few videos that caught my eye the night I read the short story. But we, yeah, we spent months and months and months.

I worked with a casting director, Natalie then, who cast Didi. She's a friend of mine, really talented, and she has a gift for connecting with, you know, with real people, non-actors, first-time actors. And, yeah, we work together to sort of curate this list of people who are, you know, a mix of scene talents and also just interesting personalities, like muffin, a guy who's sort of a heckler at the end of the bar. He became a bit of an antagonist in the film when we shot. We found him because someone posted a video of him. He's from Arkansas, a tiny little town in Arkansas, but a friend of his posted a video of him just like ranting at a hardware store. And we contacted the hardware store and we're like,

is there any way you could help us get in touch with this guy? Because I saw the video and I was like, man, if I had this guy in the room, the whole idea was just about sort of like curated chaos. It was like, what if we, what will happen if we get, you know, we have this this core idea of of like I said earlier a group of men who were at a bar and they they sort of like have this impromptu connection through seeing but what would happen if we found all these real people and sort of threw them in a pot like ingredients pot being this little bar in La Habra for a few days with an outline you know a very

very, very loose semblance of a script. And yeah, so it was just about sort of wrangling all these guys and getting them in one place. And hopefully, you know, there would be some magic that came from that because I'm really interested in like what synthesizing my background and documentary with narrative cell making and what is the, you know, what kind of unwriteable stuff will emerge, specifically in dialogue, you know, like there was, there was. There was no dialogue written in advance.

We had the core idea, but all the dialogue, because it was improvised on the spot, I think feels very true to each person in the film, because there was stuff that I would never have written. You know, they were just speaking in their own voice. And it was this interesting sort of live collaboration, almost like a like a improvisational stage play or something, where we would, you know, we'd be talking about this specific story beat that we were shooting, but the words themselves would come from that person who was, you know, in the midst of being featured in their first ever film. And all they knew how to do was be themselves, you know, whether they were from Arkansas or Australia or the subway station in New York, where Mike, you know,

where Mike Busks, they all came from such different worlds. And hopefully, you know, that kind of breathe like a documentary spirit into the film even though that it's you know when you when you look at it finished it's very much a narrative it's very much a piece of fiction hopefully is a lot of truth yeah the uh what's the phrase the lie that tells the truth filmmaking right yeah yeah yeah uh so when you're reaching out to these people are you are you telling them like hey i don't really have a script but i'd like to put you in a movie or how do you pitch that to them uh yeah honestly most of them were very trusting, you know, they, they took leaps, all of them.

No one, because they're not professional, I don't even know if they knew to ask for a script. There wouldn't have been one had they asked, but in this case, they, yeah, they were, they were usually very curious. And most of them, not all of them, we actually cast them on in one of the main roles who was on board until, like, the day before we shot. and ultimately got cold feet and didn't make the trip. And so we had to sort of scramble and pivot. And that's sort of like the risk that you take when you make a movie like this. You know, it was bound to happen. We knew it was.

Some of those big bets that we took paid off in big ways and others, you know, failed. And but I think beautiful stuff emerged even from those sort of last minute pivots. no one asked for a script really and I would I would talk to them about like the you know give them a visual of what to expect and in making the film and tell them I think maybe people were relieved to know that there wasn't a script because I would tell them

I just want you to show up and be you and I'll walk you through it in the moment we'll talk through it and it's very collaborative and in a sense that's comforting to you know, I take a first time performer. Yeah, you know, I, I'm shooting this, for lack of a better term, it's a corporate thing, but it's more fun. It's for a company called Death & Co, who now I know those guys listen because I filmed for them.

So, hi guys. But one thing that I ran into with them a lot was, you know, they'll script stuff for themselves because they have to be very professional. And then that takes a lot of effort to like, because they want to hit all the words correctly. So I can see how, especially in something like a narrative, which can be even more frightening, you know, just kind of being like, here's the gist, do what you would do. Yeah. Probably does feel a lot better. Yeah, working in documentary too, it's a little taboo, I guess, to talk about.

