Frame & Reference Podcast - 190: "Black Mirror" Cinematographer Stephan Pehrsson

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Today we've got Stephan Pehrsson, BSC on the program to talk about his work on Black Mirror (and Doctor Who, because I'm a nerd).Enjoy!► F&R Online ► Support F&R► Watch on YouTube Produced by Kenny McMillan► Website ► Instagram

Hello, and welcome to this episode 190 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Stefan Pearson, B.S.C. D.P. of Black Mirror. Enjoy. You know, it's funny as I've interviewed a bunch of BSC members. Yeah. The funniest one was Catherine Goldschmidt, because I was like, wait a minute, you're one of us. How'd you get over there? Now she's the ASC, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she's on both. It's always kick off, you know, and I'm Danish. So I just, I did film school in London and, you know, BSC. Because all my work's been in the UK, it made sense to become. D.S. But there's also a Danish. You can be DFF as well. Danish film, uh, film photographer or something anyway, for evening. It's a, it's a, yeah, DFS. That's the, that's the Danish one. I'm not part of that one yet. Let's see. They'll get you. But the reason I brought it up was, uh, because every single BSC member, I'm always like, all right, where is it? Where is it? There's

Dr. Who nailed it. And, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly. It's a ride of passage. You have to do it. have to it's one of the things it's it's yeah well and it's it's like in new york you know if you're a new york based dp if you haven't shot law and order you're yeah you haven't made it yet and that's that what you're doing you know yeah yeah um you you have the uh distinction of shooting probably some of my favorite of the smith era uh fantastic yeah but work um time line and then the the astronaut I thought we were not only some of the best looking episodes up until that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Smith era brought in a whole new level of production. Yeah, but just story wine lies. I thought they were incredible. Yeah. No, they were good. I think there was something, I think Toby, who is my good friend, but who also did these Black Mirror episodes, you know, he's got sort of a knack. He's got sort of some kind of, you know, natural instinct to him that just, you know, he just adventure and, you know, that kind of storytelling. just bounces off him, you know, he just, you know, he just elude, you know, it just comes out of him. He can't stop it. And, you know,

I've just been lucky sort of be part of that and hang on to his cocktails, you know, and, and do something exciting with him. So he did those episodes, too, of Dr. Uthen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're all friends. We were way back. We did to, we did film school together. Oh, cool. So, uh, so I came over to film school 2001. And then, uh, met Toby then. We did some horrible, uh, horrible, uh, horrible short. of those back there, so that nobody liked. But then we sort of carry on our, you know, professional relationship and, you know, private friendship after that. And, and sort of maybe every other or every third project, you know, we sort of end up sort of joining up and

doing something together again. And that's been, that's been brilliant. So sort of dotted around the career. Yeah. That's the big, uh, it's who you know thing, right? Whenever people talk. Oh, Absolutely. Absolutely. But all the years, who you know exactly, which is great because, you know, but also I think we always, apart from film school, everything we've done together has we sort of been able to elevate each other, you know, sort of help each other. So like, no, no, no, do this, do that. And we just, there's just that little, little thing that goes with it, you know.

So it's always great when we get back together and do another thing. Yeah. What about Doctor Who? What was, I'm always fascinated, especially with the Smith era. coming from the sort of traditional BBC look of the time into that more cinematic look. Were you sort of privy to some of those maybe conversations or what the BBC was for at that time? The thing is, I was watching Doctor Who and, you know, I watched the David Tennant era, and it just made me so angry because I just thought this could look so good. You know, it'd be so easy.

Why don't it make it look good? Why is it lit so bad? And as I just couldn't wait, I just knew, if I ever got the opportunity, I was just going to make it so much better. You know, I was just itching, itching for the chance. Luckily, that series already, they already gone to 35-mill cameras or 35-mill lenses. It was all digital, of course, you know. But the series before, it's all a dig-eater, which is a horrible format.

And they shot it on E&G-style cameras, you know, with those sort of zoom lenses to sit on the front. I mean, it couldn't be worse. It just looked like, you know, the something, is it how you shoot a football match? You know, those are the cameras that they were using. Exactly, you know, yeah, the cheapest, not cheapest, but did it be what sort of industry standard for a lot of dramas, but it was just not very good. And then they sort of moved on to 35-billed, a thing it was called the Sony, 35 at the time, we now shot, we're not in shot with 35 mil lenses, and that helped, suddenly you got that bigger depth of field, the lens, you know, everything sort of warped and

looked miser, the colors, you know, the, what's called, suddenly it was a log, a log curve, you know, so you had all the, you know, so much more information to grade with. That's the other thing I kept sort of seeing in the early ones was everything would be either crushed black or completely overblown white, you know, it was just, all out there so everything was just you know it looks so videoy that that was sort of my you know the feeling so

I was just very pleased to get in there and just hold it in and go no no no we make an adventure we make an Indiana Jones we're making you know we're making Harry Potter just all those things that's you know we were just trying to our ambitions were high and I think we sort of because we did like start in a row we did

Pandorico opens Big Bang Christmas special with Michael Gambon and then the two American ones straight after. And then that was sort of a five-episode era of Doctor Who. They were shot sort of at different times, but they ended up going out sort of almost like a five-episode block. Yeah.

Well, and the other thing, because I've spoken to some of the DPs from the older shows, and they're like, well, we had what we had. And the thing I noticed, too, is they would, even though it was the early 2000, well, I guess the early 2000s was still like, you know, DV. Yeah. It was a thing in town. But they were still using. some of that older film sensibility when it came to like diffusion and stuff,

which would make these hot backlights just like nuclear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It was actually my old tutor from film school, guy called Ernie Vince. Did you speak to Ernie? No. I think, no, well, he sadly passed away last year, so he's not with us anymore. But he did a lot of those stuff.

He did the first season of, what's it called, Christopher Eccleston's. and then I think from David Tennant he did every other episode but I sort of found his lighting incredibly lazy and I sort of knew him from film school as well

so I just went you know I can see you know he you know him and me you know he was teaching us film school and anything he said I just thought the opposite I always went you don't know what you do

you know but he was he was great for time you know obviously he was a fantastic DP in the 60s, 70s, 80s, did some merch and ivory films and, you know, lots of beautiful great stuff, but I think he sort of, he didn't understand video, he didn't understand the subtlety and, you know, and you had to be a little bit more. I think he was just used to film grade, you could just do whatever he want and blow things out and, you know, somehow film retains it and makes it look good. But video, you just have to be so careful, especially

those days, you know, if you're not careful, it, you know, it fights against you. So, yeah, he wasn't he wasn't a subtle man with that kind of stuff well and also just the use of color too right like it just everything had 15 gels on it it seemed like no exactly no it's the thing he just it was overlit exactly it would be red light and then blue light on the same side and then greens on the bag and then you know and it's like what are you doing you just turned everything on you know that was the thing getting sort of lazy you just didn't care or we need another light okay just bringing in from that side but you know we would care what no no it's coming from the left and, you know, the key lights from the right.

And, you know, we just tried to, you know, just make it a little bit more modeled, you know, and just how it looks in the, in the films. That was all. Yeah. Well, and the... So I was so pleased I got an opportunity, you know, that was, you know. Yeah.

