Frame & Reference Podcast - 194: "Apple Cider Vinegar" Cinematographer Toby Oliver, ACS

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

Today I'm joined by Toby Oliver, ACS to talk about his work on Apple Cider Vinegar! Toby also shot Get Out, M3GAN 2.0, and Barb & Star Go to Vista del Mar.Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this, episode 194 of frame and reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Toby Oliver, ACS, DP of Apple Cider Vinegar. Enjoy. or or i see a lot of people uh online because you know all all my friends are cool uh yeah you know i'll see online a lot of kids talking about like hey i'm really really shy and don't like people like how can i make a movie just by myself and i'm always like you don't and then everyone gets mad at me like i'm not saving this kid thousands of dollars and heartache you know yeah no but you are because you know if there's a really especially if you're a direct

director, you know, trying to get projects off the ground, you've got to have a bit of chutzpah. You've got to have a bit of, you know, you can't be that shy. Yeah. You know, you can't be hiding in your new closet or your bedroom. You've got to get out there. Well, and I think that, you know, the current media landscape includes a lot of people like streaming or doing YouTube and stuff, which is very, you know, camera. Which is a thing, but you can't watch all of those and go, I would like to be a filmmaker. Yeah, from that.

Yeah, that's different. It's not evidence. It's great and it's valid and it's contemporary, but it's not the same thing as making a narrative. Maybe. You know, that's something that takes a long time, I think,

to hone your skills and your experience and your life experience and all these things can go together. Some people are great off the get-go. They just seem to be born to be able to make their storytellers and visual storytellers. And there's other people that are, you know, they get better and better as they go on, you know.

Well, some people are great filmmakers when they're, you know, in their 70s or 80s or whatever. Sure. I mean, that was one thing that, well, I was going to say Ed Moore, I had Ed Moore on the other day. His is going to come out later. You got to see the list of people that are in the, in the queue for coming out because it's all. Right. Yeah, last of us is going to be next week with Catherine Goldstein. Oh, cool.

Yeah, Silo. Excellent. DPs from Silo, you. See, that show is really picked up in popularity, didn't it? I think when the first season of Silo came out, it was like, Silo, what's that? And then now it's like this, even over here in Australia, people are, people are, you know, really, you know, binging it and everything. Well, it's good sci-fi and the books are already done. So they have a path, you know?

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's easier to do that than Severance where it's like, all right, where do we go with this? You know, there's no, there's no material. I know. How did they figure out what to do the second season? It was sort of like, gosh, what do you do? But it's really clever. It's fantastic.

But Ed was saying, well, first of all, I'll just tell you, they're starting to shoot the fourth season of Silo already. Oh, wow. Yeah, they told me the third one's wrapped in four if they're starting in like August. And I'm just like, what is your guys, do you just live in that set now? Clearly. Yeah. But Ed was saying that with all the gatekeeping of cinema. cinematography and stuff, he was like, if you get a shitty coffee at 4 a.m. under a leaky tent

in the rain and a parking lot, you're a cinematographer. Yeah, yeah, it can take all shapes, all shapes and forms, actually, being a cinematographer these days. You could be anywhere, any time doing anything, really. Yeah. I was wondering what, because obviously, like, I grew up here in L.A. I'm around the film industry. Well, technically the Bay Area. in the LA. So a lot of film history here. But every time I interview Australian cinematographers, there does seem to be this element of like just getting it done that I think even here like New York or maybe in London interviewed plenty of British cinematographers. But like I feel like all

the Aussies like it will get done. It's like, you know, it's just like there's no, a roadblock is just a bump. You know, it's like we're going to muscle through this. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's a bit of the way you grow up shooting here, well, grow up, grow up as a cinematographer working here in Australia with the constraints of budget and time and all the things. A lot of people around the world have to deal with, but it's pretty cut and dried here in some respects, especially if you're doing television because, but not only television, is that, you know, that's the day. You've got a 10-hour day.