But even in documentary, like, you're working with real people and hopefully you're capturing truth on some level. but like people are always performing in a sense you know so even as a documentarian when I'm shooting a film a doc I'm thinking about how to set this real person up to be as real as they can be on camera and whether that's where I put the camera or how I interact with them you know between between shots or um you know an idea I give them about something to to talk about in order to stir up a conversation um it's um yeah it's all about setting setting people up for success whether they're trained actors are or or not and in this case it was just about how can we make these non-actors act as little as possible and just um and just be themselves and that's where the magic would come from yeah the uh no lost that thought um oh that's what i was going to say um how so you have them all improving and you're shooting film yeah how many that feels like a scary combo because now the whole thing was scary well yeah but like improv lives

you know digital was probably the greatest gift to improv uh i was supposed to improv comics but improv improv in general yeah so how many takes were you kind of allowing these guys to like find it or you're just rehearsing like crazy and going you know what we're going to go with that oh say that we didn't honestly we we didn't really rehearse because so again so much of it was was sort of improv in the moment we um and that was part of it too is like we're going to do all these we're going to take all these risks we're going to cast all these people who don't know how to act um and on top of that we're going to shoot it in the most sort of crafted heightened cinematic way possible difficult way possible um and and also there was something i loved

about like to take a bunch of viral video you know america's got talent whatever stars and and photograph them in a way that feels very reverent and important. I thought that was, you know, I was really inspired by that idea because I think the filmmaker says, I think

you feel the filmmaker's love for like a subject or a person or when you can feel the level of thought and intention that went into making, you know, putting that, bringing that image to life. and um but yeah we takes it's very difficult to say because we most of everything we did was sort of like there's something I do when I shoot docs on film where I'm kind of just mentally editing

and like a take could go on for a long time and I might be rolling and cutting and rolling and cutting six times within a take as far as they know they think they're on the entire time when when it starts to meander and I don't like where it's going I'm cutting because I can't afford to continue rowing. But I would do that. You know, we would run long takes almost like you would if you were shooting digital, but maybe only 30% of it would actually be recorded on camera. And sound would continue to roll.

It's a nightmare, obviously, for an assistant editor who has to think. But I don't believe in, I don't believe in slating in my, like the way I do these hybrid projects. No, it's a hot take. I know. I'll be crucified for this. But when I direct the project, whether it's a doc, especially docs on film, really any doc, even in digital doc, or something hybrid like this, I don't slate at all because there's nothing more precious than like this specific moment that we're capturing. And if that means I have to slave or, you know, a week, two weeks, whatever it is to manually go through and sink all this stuff, I'll do it.

because there's nothing less natural to a especially a first-time actor than like clapping at something in front or a documentary subject even more so than clapping sticks or your hands even in front of their face and saying action before you ask them to just be themselves and try to convince themselves that they're not in a movie it just doesn't it doesn't add up to me so I suffer it I I accept the consequences of of you know not having that um convenience of time code or slating and there's a real fluidity that I feel in working this way that feels more documentary so you know it will drive it will drive assistant out of years and sound people

and all kinds of people up you know it'll drive everyone crazy but that's I found to be kind of a hack for my workflow specifically sure I mean on I fully get that on set but yeah I do I do well I guess you edited it, so who cares. But yeah, if I was handing that in, that would be a fireable offense. No, that's it. It's annoying for sure. It's to have to sync that stuff, but it is possible. Because obviously there's not so much.

I was going to say for folks that don't know, there's obviously no sound on the film. So you can't just right click on sync audio. Right. Right. I mean, shooting docs and I shoot a lot of documentaries on some is even crazier than shooting, you know, a narrative short like the singers, even though that was pretty improvisational. Thinking Docs on film is, you know, it's, it is a behemoth task to sync Verity documentary footage with no, no reference, but we do it. So what, I mean, this is a dumb question, but what draws you to film so much?

Obviously for, for Doc, and I mean, film is a medium. Like, because for Doc, you know, there's usually no budget. You have to work quickly. You know, anything that can be, I suppose, automated or whatever, generally people will gladly take. So what kind of started your sort of career with film since that seems to be your webinar choice? Yeah. Well, I think I entered into the film industry, into the documentary specifically in the moment where, like, up until around the time I graduated from film school in 2016. And you went to USC.