Well, and the, the, um, now it's kind of charming to, you know, it's seeing how, because I feel like when it came back out, everyone, you know, when they rebooted it and stuff, there was probably a little bit of like, oh, all right. Well, let's see how this goes. And then it ended up, you know, off again. I've seen some of it. I mean, obviously, the production value has just gone up like 10 times, you know.

But I don't know whether it's been as bigger hit as they hoped it would be. There was something around that, sort of that David Ten and Matt Smith era, where it was just really blowing up everywhere, you know, people who had really sort of taken notice. But I feel like it sort of, it's died off. And I'm not sure whether they're going to carry on. It feels like Series 2 might be the end of it with Shutee. But let's see.

let's see you know but he's never going to be over over you know then they'll like light dormant for a few years

and then someone else will take it up yeah I think there is a bit of with with with Shudian with

what's her name great actress who played 15 anyway oh Jody Wichika Jody Jody Wittaker yeah I think you know

fantastic actress and then just all the scripts kind of came in and it was just like yeah oh I know it does One guy, I mean, the thing is that that writer, he did write some great scripts for the Matt Smith era.

I did one of them. I think it was dinosaurs and a spaceship, which I lit. And it was exciting. He had all the right things, you know, it was silly and funny and all that stuff. And I think after he'd done that, and then he did Brought Church, which was a massive hit as well. You know, Chris Chibnall, he's going to be amazing. He's going to run this show beautifully. But I think he'd already used up all his ideas.

you know, he just wasn't, he wasn't ready for that show. Whereas Stephen Moffat and Russell T. Davis, obviously, you know, they've been dreaming about this since they were tiny boys and they, yeah, they had stories, you know, galore in Leslie's. The, I remember, I mean, obviously I haven't seen the episodes in a while, but I remember the American episodes, which I thought was fantastic. I was like, we're coming here. But, like, outside that diner with the, with the, with the Ashton,

astronaut stuff. You would lit that in such a like, I don't want to say extreme like that, but it was just very intense. Like I wasn't used to see. It's like the opening of that. I think it's like the fourth or fifth Harry Potter has this very like crispy HDR kind of look that I always thought was a bit interesting and cool. I think outside the down. It was actually a green screen. There was so I don't know. Yeah. So I didn't actually light it. I just they just they just. They just. put it in afterwards. It was one of those things where we could only have a week of shooting in America. So we had to be very specific about what seemed we wanted to shoot in America. And at diner, we sort of felt like, you know, guess you could shoot that in America. But it felt like a, you know, from production's point of view, it felt like that's a waste, you know, because we've got an excellent diner, right-hand Cardiff. Why don't we just shoot that one? But it meant that every other shot was looking onto the screen screen and probably ended up costing more than giving us one more shooting day in America. But, you know,

They were so there, you know, sometimes. Sometimes you don't necessarily make the right call. Yeah, no, the diner look great. I mean, I was really pleased with that beach, you know, but it was this crazy idea. But we were told, there was a thing with Stephen Moffat was in his area where he was sort of, you know, still sort of piecing it together and what's the right story.

He pitched us a story. It's going to be all about NASA. It's going to be all about Houston. And it's all going to be like the space journey, which it was, you know. And then so we sort of send a guy over to Rekki and he just went to Houston and he went to, you know, all that sort of NASA kind of stuff. And, you know, and obviously that area is, you know, landlocked.

You know, it's just a big sort of desert, really. And then he sort of came, oh, yeah, yeah, I've written the script now. It starts on a beach. And we were like, a beach? You've written a beach? Yeah. It was like, okay, so now we have to find, you know. And then luckily you found that sort of dam, you know, area where they sort of damn, you know,

up and we had, you know, we had this amazing looking beat, so it did work out. But it was just like, that's not what you told us it was going to be. Anyway, we worked it out. Well, and then the silence ended up becoming my favorite. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything like, I got a silent tattoo plans. It became a gamer tag whenever I played video games. I just think it's like both looking and just the idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. That's saying when you instantly look away. it's it's you know it's gone from your memory it's only when they look at you and then you know and that whole idea

it was such a clever idea you know and he wrote it so well and then I think again Toby he just knew what that was going to be and he was so smart with it you know the way we did it and the little tricks and you know

kind of yourself in the face and all those little ideas and stuff you know yeah no that's great that was great I mean it was it hard every there was some tough tough days to you know to make it all

feel bigger than it actually was. We only had three members of the silence and you had to sort of fight a silence army at the end and, you know, with some clever shot. I mean, it was always the way, you know, whenever you have the Cybermen, you get three Cybermen or you get three Daleks, you know, but we always have to make them

look like this. Two hundred of them. So, yeah. I remember when, because the editing of it too, you know, playing with your perception of the silence as well, like I remember when, I think it's, yeah. turns around from a from a window and she suddenly got a bunch i remember that's one of the few

times and i was like oh fuck like it was like you know a lot of these shows i don't get super scared but that was one of the ones or it yeah yeah yeah yeah oh that's good news we got you we got there was a great we were in just quite a spooky house filming that it was really sort of weird house in the middle of nowhere been derelicts a few years and i remember the we had this big staircase in the middle of it but they're walking up this staircase in the in the show and then the sparks thought it was hilarious to um they found this this uh what's it called little fishing fishing line or fishing rod and at the end of it they put two two little two little sort of leather gloves at the end of it and then they were sort of

fly it around and made people think it was a uh was it called a bat you know so you just try to land on people's shoulders you know and i remember i remember they got karen gillen pretty good you know she was freaking out yeah and then her career took off great for her oh my god i know that's incredible i mean i mean she she had it in her you know definitely you know but it was interesting you know because she was she was so good on camera but then sometimes you she she had to remind her you should be there on camera like yeah i remember the director one time had to go over and sort of sort of go to and you're still in shot okay you might be in the background but you're still in shot so please you know just be in the scene okay

I don't actually when she was on and she was on she was incredible you know she was so good yeah yeah she ended up

being a friend I should he's not really an acquaintance of mine but like a friend of a friend which I saw that fantastic wait I

wow two degrees but the thing that I thought was hilarious watching I just watched your episode of Black Mirror this morning and the thing that I thought

was hilarious because I had looked you up you up prior And I guess, you know, if people are listening, they should probably watch the episode, it's out. But all of the enemies getting invited to... Yes. Yeah, it's a very pandoracum. Yeah.

Absolutely. I said, you know, Charlie may have been inspired by that. You know, there may have been some element. He's a big Doctor Who fan too. So there may have been some overlap, you know. And also, I think Toby was quite sort of... He was part of the development of that, you know, story and script. Certainly, but we got a script and we sort of, I think he had input early on,

but then we got the script. We were like, oh, I'm not sure about the ending. We're not sure about this, not sure about that. And maybe some of those things may have fed in, you know, from our Doctor Who experience, bringing everybody back. Were you guys the only episode that was feature length? Also, Ravory was close. I think that ended up being 75.

I think that was a post. And it was a 90-minute script. I think it was supposed to be feature length as well. But then they probably just condensed it a bit in the edit. So, yeah. But yeah, we did 90 minutes and it held up for 90 minutes. I think actually the first cut was probably two hours plus. But I think they found the right length.