You have to shoot everything that's on the call sheet. Could be 10 scenes, could be 15 scenes, could be. be forced, you know, depends what it is, you have to shoot it by that time because there is no overtime or only on very special occasions, right? So it's, so there isn't that, that, you know, I think in the States, and I've worked in the States who are quite a lot as well, obviously there's a bit, there's, you know, they allow for a bit of flexibility because sometimes you have to and sometimes people end up doing really long days because that's just how long it takes, right? And in Australia, they just don't have the budget for that. So they just don't,

Just you, if the director and the DP don't shoot the call sheet in the day, then those scenes aren't in the show. They just, you have to then cut around it because they're just not going to be there. Because they're not going to come back and add days and shoot them again later or any of that stuff. So there's a certain discipline you learn. You have to make your days. And if you do get a little bit of extra time and there's a bit of this or you can do a bit the other day, the great bonus. We've got a bit more time. awesome but the the the the discipline is you have to do that and i guess if as a dp

if you were not making your days and it's sort of your part of your department's problem uh then you don't you just don't last yeah it's your vote it's really pretty well more or less or you just don't get asked back or whatever it might be but you it's just um yeah there's there's not a lot of leeway there. So I guess with Aussie DPs, when you're working on a bigger show and you've got more time and space, then you really, you know that you can get to point B by the end of the day, but we've got extra time. Oh, great, well, we can do all this extra stuff, you know.

You know, it doesn't, it's not always, you know, as black and white as that, but that's sort of where you're coming from is that, well, I just have to make the day. It's no question. It's just that's what's going to get done, you know. So, yeah, you go into it like that. So I guess over the years, it has been producers sometimes think, well, Aussie TBs are great because they're very fast, you know. And there's truth in that.

That's because we just have to. You know, it wasn't, it didn't get much choice in the matter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it was, it's funny. Judd Overton, I think, was the guy who. Oh, yeah, I know Judd. I know Judd very well. He's great.

But I started to get that sense from him where he was just like, Yeah. I don't know. I just, I work really efficiently. So I don't think you said that. Well, you have to. You actually think about, you're faced with a big call sheet and you're going into a location. And obviously, you think, if you've thought about how you're going to light it and that's all happening usually in a pre light, because often in Australia, especially with television, there's no, there's no rigging gaffer or rigging team. So they don't, they don't go in there the day before or two days before. set it all up for you and you just walk in and it's all kind of rigged that there's no money or time for that so you get in there early on the day so it's a bit more like an indie film type thing you get in there early and you do your pre light so it also affects the way you would light

something you're not going to put in this giant rig you know it's you know 16 cranes and a lot of stuff because it's no time for that so you figure out an efficient way of doing it like judd said you think of it okay this is the efficient way i'm going to be able to complete this day and leapfrog and everything else that you do. So it's, yeah, you just learn over the years that that's, that's what's expected of you. And so you figure out ways of doing it, yes. Yeah, have you sort of discovered any, I suppose, cheat codes for working efficiently, efficiently, you know, look that is acceptable in a cinema?

Well, it's usually, yeah, you have to achieve the look, especially nowadays, because the expectation of how good something looks, I think,'s gone up since when I started out. You know, back in the 90s or whatever, you know, there was a bit more leeway and it didn't have to, you know, it was a low budget. It could look a bit low. It was okay, you know. But now what you see is what you get, all the big monitors around and all of that. It has to look absolutely, you know, schmiko, perfect and look like a real movie or look like a real show. So you, at the same time, being very efficient, you have to maintain this level of quality of your work.

That also can't really dip down and become, you know, shoddy because then it will, you know, that's going to stand out. So there are, you know, there are ways you're leapfrogging where you're always got a team preparing the next scene while you're shooting the scene that you're in. And sometimes you make sure you've got extra gear or an extra camera body or something can be rigged for something that's coming up before you get to it. So it's always, it's basically thinking ahead very clearly in detail about what's coming up. So obviously you've got to be helped with your director.

You don't want a director who's just changing their mind, you know, wishy-washy on every scene, you know, during the day because then you, how am I going to preempt any of that? So you've got to work together as a team and good director. directors over here who obviously work in Australia on the same, they're on the same page as you. They haven't got to also make their day because the director is also underneath the exact same pressures. So, because, you know, they won't get asked back if they keep going over and not, you know, dropping scenes and whatnot. So you work together. And with your first AD, of course, who's, you know, responsible for the schedule as that little T.