I went to USCA. Yeah. And it felt like up until that time, documentaries were primarily motion picture journalism. It was about getting it in the can. That's all that mattered. There was no sound design. I remember sound designing a doc in school

and asking to get into panning with my sound mixer. Who was a professional mixer? And I was like, we don't, like, you don't, you don't pan in a documentary. And but around the time I graduated, we start i think there was a bit of a renaissance in documentary i don't know what it was i don't know if it was chef's table or or or um you know a number of of netflix series that came out and they were like pretty polished and they were like really good looking not just visually great sounding

music everything really slick really cinematic films and um i happened to graduate uh you know Up until that point, all I was interested in was narrative, it's all mecking. The first thing I did when I graduated was a short documentary called Period, End of Sentence, that went on to win an Oscar. And that sort of shifted my career trajectory. Yeah. First thing out. I know. A blessing and a curse.

Sort of shifted my career trajectory. That wasn't sarcastic. I mean, like, you know, to have your first thing win an Oscar, that sets up for a pretty fucking high for ostensibly a movie. It did. And also, like, it, it pigeonholed me instantly into doing that specific type of documentary, not only documentary, but like female empowerment documentary. That was my thing for a very long time. And all that to say, I think I entered into documentary in a moment where we were starting to embrace that. If I hadn't, I don't know if I would have continued to be inspired to make docs. Because I want, you know, I had all these skills. that I had learned in film school and really I'm an artist. Like that's how that's why I became a filmmaker and not to carry around the camera

and that's a, you know, not to take anything away from the sort of journalistic, you know, minimalist document handy cam documenter. That's its own thing, right? And it's very important. And films like Navalny, for example, like those are incredible films,

not really the type of thing that I'm interested in personally. You know, I want to, I want to add value to a story by using my creative eye and filmmaking mind to immerse audiences in it. And film, when it comes to film, I, you know, it, I wouldn't shoot every documentary on film. It would be a mistake to shoot. There are a lot of docs like Navalny. You could never shoot that film on film.

It would be, it wouldn't make sense. But there are some films that I think deserve. a certain amount of intentionality and in reverence that film can lend a subject matter. Like I was saying before, like you say so much about your appreciation for or your sense of importance of a subject by putting it up on a pedestal and going that extra mile to to capture images on cellulid, in my opinion. And there was a film, one of the first docs I shot on films called Long Line of Ladies, and it was in New York Times op-doc, a short documentary about a Native American

coming-of-age ceremony for girls. And it was something that had never been photographed before. It was very, very precious, very delicate for them to have even allowed us to come in and make this film. and we talked about, like, rethinking, you know, Native American people that had been exploited, you know, on film from the beginning of documentary filmmaking, and we talked about sort of, like, concluding that. Exactly. Look at all the cowboy films. Right.

We talked about sort of, like, reclaiming that, you know, could we sort of, like, reclaim that format and do it the right way and do it with purpose and ask permission as we. went and rather than just hosing it down as you would with a digital camera so often and so you know I think that was the first thing that kind of got me into that space and um and I kind of caught this bug where I just I feel it's a sweet spot for me to be to be to be making images and telling stories that feel very crafted very thoughtful respectful um have the almost have the production value of an and And level of immersiveness as a narrative feature might, but you're telling a true story. And of course, like, you're going to roll out at the worst time sometimes. There are definitely drawbacks.

But I think, like I said, that the weight that some can land the story can be really valuable for it and really, like, uplift a project. Absolutely. I'm wondering, you know, you mentioned, like, when did we start? churching up docks and i'm wondering if it was kind of a response to the vice era and of like maybe getting everything out there and on and the and the bad side of of all those vice docs was how much ungraded log footage oh my god fucking defined an era of people like no no no we want it to be raw it's like not literally i've seen so many of those are like oh my god i wish i had

been there to direct this piece because the access is like that's everything for those right was access

but the craft was not necessarily man yeah I mean those that whole era of for them

was awesome but the I don't know how everyone there watched hours and hours and hours of S log

three footage and just went like yeah yeah yeah this is good my eyes don't hurt at all amazing I got to look back at some of those