You know, we didn't outstay our welcome. And hopefully it stayed fun and entertaining all the way through. Yeah, I loved it. I mean, the thing that always impresses me about kind of these modern television shows is that like you're given that project but you're still ostensibly I mean correct me if I'm wrong but like

on a TV budget yeah I mean there was a great thing about Black Mirror Black Mirror was a TV show in Channel 4 on Channel 4 which I actually had 74 comedy money which was absolutely nothing and then

so back then when they did series 3 after series 2 channel 4 decided not to carry on with them that it was getting too expensive for them or whatever. So they just let them go or allowed them to go out and seek new partners. And then they ended up with

Netflix. And Netflix gave them at the time a huge budget. You know, it was probably you know, five times or maybe you know, ten times what they had to make it on Channel 4. So suddenly they had a whole different level of scope miseffects, everything. They could

take that. And I think, you know, that budget hasn't increased. that much, but I think for this particular episode, we were given a decent amount of, I mean, it was enough to make a small indie feature film, I would say, you know, but it's, you know, but it was, you know, also we had quite a lot of these effects, you know, so I don't exactly know what the money was,

but I have a feeling that it wasn't, it wasn't terrible, but of course, it's not feature money either, you know, it's not what money you get to make, you know, one of those tent pole movies, you know, we are, you know, probably a tenths of what they get, Oh, that's when he gets, what's it get? Well, I mean, with, I assume, obviously, did I work primarily these days in documentary now. So my concept of where budgets goes is pretty much like whatever the, you know, line.

Yeah, yeah. Hands us physically. But, you know, even now with the popularity of like A24 films, there's, you know, you get like death of a unicorn shooting for whatever it was, like 10 mil or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah. And I imagine that has something to do with obviously. the prevalence of newer and less expensive cameras that are still very viable. Obviously, LED lighting springs down your power costs.

It's easier to do, you know, all that kind of thing. Yeah, I think I'd definitely make something decent for $10 million. You know, I think that's probably around the range we were. Maybe, I don't know, I can't say. But also what Netflix will do, they have sort of a special thing for their budgets. It's whether you have a certain amount of money to make it fall. And we knew it was a 90 minute. So they gave us 90 minutes worth of production money.

But then there's a cast on top. And if they feel that the cast members that are on the show add to the value, they will then, they'll top up the money. So the cast sort of sits outside of your student budget. You know, so you can actually, you know, that's how you can get people like Jesse Clemens and Kristen Miliety. You know, they, you know, they charge a little bit more that you normally would. You know, but then that's covered.

But you still have the same amount of production money. to make it for. You don't have to take that out of your own budget, so to speak. And Jimmy Simpson's great, too. I mean, he's like going. Oh, he's amazing. They're all great, you know, the yeah, Jimmy, Jimmy is probably the funniest one. He's the one who sort of keeps the humor

going in this episode. He's, yeah, everything he does and says is funny. Well, I was going to say him coming from, uh, it's always sunny. I was like, oh, yeah, that guy's great. And then I just, you know, Westworld comes out and I was like, wait a second. because he was

exactly but talking about the pre-production for this because obviously it was probably more involved than like like Demon 79 I remember loving yeah oh brilliant no thank you

because yeah I haven't seen like every episode of Black Mirror but every once in a while like my girlfriend's watching and I was like oh yeah all right you know I remember just looking through your list

like oh I do remember that one that one was great yeah I mentioned this was a now that I think about it though there wasn't a ton of low You guys play it off really well where it feels way bigger than I guess, you know, it's Yeah. Are you thinking of Calista or even now?

Calista. Yeah, I mean, what did we have? I mean, it's a lot of it takes place in the spaceship. Then a lot of it is in the office. And exactly we don't. We had one little, we had one night on the street outside the office. Right. We had two days in a, two days in a fort, now three days maybe.

now I think two days in a forest just outside pinewood a place called Black Park which we turned into a jungle then we read two days to a quarry in Wales where we shot whale when we shot Walton's

sort of world in a way catching weird squid and having little stone friends and but what was the last thing oh yeah and then we had

one day at the end when we built the snow planet on a different stage. We had all sorts of the discussion. We're supposed to go to another quarry for that. At one point we're going to go to Iceland. There are all sorts of ideas and how we're going to do it. And then in the end, it sort of worked out that it was cheaper to build it. So we built that

sort of opening snow world. So that was it. It wasn't you're right. It wasn't that big because it was so contained in the studio. I mean, our location, you know, our tech recque, our tech scout, it took a day, you know, We just went around there, there, that's it. You know, and the same, actually, he was even shorter for the original Callister.

You know, I think we just had his flat, you know, his flat and the office, and then everything else with the studio. It was just so small. So, yeah. No, that's that, which is nice. Yeah, because I was going to say, like, this, is this the only sequel that Black Mirror has ever done? Yes, it is. I mean, I mean, there's always, I mean, there's always, I mean, they keep. sort of doing all these

what's called Easter eggs you know there's always some kind of hint like someone gets some character gets mentioned in

another episode and you know the pizzeria of something is called something you heard of before you know there's all these

little overlaps there was another sort of stealth sequel you could say or certainly returning characters in an episode called Placing

this episode or this series sorry and that was they had some people from Bandersnatch come back some of those characters

But, you know, it was just sort of more, the only sort of true sequel, absolutely, is this point. But also, this had had a fun development, you know, because we weren't, I mean, even just after this original came out, you know, I think even in the original interviews, I remember Toby sort of saying that this episode was pretty much the best pilot that he'd ever seen, you know, because it's sort of, you know, you have this crazy story, you set up all these characters,

and, you know, you kill off this bad guy, and you end with them going off on more adventures, you know, and you feel like, well, let's get us episode two. Let's get us a whole series with these guys because they could do so much in this world. So that was the original idea. They sort of thought, you know what?

Maybe within the Black Mirror universe, we could have our own little mini-series. So for a long while, it was an eight-part. It talked about half-hour episodes, like comedy kind of comedy action, half-hour, eight parts. Then suddenly it was six parts, half-hour. Then it became four parts, one hour.

Then it was three parts, one hour. And actually, just before, we made this in January 24, but we were actually due to shoot it in October 23. And around that time was when the sack strikes happened. But had they not happened, we would have shot a three-part series of USS Callister. That's what we had the switch for, and that's what we were going to make.

And we all sort of set up to do it. and then I think things got around because of the messing up and then also getting the cast together for the amount of time and, you know, all the schedules and it sort of became, I think, you know what, let's make it part of the series.