team, like on every production, that's the little team of three people are kind of driving, you know, steering the ship when you're on set actually filming. But you've got the imperative that, you know, there isn't really any overtime or not much. So you've just got to be really efficient, all the three of you together. And the whole, you know, that's part of your, part of your jobs. I work very closely with an AD, you know, from the get-go. even if i'm on a much bigger production where you've got a lot more time um it's it comes out a habit you know it becomes it's it's it's like a it's you've got a team up with your ad otherwise you know you can't just sort of say well i didn't know what was coming or you know

that's you actually you know you got to be like peas in a pod well i uh i if i'm really like interested in what i'm doing especially but pretty much on any film shoot i've been on I can get time blinders really fast, and I love a good AD. A bad AD, in my opinion, will just bug you about being on schedule. A good ID keeps you on schedule. Absolutely. And I love those ones where they're like, oh, no, 100%. Like if you do get, like you say, to start getting drifting off into getting really

involved with something that's going to be really beautiful. And the AD says, look, that's great. We've really only got half an hour. So just, you know, you go, oh, right. yeah yeah i'm with you okay camera rolling yeah sometimes i mean as it as it yeah sometimes as a dp you know you're lighting a scene um and you're you're you know 90% of the way to kind of what you wanted to achieve but there's that extra 10% you really want to just and you can be fiddling around and sometimes you just let go of that and i guess that's part of it too with experience you know you get

You know how you can get to a point pretty quickly because you've done it so many times before. And the icing on the cake, sometimes you've just got to let go over the icing on the cake because we've got to get the scene shot in that time, you know, to make sure we can get to the last scene of the day, which is more important, whatever it might be. So you could make those little mini sacrifices in your head. You know what? I could have put that extra light up there and that would be great for that, you know, to the actor we're walking through that.

But you know what? It'll be fine. and let's just that's shoot let's button on you know so you you make those decisions constantly all the time it's funny i've been asking probably the past i've done like 10 interviews in the past week uh so wow it just feels like a flowing clock conversation yeah yeah this people are continuous yeah i just hope that i'm not repeating myself too many times but uh one question that i have asked a few people which you kind of just touched on is like thinking about efficiency thinking about lighting and stuff, especially on a television show, you know, restricted timeline, usually

restricted budgets compared to a feature generally. Sure. Yeah. What are those like nice to have that do get hacked off? Yeah. I think, look, sometimes it's about you've got to get in there. And often you've got to light, you've always lighting for two cameras, right? and often one of the key things of course is are we going to cross shoot you know are we going

to cross shoot the dialogue where we've got a and b on each character at the same time now you have to be prepared to do that i think whenever that could happen and sometimes that happens on even a big feature because the director just might want to really you may not be the norm in that movie but that might be a scene where you know what i really want to cross shoot this because there might be some ad-libbing or whatever it could be uh you've got to be ready to do that at any time. That's always a compromise to some degree because you're facing obviously your backlight's going to become your front light and so on and so forth. So things like that, sometimes you've just got to, if the director really wants to do that,

I don't put up a fight and say, oh, you know, it's going to be a compromise, blah, blah, blah, because I think as a DP you're there to service the director's vision and also you've got a service to script, you've got a service to production, you've got a service. the schedule, there's a whole lot of things you've got a service. And I think the challenge then becomes, okay, well, I'm stuck with having to do cross-shooting here, but how do I make it still work? How do I make it still look good and still look like part of this show that, you know, where it's not always, you know, when I want to always cross-shooting. And so it's those little challenges where you say, look, I'm going to give up, you know, that finessing, because I won't

be able to do in this situation. And sometimes it's even in a scene where, you know, you've lit you've lit the space and the actors land and then they just end up not where you thought they were going to be you know you thought that was going to play over near the window and we had this even it could have been even natural light or whatever it might be coming in and say oh this is going to look good and I can do it so quick it's all ready to go and they end up doing it over in the other corner and the director says oh this is really great because there's this sculpture here and I want to do it you know whatever it might be and you go oh well I haven't really lit for that So, and it just depends how much time you've got between when that decision gets made,

which might be in the blocking rehearsal, and then when you need to actually roll. So I love it when actors turn up and they're clearly not in costume. They're not ready yet. And they turn up and do the blocking and go, oh, yeah, that's great. Yeah, all these great ideas. And I care, I've got 15 minutes. Right.

They come back and they're all dressed and they're ready to go. So it's sort of like depending on, you know, the situation. so that's but when they turn up and they're fully made up fully dressed ready to like we could shoot straight after this rehearsal which of course happens as well especially in tv then you sometimes i'll say look we're not really ready to do that if you want to shoot and if it's like if it's really not going to look great it's going to look bad i say look well i won't be ready to shoot if you go over there it'll be another 15 20 minutes but if we can sort of stage it a bit closer over here, we can shoot straight away. And often a lot of the directors will go,

oh, okay, great, let's do that, because they want more time to shoot. So it's always a bit of give and take and a little bit of cajoling and, you know, suggestions, things like that in those situations. But, but yeah, you've got to still be the king of compromise sometimes, you know, just to keep everything moving, you know, keep. I find the flow on set is really important that we just keep, we can keep shooting and flowing and that we don't get bogged down with some really slow, either grip setup. Sometimes it's like, oh, let's have the camera coming in over the top of the thing. And I'm looking at kind, yeah, that's a nice idea.