I mean they're I remember a bunch of them just like really And then I think that would have been When we when me and David were in college The producer of the singers But for people I'm actually wearing my Kodak shirt When I went to awesome

Yeah I wanted to Did you go to the Kodak Awards? Yeah so I went there and I wanted to buy one of the Kodak house t-shirts And they were like Ah we don't have them in your size and so the guy went in the back and then brought out like this one from Korea and I was like you can have this and I was like oh sick that's amazing only a handful and that's like awesome I watched trap recently did you see that's old trap hey uh no I'm the Mnich chamelon oh no I didn't know okay let's see in it specifically about going in the back and grabbing another t-shirt oh you can cut that part out that nothing gets cut from this unless it's ND8 or that's usually about it or someone needs to go get water

I think a lot of people would love to shoot film more I remember the Kodak Awards last year Hoyta came out and was or no maybe it was the Oscars last year but whatever it was he was like hey everyone he said it at the Kodak Awards too but he was like you know go out and shoot film it's easy blah blah and I remember a few friends of mine were kind of mad at him for that

because they're like, it's not that simple. And in some ways it is, some ways it is. And I priced it out and I found that like for a fashion movie, a fashion movie, a fashion film I did, you know, a little three minute, whatever. It would have been roughly the same price for me to shoot the cameras that I own and do all that and like rent it. Then it would be to go buy or rent a like a SR2 or whatever and like get the stock. So for you with a lot of experience, what does the price? process of shooting film look like, you know, on a nuts and bolts level. Like, do you,

are you reaching out to Kodak and saying, like, can you help us out? Are you just, you know, what does that whole process from soup to nuts look like? Well, because I shoot so much film, I have a really good relationship at Kodak, specifically Kodak Atlanta. I run a lot of my projects through Kodak, Atlanta. I don't shoot in L.A. very much. Unfortunately, I think a lot of could say that and um i don't and i live here right because of that i i'm going to be in most cases i'm going to be shipping the film to a lab anyway so it doesn't matter to me that it's in atlanta i'm either ship going to you know ship it or fly it back to l a lot of they've been great supporters of my projects what they do um a lot of the times is they'll give you know

friendly rates on film stock in exchange for processing and scanning but them. So you can make personal relationships with these labs and they appreciate your continued business and they'll help you. They want to see you continue to shoot film. So yeah, I have some great, some great resources that have that have enabled me to do these projects on film. But aside from, you know, needing to purchase raw stock, which gets shipped to wherever I'm shooting or sometimes wherever I'm prepping. And obviously, you know, shipping the footage, back out to have it have it developed and scanned the process isn't terribly different for me i meter you know when i'm shooting film obviously i don't meter when i'm shooting digitally i still um

you do yeah that's probably good practice honestly um for me and you don't have to get video village up right because someone the stakeholders always want to watch you do it and so if i'm just sitting there with the meter me and the gaffer you know in our little huddle hey can we see it yeah one second but then when they do see it it's ready versus and then they can nitpick and it's actual nitpicking and not like oh is that gonna be that you're like we haven't put up the light you know there isn't any of that any yeah for me i've gotten into a rhythm of like my the way i meter because i shoot irritated docks on film is always really from camera um i I exclusively

spot meter because I'm usually operating so like it's this frantic thing where I'm like yeah I'm like shaking and you know because I'm running around I'm exhausted and I'm just taking sort of yeah a bit of an average of the shot because it has to be very quick

and I check my meter pretty pretty compulsively but shooting docs on film has been an incredible incredible school and cellulite for me, you know, I feel like I can work so quickly in a narrative environment, having that experience and just that level of comfort in terms of like how far I can push you and what things I need to be concerned about and what things I don't. So it's been a really good, it's been a really good way to cut my teeth onto them. Yeah. Do you, are you just kind of like putting skin at key and just hoping for the best or like have you built

kind of a system for yourself when you shoot on documentaries because yeah because usually doc stuff is not lit um i think i used to be more concerned about like about highlights um you know i would always i would always negotiate between windows and and faces quite a bit and more and more i just like i i like what happens with highlights when film blows out but when it's when it's hot and so more and more I've I've come to really trust the general you know I think faces are the main