We call it, you know, we just make it a sequel, make it 90 minutes and maybe that's the right thing. So the scripts, you know, they've been written, writing so many scripts, you know, they've been writing scripts for like three or four years. So also that, I think that was difficult as well for Dali

and the other co-writers, you know, to actually get it down to this piece to make to make all the ideas fit into 90 minutes so so yeah so but that's what we ended up with but just an interesting interesting sort of development of the whole thing well i mean it plays very well as a as a standalone but you know the recap from the first i suppose episode was helpful but yeah absolutely but it did kind of make me think like you know uh especially with a show like Black Mirror or any of these kind of anthology series, it's rare that you get to go back

and revisit the material. Was there any kind of consideration when remaking the ship or anything like that or the way that you approached it, that you were like, you know what, let's plus this up a little bit. Because I know in the first episode, the original episode, whatever you want to call it, you know, there was like format changes, lens changes, stuff like that,

which doesn't necessarily take place here. It didn't happen this time around, no. I mean, the original story lent to doing that and we really wanted to do the as of the opening because it just made sense. It was a 60s TV show

and also that story had sort of perfect out from a cinematographer's point of view. You start in the 60s and you end in the future and we could sort of take that whole journey along the way. Plus there was all these little sort of mini journeys within the game. You know, is a game off, is a game on you know and yeah, so that was great. I think this one we basically just took, we

We just thought, okay, we took the last scene of that first episode, which was when they come into infinity, the new sort of world. It all looks like JJ Abrams kind of Star Wars, Star Trek, sorry, Star Trek world with the flares and, you know, the spinning camera and, you know, all that energy. And we just thought, but that's where we start. And then let's just see where that takes us, you know, we couldn't go back, you know, those different ideas, you know, it's like, oh, when we go to the planets,

would that be a different, you know, format or different idea? but it just never felt right. It felt like just in this world that this is how it works now and we just have to, you know, move on from that. One of the years we sort of carried on

from the original was whether you were on a steady cam or whether you were handheld. You know, and we sort of, we always had the real world, like Nanette's world. We always had handheld in the original. So also when she gets into the game,

she takes the handheld camera with her into the game world. And then whenever the game turns on, then you, you know, the camera gets a bit more fluid and a bit more Steadicammy and then as soon as it stops, you know, then it's back on the shoulder. So that approach we took with us, you know, to this one as well. I feel so smart because I wrote exactly that. I was like real world handheld space looks locked off of Steadicamp.

Good for me. You noticed. You noticed. Well, because I, you know, normally I wouldn't when you're watching to talk about it. But it's just how do you distinguish it? You know, and of course we then also, you know, we mix it up. It doesn't, it's not rigid, you know, and also it would be handheld on a dolly and it would be like different, you know, sometimes we did a handheld shot. We would try to walk her into the office and it was just so bumby, you know, you couldn't see anything.

And we went, okay, let's just roll on a dolly, but the camera just sits on the shoulder of someone on the dolly, and that gave it a bit of sort of a handheld feel, you know, that kind of, that kind of stuff. But also, I mean, there's also shot that suddenly we back on the sticks. We're back on the dolly, you know, for big dialogue scenes, you know, because it just, sometimes it gets too much. you know when you're but everything's handheld um but also that then caused problems you know because

we then have the scene i'm jumping now but but the uh net there's suddenly two nanets and there's two waltons you know and they end up in the side of the spaceship but we we had to film that all handheld in our theory so so we suddenly had to come up with how do we shoot uh you know doubles locked off shots but still feeling handheld you know so what we then went for was uh we had a what was it called the Techno Dolly, which is I think sort of fairly old tech now, it's probably 20 years old at least. So it's the guy who does the Techno Cranes, you know, but they built this thing called the Techno Dolly, and it's tenoscopic, but it's also programmable.

And the great feature it has this issue, you take the Techno Dolly and you take all the, what's called all the restriction out of the head, is that what it's called? you know, you know, so. Friction? Oh, friction. Exactly. Take all the friction out of the head, make it completely loose. It still records what's going on.

You actually operate it. Even though I sit on an arm, you can sort of operate in handheld, and it will remember that move. So we could sort of walk around and do our little handheld shots with her in space, in the room, you know. And the great thing, because it's programmable, meant we could get a white shot, we could get her single. Do you get a single on Walter?

and we get a single on, you know, four different sets, you know, and then we send them off to change, and then we come back, and then we shoot the four plates when they're back in their other costumes. That's so cool. Yeah. I imagine most people would just lock it off and then do the shaken post.

Yeah, but we wanted to walk with her a little bit, and you'll see it a little bit. There's a couple of moves where the camera just moves a bit. I mean, we probably could have used it even better. This would be the lesson that I learned, and I will then pass on to anybody listening to this punk, podcast, is, you know, have a test day. If you ever do a techno dolly or you do any kind of motion control, get a test day in

because, you know, that was killer. You know, there was a lot of teething problems and, yeah, noodling and getting things right and took a long time to get ready. And I remember Toby, who was sort of famously impatient, you know, he doesn't, you know, him sort of having to sit on his hands and wait for this technical beast to sort of work. as he found that very frustrating. But we, you know, we did get through it. And it did work exactly as intended.

The one issue we had was actually the sound editing. There was a thing I never even considered before. Again, this is what a test day is useful for. It's because you record a take, you record all the sound for that. But then when you shoot the next take, you know, you need to just play the dialogue that those actors that are in the shot, I was saying, but everybody else to still say that bit, or they need to hear their cues

and then, you know, something has to be played out and then something has to be edited out, but it all has to stay in sync. And that sort of editing process was killer, you know, because you just need someone there who has to work out and know exactly which line to take out, what's the line to put in, you know, and sync it all up to the take, you know,

which is, yeah, yeah, that's tricky. And then the other thing we had was everything in that spaceship was on some kind of chase, you know, everything was moving, those video screens everywhere. All those things had to be synced too. You know, so we had to work out how to sync LEDs, how to sync video screens, how to sync, everything had to be completely perfectly lined up. Otherwise, the effect was gone. So, yeah, there was a lot of R&D to get that all come together.

So was that, because I once tried to use time code to make a music video more easily chunkable and I never really figured, I didn't end up doing that job anyway, but I was like researching how to like play back with like have the playback sync with all the clips so that you could just drop them all into a timeline and have the exact. It was, were you guys doing something like that or like how'd you end up? Yeah, a little bit excited question.

The same take and take will just start on the same time code. You can just drop it off each other. And absolutely, that is the idea. But the problem is we then live have to, you have to do some editing on set. You know, that's the problem. You know, if you can send it all off to the edit and then come back the next day, you know,

it would have been fine. But you sort of have to do it now. We have to be ready. And also the whole thing is we, you go for like, oh, take five was the good take. Okay, now work on take five. And now we're going to do another take while we are, you're editing, take five.

you know, it was just things got missed and, you know, it did, yeah, it could just have been slightly smoother, that's all. Yeah. I mean, the first episode was six years ago? Yeah, 2017. I think it came out. We shot it in 2016, I think, beginning of 2016. So how did your approach change between then and now? Obviously, a lot of new tech, you know, lighting has gotten a lot. Yeah. The LED has gotten a lot better. Obviously, cameras have changed. Oh, absolutely. There was a few. Yeah, and of course, we'd be sort of, well, there's a lot of,

I sort of remember sort of seeing the original episode, I still sort of, every now and again, when I glance in the background, I can see sort of LEDs sort of sort of half falling out of the set because they weren't glued properly in, and there's all these little detail, like, oh, that's annoying, oh, that's annoying. So, so we

sort of knew how to build this set better, you know, where at the first time round, we just had to make it work and, and I think our first lighting package came in like three times more than it was supposed to cost, you know, like, you're spending the entire budget of the whole film on your lighting, you can't have that anyway. So we had to come up with this little ingenious solutions, you know, lots of LED tape and, you know, just we had to

build their own fixtures. That ended up being cheaper than, you know, renting and lighting equipment because it didn't, LEDs were still sort of a fairly novelty at that time, you know, sky panels had only just really sort of became sort of studio, you know, something that film Bruce used, you know. So, um, Yeah, I mean, you know, so we were able to make the spaceship a lot better. We got much better LEDs, and also this time, instead of using RGB tape, we use RGBWW, you know, which has a much better white, you know, because we ended up, there's a lot of sort of pink tones. We had this issue, for instance, in the original one when she wakes up in that little sort of light pod or MET pod or whatever it is, you know,

the sort of this sort of lights up like that. We used sort of a cheaper kind of LED tape for that than we used out in the corridor, which meant that the lighting looked completely different. It ended up working for the show. It felt like it was sort of warmer in that and slightly greener out in the corridor when we graded it. But it was sort of the other way around.

It was everything in that room was totally pink because, you know, we used these cheap LEDs and they just had this weird magenta spin. So anyway, so that was a lesson. Let's get proper LEDs for everything. And then the last thing, actually that, I was quite happy with, we have outside the space port, or whatever you call it, the view port in the main sort of control area. Oh, in the, what is it called, the deck. They, we just had a big green screen there for the first, you know, for the first episode, or the first time we shot it.

And, you know, green screen is great, you know, but I think it, there was a lot of green spill on the set, you know, and, you know, it was sort of, I mean, it was sort of, I mean, I think it cost them a lot of money in post to fix that, to do all those shots. And this effect, this time round, realized that we're going to do so many shots and so many shots looking towards the screen that actually it made sense for us to put a what's called a video wall outside. So this time round, when we were on set, we were actually in space. You know, so it was a great day actually taking the cast in there for the first day and then going on, actually, it's all there.

We're actually flying through space. and the space was animated as well. They put all these little star fields that had slightly some movement on them. And then, of course, hyperspace was great because you could actually play that as a video file. So when they, it works both that they can look at it, but it also likes the set, you know,

and it likes the people, you know, looking at it, you know. So that was super useful. And again, for the last scene, spoiler, when you get to, when they all get inside in the net's head, you know, we could sort of actually play the video the little handheld shot to be shot but her T-OV shot we played on the screen

behind them so when they're reacting they're reacting to what's going on on the video screen like it's happening live they sort of help them sort of sink up their movements whether they're falling left

or falling right as he bumps around and in the hospital yeah well and actually that brings up something funny that I thought because obviously you know there's a lot of different

Star Trek to choose from I saw in some other interviews you did that you know obviously at least with the more modern version of these characters that, you know, you're doing a lot of JJ, you know, like you said. Yeah. Steading in

the thing. But the chair acting, I think, is very very Star Trek. I don't think there's any other show that does chair acting. That's what you have to do. I mean, the set is just too big. I mean, it'd be lovely to put it all in a gimbal, and I'm sure that's what JJ really wanted to do if you could. But

the set is just so massive. So yeah, what you have to do is everybody to the left, everybody to the right. And it's great fun. It makes part of it. Actually, this is a great little sort of Easter egg. I always sort of love when I see the original one with Jesse Clemmon. So in that 60s version, you know, they have this whole thing where, oh, you're going into the cluster, you know, oh, that's going to be terrible.

And the whole spaceship starts to shake. And everybody's shaking like this, but Jesse Clemen is just standing completely perfectly still because, you know, spaceship shaking does not affect him. You know, he's not going to sort of degrade himself to that kind of stuff. And I just love that. They're so cool, if you're pushing on him, everybody's shaking around him. He's just there completely steady. Yeah, it's a nice, nice detail. Yeah.

Yeah, there's this great series that someone put up on, I think it's on YouTube or whatever, but they took all the next generation clips of like the ship getting hit and they stabilize it. Oh, right. To see how silly it looks when they're. Yeah, no one's going in the same direction either. It's all just. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That too.

It's just popcorn. That too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We tried to be quite good with that, actually, because Toby sort of understands that. So he will sort of stand there and go, everybody left and sort of stands in front of them, you know, we would stand on the viewpoint and sort of down and set out so everybody reacts at the same time. I was wondering, because this is a conversation that I love having with people who work on, any, anything,

but especially with stuff like this is like, obviously VFX is going to be part of it, right? You got lasers, you get whatever. But I was wondering in what ways did the VFX team help you out from a, production standpoint. Well, the video screen was incredible, you know, that, that worked out really well. I mean, they were just super accommodating, you know, like anything we sort of came up with, you know, because like sometimes people delete stands, you're like boom pole, you know, stuff that just just for you to shoot.

100%. They do that all the time. You sort of become part of the proboscis, but also that won't necessarily happen on a sci-fi show. It seems to happen on every show. Right. You know, I was just doing a show with, um, before this, did a show with Guy Ritchie, and it's a thing called Mobland.

It just came out on Paramount Plus with Tom Hardy and Pierce Brosnan. But Guy Ritchie doesn't like to wait around, you know. So you sort of, he'll do two takes of anything, and you sort of come in and go. So, oh, I'm really sorry, Guy, can we go again? Because there was a lighting stand in the back of that shot, and I think I saw a reflection or something. No, I'm happy, moving on.

Okay, so we just knew. You know, he just wouldn't care. And he just knew that that was going to get fixed, that was going to get fixed. You know, even when you sort of try, I can, I can actually help with that. No, don't care. Moving on, you know, we'll work it out in post. Okay, fine. And all those things do get fixed, you know.

So it happens on all shows. But this as well, it sort of helps when you are big, your sex production. And there's so many shots anyway, you know, to paint out the cable while they're putting in a big staff field at the same time. You know, it's never going to be a big issue. You know, they can do all that for you. And we did that first time round as well. I remember there was some angles sort of looking straight up

at Jesse when he was sort of talking to Nanette when she's on the ground and we had these big sort of lights hung in the rig and it would just take us half an hour to take him down and I sort of went to the guys

he said, okay, can I leave him up there? And they went fine, fine, we'll pin them out. So, no, they're super helpful with all that kind of stuff and yeah, yeah, and it just makes it, I try not to take advantage, you know, but it does make the film making process slightly easier,

you know, yeah. And also there's the little things later where things that go wrong, you know. At Demon 79, we had someone getting stabbed in the chest with a knife, and then the blood was supposed to just pull out a little bit and get on his legs kind of thing. And we did it, and we had like two minutes left of the day.

If the blood they were supposed to come out, it didn't work, it just sort of splurred it out like this, and then there's something, else who went, oh, that's shit. And then the producer come up. Yeah, I'm sorry, guys, we don't have time to reset. That's it. That's a wrap. I went, oh, why do you have to come back? Are we going to, what we're going to do here? And then reaffixed, don't worry about it. We'll sort it out. And they did it. They changed it all up. You know, the spurt was painted out. They made the blood sort of steep out under his jack. And, you know, they could do all that kind of stuff

now. It's, you know, it's not free, of course. But you can't get those little fixes when you just run out of time sometimes. Well, and it's always cool to see that. kind of stuff or have it explained or whatever because it eventually works its way down to you know like my level for like I remember when I think it was mine hunter came out and they were showing these production stills and you saw this like you know boom pole uh lighting you know flags whatever and then they would show the final frame and it there's none of that there and I was like what I was like yeah we just get a plate and then put it's not even VFX it's literally just to take a clean time and I was like what so I started or like color correction now is so good

Like, if you're supposed to flag off a wall, I'll just be like, let me color it because I'm, you know, at my level, like, make me the colors. And I'll just take it down later. Like, I'm not going to. Exactly that. Let's say that. I'm constantly making those kind of calculations, you know. See, it comes with experience as well, but you sort of know that's going to take me five

seconds in the grade. I'm not going to, it's going to take a half hour now to put flags up and do all that kind of stuff now, leave it. Yeah. And the same thing, when you shoot two cameras, that's the whole thing with sound, we'll always go. They want the microphone as closest. they can get, you know, and I'm trying to put a wide shot on the mid shot at the same time.