thing that I'm that I'm looking at when I'm metering for film on on documentaries and you know obviously considering the mood of the scene and a really quick way a narrative like we break these things down and we talk at length about the exact tone we want to accomplish with this in various a documentary it's like you just really have to be in tune with it and i i have i listened to you know the dialogue if it's the subject to start too far away i get their lives so i can kind of hear the tone of

something but um yeah i it's really quick quick pop-bop-bop you know check the check the highlights check the shadows check the you know the faces and mids um on maybe it's like a silhouetti scene and that's fine too but um i remember being at uh in film school before college we were shooting 16 and the common wisdom was that we had about three stops in either direction off a key is that is that but we weren't i don't think we were shooting 5219 at the time when we shot color i think it would have been it might have been something else this is like yeah oh 708 is that still the kind of the common wisdom or or have it because i When I was talking to, I bring up Eigle a lot, but only because he's, I wouldn't say he's like a friend of mine.

You know, he's like a good acquaintance of mine. Yeah. But he shot the holdovers and we talk about film a lot and sometimes DM and shit, but. Gotcha a good looking movie. This looks so good, but, you know, digital. But one point that he has said, this has come up at a bunch of times when I talk, like, I think I brought it up in a song to Jaron, which was the 5219 is so nice. Like it's grainless, it's got so much latitude that it's almost like shooting digital anyway. So, yeah, the question being, how much latitude do you have on modern film stocks?

Because, you know, obviously on digitally you've got, depending on the camera, you know, eight stops in either direction. Yeah. Yeah. I think probably, definitely not. Definitely not eight stops, but I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of latitude there. And like I said, I find myself, you know, even with highlights and stuff, you know, being kind of on the borderline, it just does magical stuff on the negative that you don't get in digital, even if there's like a window that's nuclear behind someone's head, you know, the way it halates or on their face or. Um, so I find myself being, being pretty comfortable, you know, plus or minus, um, three or four. Yeah.

So I did, I didn't, I haven't been able to shoot filming forever. Now, whenever I shoot, um, I shoot a lot of medium format stills. Again, not recently, but, um, if I'm shooting 35 or like half, I have a little half frame camera, I, I literally just meter the face and then everything else is up to. God for stills, you know, because it's like, it's kind of the way you have to work in docs. Yeah. But I did want to kind of narrow in on, because you were saying like you had a great relationship with Kodak Atlanta and all this. But what was that first, you know, that first gig that you shot at them?

Were you shooting on film in college and that kind of dovetailed into that relationship? Or what were those first initial conversations that led to that relationship? yeah not really i um i actually started a project five years ago that's all shot on film it's a documentary um and at the time it was like a total experiment we're like what if we um yeah most veritasa docs are you know an experiment until you until you shoot and you work with the subject or but see what's if there's enough meat there um and this one in particular was was instantly special and so we've continued to sell and we're still filming five years later we have two two years to go and that project no one has seen it yet

but that project has sort of defined my my relationship with the labs and also just like my experience and understanding with the format in shooting film especially docs on film the projects that I shot on film that you have seen were because I was able to show this as sort of like a proof of concept even than no one else has seen it yet privately. So, and with this project, it's been really fun because we're sort of, the film negative format is expanding as the story goes. So it's all on film, but we started on 16. And it's sort of like boyhood. You see this kid grow up on screen. It's a doc though. And when we started, it was 16 as like this really sort of artsy home video, sort of nostalgic, hyper-nestologic look.

And then when he entered high school, we went to two. per 35 and then when he's a junior in high school which is coming up soon we'll switch to three per and then four per when he's a senior in high school and then the movie will be over but uh the film negative format sort of expands to fit him to you know to accommodate him as he grows and also just like the you know i think on a on a more um your subconscious level like the stakes of the story sort of and the clarity of it all coming into focus, you know, the image gets bigger as time goes on. But with that project, we were able to say, like,

hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to buy like a half million feet that's film from you and process over the next, you know, X amount of years. Like, will you be a partner, you know, for, you know, along this? And so the relationship came out of that. And then, you know, just continue to,

continue to build it through other projects. Yeah, I think you have to kind of point to examples of things in your, in your career, especially when you're, you know, pretty early on in your career like I, like I am, with a point to the thing, even if they haven't come out yet, you can use those as tools to prove concepts or skills or big, big risks to other collaborators. Yeah. So talk to you about lighting the bar in the singers because I noticed, you know, a lot of obviously backlight, almost spotlight in some cases, but kind of what was your, it's nice, I assume, to have a one location short because you can take the time to like just light the whole thing and then let it ride. But I'm going to walk me through your process of, because it's like, when people, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of. people on the internet who are like oh movies don't look like movies anymore and i think what they really mean is that things look polished not that your film doesn't look polished but i think just that kind of um willingness to lean into shadow and uh you know not clean up you know not hit it with

the dust buster you know let it let let let the negative uh be its sort of true self as it were i think that's kind of yeah an aesthetic especially for sure right Especially for a short, it's like, why shoot on film if you're not going to embrace that stuff? And 35, too, I think. 35 is like, I've heard some filmmakers say like, 35, you know, it could almost be digital or I disagree, but I understand the concept there that you have a good amount of resolution. So it's not like 16 or the look is very in your face. But we lit the bar.

We used a lot of skip bounce off of the bar. I was that became a big a big part of the look I think we really wanted to accentuate the wrinkles and the texture and these guys faces all like we talked about earlier they were all very carefully curated because of their stories but also because of the their faces and and you know sort of memorable qualities of them whether it was like the tattoos on their faces or you know the dark shadows or the way their eyes one of them has like a you know a white eye we just wanted all these pretty severe looks and um we knew early on that like if we were to use a lot of skip bounce it would accentuate you know those you know the wrinkles and and the um the sort of like um the weatheredness of of these faces but also there's something like really beautiful about it because the way i don't know the way skip bounce you know spreads across the it's very glowy too. So I think we were able to achieve both of those things really accentuating their, you know, the contrast and texture and the faces, but also channeling something that felt

a little, a little heightened. You know, we wanted it to feel fable-esque, whether to feel like it could be anywhere, almost any time. Yeah. And so it was a lot of that. And we were and afraid of like, you know, some hard backlights. And Will specifically plays at the piano and we just bathed them in like the hardest light. And it's pretty spicy and it kicks the, you know, the light. I love the way the light kicks around the piano keys and, you know, the, the front of the piano and back into his face.

And it's really, it's really film at its finest there, I think. It was also the only scene that we shot handheld and really because his voice specifically. it was just like so his voice is like a cement mixer or something it was just so raspy and almost like a young Tom Waits and it just felt when he started a thing

and just felt like we had to pop the camera off and let that be the one you know uh sort of untethered very very gritty and and sort of wild his voice felt too wild for like a very composed frame like everyone else's yeah and you also got to

the cool uh that only seems to happen on film which is the the like blue look that cigarette smoke has oh so good you know that was my first time that was my first time kind of discovering you know i've seen it before i think but like yeah this is those proff cigarettes and and cellular i don't know what it is but they they have a really magical beautiful velvety sort of blue quality yeah that's a I did you notice that. Well, and at some point, someone on the internet was like, why do old sports photos look like that? Why do old sports photos look so cool? And people were like, because the whole place was filled with cigarette smoke.

You know, you used to be able to watch a basketball game and just, you know, chief darts all day. And so it felt, you know, it had that blue ambience. It was. It was very smoky in that. The other thing I noticed was, because obviously you're shooting 4-3. which, you know, back in the day, used to be referred to as the actor's format. A lot of really good close-up.

You know, a lot of close-up play for most of it. In a way that made me feel a little, I thought the bar was smaller than it was, but then in a certain point you kicked to like a wide of all the tables. I was like, I didn't even know those tables were there, you know? Right.