They go, well, you know, sounds going to be terrible on the midshot and get, oh, just put the microphone where you want it. The other camera is locked off and we'll just literally, you just, at the end of the shot, let's take the boom pull out and we get a plate for two seconds and then that shot's covered, you know, so it is that simple. And it is stuff they, I mean, that's not even considered the effects, you know, they do that stuff in the edit or it's the online, you know, it's the same kind of people who put the credits on, you know, they're also just cleaned up that kind of stuff. Yeah.

And I mean, it's really, it's creating what was initially, I'm stealing this phrase from Michael Chione, but it's creating what used to, filmmaking used to be a very linear process. And now it's becoming far below, you know, where you can have those thoughts and even have, you know, obviously with DITs now. And this can happen on set that are supposed to happen in post. It's just really, I feel like it's probably very, very freeing. Absolutely. We also had a fantastic video playback guy on this job. I forget his name now, sadly. But he, and he sort of did, he did live edits for us, you know. So he would sort of, when he got some rushes in there, he would put it together, cut it around, you know. So we, you know, like five minutes after we shot something, we just walk out to him, just show us, how does it work? You know, and he just shows a quick edit. Okay, it's going to be fine. Move on. Okay, let's do something else now. So, so that kind of stuff happens, you know. And, and it's super, super useful.

And it's not even an editor-un-set. It's just that the guys who have all their playbag and DIT, and they can all do that stuff now. You know, the computers are so advanced and technology has become so fast that that's easy to do. Yeah, dailies have become hourly's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can literally, exactly.

And exactly, you put a look on it as you're doing it because you used to have a daily scholarist who would put the look on overnight. And now, you know, you're doing it. The picture you see on the monitor that everybody sees on the monitor is pretty much very, very close to the final created picture you're going to see when it goes out. But also, I learned that as a lesson as well, you know, being, I learned from experience, is, you know, the editors and the directors and producers, they get very attached to whatever image that they sit and watching the edit for six months. so actually it happened very much on the first first year as Calistus was

what happened to me we did this the spaceship was very sort of bold colorful very bright white and pink colors and all that kind of stuff and then I took into the gray and I sort of felt oh that's not black mirror black mirror is much more dark and green

and gray and you know let's put the color out let's make it a bit more noisy and interesting and anyway I sort of played with it. And then Charlie came in and Toby, the director, came in and watched it and sort of went, what's that?

I went, I just started to make it cool. And they went, no, it was brilliant. It was really good. You were making the right thing. You had the right colors, all the things that it needed to be. Yeah, but, but, no, no, no, but change it. Take it back.

Anyway, so we took it back. And it was totally the right decision. I think of just my own sort of anxiety about being cool enough. I was really nervous that, you know, coming from Doctor Who and from other kids TV in the back. In the past, I was making, I'm making it too colorful and I might just going to, you know, is it just looking like all those other, you know, prep BBC shows, you know, but it was totally the right tone and what we should do. So it was all fine. Well, you know, I was just

thinking about like the hourly's like also the speed at which cards can dump now. Yeah, you just have to wait hours for it. Now it's like, you know, a couple minutes. You've got everything there. But you say that. You say that. But it's actually slightly different because, there's also become that there's a whole sort of world of sort of post-production that's sort of come in you know there's no management managers and middle managers and you know there's a daily scholarist and then there's a daily scholarist team then there's a backup supervisor and then i don't i'm making up names now

but you know there's this you know whenever you have your every now every production you have to have a call about the delivery and how we're going to do the rushes and there's always just like 50 people on it and go and who are you what do you all do anyway so this is all pipeline of things it has to go through, which is great. And they all, you know, need to be there, of course. But it also means that, you know, when you take a card off, you know, you can't just take it and delete it.

You know, you have to take it off, copy it into a computer. And then that has to be covered to a third second computer. Then there's another computer that gets stored and put in a safe place and all this kind of stuff. And then it has to go into the edit. And then at some point, like the next day, you know, sort of late lunchtime, there it will go, yep, it's safe, we definitely have all the backups, everything's covered, now you can delete the card, you know, so the car sort of sits in a soul where don't touch it,

don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it. So you actually, you can run out the cards, even though you should be able just to recycle them straight away, you know, you actually, in theory, you only need two cards, one car to shoot on and one car to download and then swap around, but we end up with, you know, we have 20 cards still because we need to sort of, you know, we have had all the rushes shut that day, plus we have to have enough cards for the next day as well, until they gave us the all clear. Well, and I will say that...

And it can. Oh, okay. I will say that I do that as well because I'm terrified of wiping a card. So I, yeah, I'll bring... Luckily, you see 500... It has happened to me. It has happened to me.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Actually, well, enough, you mentioned Doctor Who. So Dr. Who in America, I think it was the first day of filming so we were filming on this beach that we talked about earlier and we shot all the stuff

with the spaceman coming out of the water and it had been this perfectly sea we started a lot of stuff with Matt Smith getting killed and talking to a space suit and lots of shots anyway we come up and then I talk to the guys oh right, we need to change cards you know, okay, it's his card, you know?

And then the guys said went, did you change it? No, I didn't change it, just deleted it. What? No, but, what? Anyway, we lost the whole morning's rushes on one of the cameras, the whole morning, and we just went, it's gone. Yeah, we might be able to save it, might be able to save it, and it took it off to the truck, you know, and there was some notes or, you know, we just have to go with, we probably won't be able to save it, so we had to go out and shoot it again. So that whole morning, or the whole afternoon, we then had to go back and do these shots. And of course, they were never as good as they were that morning.

But that was the big lesson, you know, just. That's why like the Alexa Mini scares me Because it's only got the one slot Right on the two cannon bodies that I have They have two slots and you record both of it You can I don't always but you can record to both Yeah So that but I'm always just like have like twice as many cards as I need for the day

And then I never use those little I don't know if you ever run into them But those little orange Lassie drives That are the slowest things on the planet Because they have an orange Oh I see. bumper on them. All the producers are like, oh, they're safe. It's, it's rubber. Stop! SSDs exist.

Yeah. But yeah, Lord, if that was me, I'd probably go to the safest, quietest corner and just vomit for 20 minutes. I can't imagine. I think there was a lot of credit teas and, you know, yeah, a lot of frowning and upset faces. But anyway, we just had to go, well, okay, shit happens and went back and said some more. Nobody got fired. It was all fine. You know, that's good. That's all we could ask for.

You had mentioned the colors. I did want to ask about what the grading process. I imagine you made a shooting lot first. Yeah, we had a shooting. Did we have a shooting lot? I think it was more, a lot was more sort of, yes, I did have a shooting lot because what I was probably to do was just a little bit of emulate what we did on the first. time around. So I did have a lot for the office to give that sort of

that slightly more greeny look. We ended up knocking that back because the office had changed. It'd become a little bit more colorful, you know, so we didn't go as far as we did on the first episode. But I did give that a look and then space had a look. And I think when we went to the planet

that was called the jungle planet, you know, I think we beefed that up quite a lot. So we had that sort of teal and orange kind of Michael Bay kind of so that's

what we were thinking of taking it so we did we did try but I think it was rather than

being a lot it was more the DIT would just sort of tweak it on set you know

so we were sort of watching it on the monitors and they would have sort of the right

kind of polish while we were shooting got so that this is a dumb question I feel like

I should know this I don't know why this is the first time I've ever asked this

Oh, sure. I assume the DIT, I feel so stupid. I feel like the DIT must be between the camera. It goes camera, DIT, and then, like, I guess, video village. Yeah. It's not like a separate. I think he, no, he's in between exactly. That's right.

You know, so he sends, he sends it, he gets it, he corrects the color, and then he sends that image to the video operator, and then the video operator then the video operator then sends that his image to all the monitors that are all around. But sometimes, I mean, in certain situations, they might filter it in a slightly different way. But that's how it's supposed to be. So you get the colors on. It has the right look. And then everybody watches the same thing.

I don't know why in my head for the longest time. I've just thought like, I guess I just never thought of it. I was just like, there's a guy on set or a girl or whoever. There's someone on set. Yeah. Colors? Yeah. Magic.

And then mine. Magic. Yeah. No, no, no. And also that, I mean, this is a very. very, very recent thing, certainly for me, I mean, it's been going on for a few years now, you know, but it's not, it's not all budgets of production that will sort of have this kind of service. So quite a lot. You still have a TAT, but they'll just, you've just given the

rushes and they'll sit in a little tent next to the truck and they'll just basically doing the backups. And while they're doing the backups, they put a look on it that you talked about. And then at the end of the day, you sort of just look at the, you know, some reference stills and going, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the right directions. I'm happy with that. that, okay, send it off, where, you know, the whole sort of onset DIT is a new process, but it's been sort of embraced by everybody. I think that I think the thing that you're getting the right look up front, I think it does save time all the way through.

Because one of the issues you have, for instance, is all the VFX, you know, they sort of need to know where they're going to end up and what kind of look it's going to look like at the end. If they just got a lock C or something that was sort of color the wrong way, that these effects might end up looking wrong because they're working so off balance, you know, that it won't marry up. So them getting ahead of the curve with the final or close to a final look will make all that kind of stuff works so much better. Yeah.

I guess tent person is more what I thought was happening. And then, you know, maybe they would give you like a blood or something. But obviously we have, you've had SDI forever. you can just put stuff in that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I guess one thing I did want to ask is on the first version of the show, the first episode, whatever, I saw in an interview you had mentioned how at the time tracking technology hadn't really been sured up that, so they were making you shoot

clean animals. Yes. No, it's clean anamorphics. Yes, what they made us shoot on was because we wanted to shoot animophically just because we were so, we loved the, you know, the JJ Star Trek so much. And also, I mean, all the classic, you know, the, your Star Wars and your Indiana and so we just knew that sort of anamorphic look was just the right thing to go for, that sort of extra wide frame.

But they, yeah, they would only allow the mast animorphics because it's a perfect lens. It's so perfectly engineered that, you know, everything, all the mechanics just work perfectly. There's no barreling. everything sits in the right place and it's easy for them to track. But also, it makes it incredibly boring. You know, you could basically, if you put a mast anamorphic on, you could basically just shoot it on a spherical lens. They look identical.

Oh, not, close to, you get a little bit of that, you know, what's it called the highlights you get in the back, the out of focus, the bouquet. You get a little bit of that sort of, you know, sort of long bouquet, but that's it. You know, all the other stuff, you know, the little sort of band of, you know, out of focus, top and bottom,

you know, the little bit in Yetting, the blue flare, you know, or the way that, you know, a sort of good, classic anamorphic lens flares. None of that stuff, they're taking it all out. But we did do, at the end of that first episode, we were then allowed one day, but I did a very kindly battle by our VFX supervisors.

Because he said, we need those flares. We wanted to look like JJ. When they're getting into infinity, it has to be that look, and we have to get it in camera. So we then was recommended these lenses called Toyo, which is a Japanese make. I think there's only one or two sets in the world or something.

I mean, I don't know how we had those about it. Anyway, they look beautiful. They are very vintage, vintage to the point that they were sort of basically falling apart. You know, so we were sort of putting it on the camera and it would take like 15 minutes, 20 minutes to change the lens. But, you know, but they looked great. It did exactly where we wanted. And we sort of knew that that was the look that we had to carry on into the future. So we had to get a lens that can do all that kind of stuff, but also maybe not fall apart.

So when we came to this one, we then went Panavision and we went with the Anamorphic C series, which is sort of based on the Spee series and C series, but it's sort of a slightly more modern version. I'm not sure when they made it. I sort of feeling it's like 2000s or something, you know. It's, but it's really has all the right things that you want from anamorphic lens, has the right coating, the right kind of slat air, has the banding, top and bottom. And then it also just sits in a modern housing, and it's quite good for close focus as well. You know, I think most, you know, if you get certain, certain anamorphic lenses,

most of them will have a close focus of four feet, which sort of, you know, when you set up, almost everything, everything is just the midshot. And whenever you want to do any kind of close-up, you have to stick it out to it. We had to take a plus two-dopter or plus three-draptor, and constantly swapping diopters. But the T-Series is two-foot, I think, close focus, which is much more sort of reasonable. You know, you can shoot a handheld shot.

You can push in on somebody, and it will still look good when they are up sort of close to them. So, yeah, so that was the choice, and it looked great. And we shot the whole episode on those lenses. We didn't sort of swap or change for different bits. did you have any diffusion the only time we used a bit of diffusion we did it but when we went

to be a little bit of Daley's what's he called Robert Daly's house is it both in the past when we sort of go back to the 90s the 90s you know that sort of alignment lucky with a bit of sunny weather that day so we wanted to be to bloom a bit and sort of have that sort of bit

sort of, you know, classic Barbara Catlin, you know, sort of memory, memory kind of diffusion. But then he also felt like it made sense that he stayed in that kind of world. So when she comes back and visits at him when he's inside the heart of insanity and sits in the center of this little weird, swirly thing, we kept the soft filter in because it just, I think you look good with the highlights in his little garage. So we kept it in. And it gave it a vibe, I thought. you know so it was just a black satin i think we used uh but most of the other stuff was all

clean no filters yeah gotcha yeah i had written flashback here but then i was like i felt like it maybe a solid but that's probably just the coding on the on the t series but the thing i know you know it's late there so i'm going to let you go but the thing i did want to ask do you know because again i'm just trying to steal uh how they how they emulated in the first episode how they emulated the look because didn't you say they applied like 60s sort of yeah well just the

I it was just an interview like some BSC interview sure sure where you had mentioned that because you had to shoot clean they would like emulate the anamorphic look on the I think so I can't remember what that would be

referenced to I think we probably we we probably got them to walk certain shots I think I don't think we did that too much I know it's something they can do

and they do a lot more now that you know when you shoot because for instance I shot I shot a show a couple years ago called S-A's Rogue Heroes

and we wanted it all again to feel anamorphic maybe I just have a style I just want to shoot anamorphicly but there was another animorphic show

and we shot on these very sort of bendy lenses called Kawa and they're very lightweight and they look great. But every time you wanted a vis-effect shot, then the vis-effect department said, can you please shoot that on a spherical lens?