And I assume that was just to get there was about sort of isolating. Well, a couple of things, accentuating those faces, and really highlighting to you know telling telling stories just just just just with these faces and all this you know the sort of like implied experience and stories that they hold um but also sort of like isolating them making it feel kind of a little claustrophobic and stuffy and and then you know slowly at very distinct intentional moments we we sort of like open up to the rest of the bar and start to connect some of the characters. Part of it was also logistical like continuity wise because we were doing it so spontaneously and so improvisational it was very difficult to it was very difficult

to maintain continuity so to be able to shoot in two shots and singles was was crucial it was interesting because one of the biggest decisions in terms of like the writing of the cell was where we placed each person along the bar in the bar because like a certain conversation with you know half of the dialogue in the beginning of the felon it's like between two veterans

and that's just because we sat those two veterans next to each other and they started they had something to connect on and share with each other and they started to tell each other they're true stories of of a bore the true experiences um if we hadn't sat them next to each other that wouldn't have been in the movie at all so it felt like a very high stakes decision and yet we had no time to really think it through but I think we did okay yeah

what lenses were you shooting on because there's one shot specifically where you get like the whole bar that had a lot of like lens character but yeah what was the package you work with we shot on the LT ATM LT

3 Perth the lenses were canon epaines from old class class nice yeah and some of that the really extreme uh warping was a post effect um there were a couple of shots that just felt like they needed a little extra like i don't know they felt a little too matter of fact or something so we tried this certain sort of distortion effect that i think handled your eye to the right place in the frame and felt vintage and cool in a way. Yeah.

And so with the lighting, I guess the thing I wanted to kind of hone in on, especially because we're talking to show and stuff, is like, what was your shooting stop? And then what were you setting the light to? With digital, obviously now everyone used as a whack ton of NED, but were you just like not really lighting the space? Were you kind of doing the opposite of what most people say,

you know, were you lighting faces and not the spaces? Probably mostly. yeah because there was so many singles like you said I think it was more about about lighting individual shots I mean for time's sake and efficiency we tried to plate spaces but you know then it was about tweaking

for every additional setup but then a you know sort of series of shots and I think we shot everything pretty pretty wide open 284 we're using LED 2 8 on average we actually used a lot of tungsten

I figured you did I love the I love the feeling with tungsten light especially on the cell just kind of felt right it's all more analog and where

but there's some L.A.D. sure some light mats and tubes and stuff yeah well and you got you gotta keep that bar warm you know with it snowing

it was in the summer too and we had the fireplace burning everybody was in parkas and winter coats and yeah and we're not happy with me

yeah I did oh Jesus it's already been an hour it goes so fast I did want to it's the thing that I can I just

sorry to interrupt can I can I just send it quick I just have to send an email real quick letting someone know I'm running I'm going to be running a little late yeah yeah spend enough time to do you know final questions but

no all this is this is going to be the last question and you can okay get out of cool actually then if that's the case we'll just power three all right the only thing I was going to ask was yeah what um how did you get wm e involved and were they the like main producer or were they like distributing it or something because it because i was like did they make it and that no yeah it's a good question it's actually warner music uh not to be confused at w i mean the agency oh sorry i i

i was thinking Warner music entertainment but that's not yeah yeah it is it's warner music entertainment they started a film recently, I think, in the last couple of years. And my producer, David Bichelle, you know, had a connection there and pitched this to them. And, you know, with it sort of, I think they were looking to do something

that they could enter into film festivals because it was a relatively new endeavor for them And they wanted to, you know, they want to do a project that could, I think, create like a little bit of awareness around their brand, maybe, you know, some sort of like festival prestige, kind of getting into a big, a big festival. And they took a big bet on this. And I'm so, so happy and lucky that they did because we wouldn't have been able to do it. Otherwise, you know, there's so many risks and so it was such a big experiment. and they were incredible partners and, like, really let us kind of do our thing. So, so, yeah, Warner Music was basically the finance year of the project.

And, yeah, they've been amazing. Oh, yeah. Well, it's a great little short. I really liked it. I'm sure you'll get a few more nominations for it, for it, no less. And like I said, man, at the head, I fucking love Diti. Oh, thank you so much. Great job with that one, too.

I appreciate that. I'll let you go. I also just got an email about pre-production on top. But great talk. This is fun, Kenny. Yeah, really nice to meet you. I hope we can cross paths against that.

Frame and reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frame and refpod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated. And as always, thanks for listening. I don't know.

Thank you.