And of course, spherical looks completely different. You know, it matched a little bit. Of course, suddenly the lines are all straight. And so they would on those shots, they would put some anamorphic characteristics into all their spherical shots and just make it sort of feel more bated in. And I think the same was the case

for some of the Demon 79. I think we did it there as well. I don't remember so much for U.S. Calista. I think that was pretty much straight up, apart from, you know, the, no, yeah, I don't think that, yeah, I mean, they'd probably help us out with certain bits here and there. I can't remember. Yeah. The other reason I ask is because I'm currently in the process of trying and resolve to

figure out how to do that in a way that makes sense. Because, like, one thing that I figured out is obviously, like you were saying, the edges of anamorphics get kind of fudgy if you just put a mask over it and try to blur the edges, it doesn't look right. It just, it doesn't even fall off correctly. And so I found a way to like

using the input from a different mask, you can use the tilt set blur and it actually on lens correctly and it has anamorphism slider. So that's one element. But also what we do on set is we shoot lens

grids, you know. So basically, you basically shoot a big grid, all sort of perfectly square, you know, when you shoot it. And then you have every single lens. You shoot them at that format. And then when you have anamorphic lens, of course, the lens grid will look completely sort of bent, you know, crazy like that. But what they do is they take that information into the computer and sort of so they're able to unbend it. So when they, then when they do the effects, they do it in the unbended version. And then they can put the bend back into it. You know, they sort of know what. entered. Exactly. And so they take all those

catarrations, but so when they do those lens grids, it just means they basically have that lens in some kind of, you know, you know, folder somewhere, and they can just put that, they can touch that look through any shot you want, you know, afterwards. And also, I know the totally mentioned Mindhunter before and also cars. I know that's exactly what David Fincher does. You know, he's used everything spherical, completely, perfectly, square, clean, but he loves the anamorphic look

so whenever he has a wide shot and he feels like no no no this should feel more amorphic he sort of he adds it in post so and then it gets that little slight bend and that kind of you know but he's a perfectionist he needs to control every part

part of his side work with some of his team you know and they were talking about how precise you know how how you know exact he was with everything so I think he just loves to be yeah he doesn't want anything done by chance yeah I'm a big fan of his

and I spoke I've spoken with his DP one of them actually I've spoken to like five of his DPs at this point but Eric Eric was telling me that another thing they did because obviously they'll VFX in the you know anoreth flares and stuff like that but he was telling me on the killer they used this plugin for resolve called

scatter to do artificial filtration. And I started playing with that too. And actually a buddy of mine just designed his own called DigiDiff that just came out. That is really compelling price to performance-wise. But I'm still in beta.

But yeah, I'm starting to, I used to be very like, oh, we got to get it all in camera. But now I feel like the tools are getting better. It's like if this is going to save us to, especially with like, you know, key framable diffusion. If something's too backlit and you're using real diffusion it just gets all washed it's like it would be nice to just

too late, you know. Yeah, yeah. Too late touching. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, no, definitely. But then there's all the certain things you get, you know, when you are shooting with the right lens

with the right slab and everything sort of comes together, you know, that sometimes you can't match that either. You sort of have to go for it, you know, and then hope you can, you know, if there's a problem, then maybe they can fix the problem. problem, you know, but yeah, sometimes, yeah, we just, you know, going back to that

on the show, the ESAS Rock Heroes, we shot that in absolutely no time, you know, and it was, I sort of remember so many days, but it's just like a 10 minutes left of the day and, like, oh, son's going down, so this happened over here, okay, just put something on the camera, put, you know, slow-mo, yeah, go slow-mo, whatever, and we just do something, you know, and then, and then somehow you sort of watch it go out and go, oh, my God, that looks like we had all the time in the world and really compose these shots beautifully, but it's literally just, you know, two cameramen just running around like your headless chickens

and just collecting some stuff that may work. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing with, you know, experience that you can't really teach is like, if you're given enough time to consider something, you will probably overthink it and that it becomes worse. Whereas if you have to go by instinct, and you have the experience.

It'll kick in and you'll start ignoring the little voice. It's like, what if you used a split diopter? Shut up, shut up. Exactly. Just shoot it. Just shoot something. You know, on that show, the method became basically just shoot something. You know, just shoot something.

At least you have a scene. You have something to then cut, you know, cut out of the show. But if you're talking about it and say, oh, it could be this, could be that. You've got nothing, you know, then you don't have a scene. So anyway, our philosophy was just key shooting. And then luckily, I was working with the director who, you know, at least had some sense of quality, you know, so he wouldn't use anything that was absolutely dreadful.

He used the good bits. But because we, you know, we just went for it, you know, we got so much more on the show that we probably would have done it in the other way. Yeah. Well, I'll let you go. But my final question was, because I've never seen the show, was that actually episodes of Real Housewives of Atlanta? or did you have to reshoot those? Oh, I see.

I'm sorry. I'd love to be able to tell you that. I think it's just real episodes. I don't know how they got. I have no idea. We didn't have those on set. When we played that back, that was a green screen.

And we sort of had an idea about what might happen, what might happen in those particular clips. I think one of the writers, a guy, the lady called Bisha, who also wrote Deven 79. And I think she was all across, you know,

she's like, no, no, I know everything about the American, you know, the Atlanta, you know, is this kind of stuff, this kind of stuff, this kind of stuff. You just put all this and it fits into the script. But I assume that we got the right license and we were allowed to use them. And I would have happened early on because it was on our script pages and they never told us it was going to be any different.

So, so, yeah, it must have, yeah, they must have just have agreed. to it. I don't think it's not a nitpick show, is it? Housewives of Atlanta. I'm not sure. I don't think so. It, I mean, it probably is, right, if they were able to get the rights to it, but I, you know, then it's so easy for them. Although they keep sort of, because that's what Charlie usually does, is that he keeps sort of just feeding on himself, you know, so when we did the other episode, they ended up not using it in the episode, but they were, at one scene, they were sitting in a sofa watching a TV show, and they ended up, the TV show they were watching was an episode

from the previous season of Black Mirror, you know, that kind of stuff he loves doing. But this time, he could have done that, but I guess it felt more fun that they were just watching something completely, you know,

mindless, mindless entertainment. Yeah. Because, yeah, in my head, I was like, that would be hilarious

if they went and re-shot just like a few shots. So for us. Yeah, I mean, they may have done, I don't, I'd never heard them say anything about that.

So I assume that they just picked some, some real, they got the license. to use some real clips yeah well um it's a great episode it might as well be a movie that out on a blu-ray and uh i really appreciate you spending the time to chat with me no thank you kennett it was a great great time you too yeah uh enjoy the rest of your night or i guess thank you so much thank you so much yeah exactly you know exactly i will uh go and say hello to my family at least i'm home so i don't have far to travel fair enough well i hope i can

have you back soon next time you do something else. Oh, I'd love to. I'd love to get it. Brilliant. 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. Thank you.