We didn't think about it, but I'd look, talk to my kiddie griff second, I'd say, on every about 40 minutes. And I go, that's in the truck, and that's around the corner. And, you know, it might be in this location where the, the, grip truck is actually, you know, a little way away. And so then you'd sort of go, I'd just say to the director, look, I mean, we can do that shot, but it'll take 40 minutes. Or maybe there's a way we can keep shooting, move on to something else and have set up

that shot, you know, in the other room and maybe come back to it, you know. So there's, that's where it's good to have a third, you know, a third camera body or something where you can set up another shot like that and then you can jump back onto it. We still get the shot, but we just don't get it in the sequence. We don't end up having a waiter out for 40 minutes because that kills you. Right. When you've got momentum and you're shooting. So it's always a little juggle of things like that.

You don't want to be the guy that says no to your director all the time. And so, oh, no, I can't do that. Oh, that's going to take too long. You've always got to figure out a way. But present it, you know, just present the options. Yeah, give them the probably. obvious no and your your option to be like and the option of yeah yeah exactly you know so you've always got to be you know thinking about what those things are yeah um you know with those

alternatives might be um but you know it's i bet uh LED and uh wireless DMX really uh changed your life then oh yeah i have to say i mean it is one of the things but you know what you just got to shoot faster but because you can you know right because they expect it but but you do have this incredible control that I mean I've been shooting for a long time you know I started out shooting with redheads and blondies and you know out of the backs of cars and all that kind of stuff um the most basic lighting kits you can imagine and now we have all these LEDs all remote controlled off an iPad or a console and uh it's extraordinary what you can do I mean it's just I mean I think perhaps young's DPs starting out to

they don't realize the difference between what we had to work with, what was considered 100% normal, the way you would light, say back in the even in the 80s when I started out. Early 2000s even. I mean, it didn't come out until 2011, 2012. So the 90s was pretty traditional as well. You had tungsten lamps, you had HMIs. You couldn't really control them except tungsten lamps in the studio

if you had big dimmer racks and stuff like that. But today, of course, it's really incredible what you can do. And of course, it allows you to work faster. You know, you can dim, adjust, color, all of those things, of course, can be done in seconds. If you've got the right people, you know, in your team to do that. And, you know, everyone's across it now. So it's sort of, it's become a really valuable tool in your tool works. to be able to

and make those kind of and work with them. So, you know, of course you want to work with LED pretty much 100%. You still use HMI for the really big guns. But even then, that's starting to change too. It's some of the LED stuff.

That's very powerful. I've seen some crazy moon boxes. Yeah. The two actually, so my friend Marcus Forder made one for this show. oh shit what was it called um it was a show constellation uh oh yeah he said he was filming in uh the arctic you know like yeah you know and so it was there was it wasn't even snow it was just like thick air almost and so he he said he had a 120 vortex eights not a

down but aimed out and it just turned the entire sky into a uh uh soft essentially. Yeah, right. Into the kind of the folk. Yeah. And I was like, that's a fascinating idea. And then yesterday I was talking to someone about their show.

And they said, oh, it was about, I told you, there's so many interviews. They're all running to the, and luckily they were running together. But Marcus's was a month ago. But it was this kind of like Western show. And they just did like 80, Titan tubes in a soft ice and that was the and I'm always fast actually you're the perfect person

to ask this because I'm always fascinated about people's approach to night work because everyone likes the night get most of us you know big soft source for the day you know make people get pretty yeah yeah whatever but at night it's everyone has their own plan and especially with like get out and stuff like yeah how do you approach night well it depends on um the situation I don't I don't always use the exactly the same thing. And sometimes it depends on the conditions of where you are on your big night exterior as well. Up here, right now I'm in Queensland, Australia, Brisbane. And last time I was working, I'm in prep now, but last time I was working up here, we had some night exteriors.

And I was going to use what I'd been using in LA a lot, which was a machine, like a Condor with two S-360s on it. So the big sky panels. And that was becoming a bit of a go-to thing when I was working in LA because you didn't have to set up, build a giant box, especially when it wasn't a big rig that was going to be there for days or nights on end. It was kind of just for one night. But you got this really great controllable softer source over a street or whatever it was

you were doing. So that used to be a thing. But then when I talked about doing that in Queensland, they said, oh, no, no, mate, we don't do that up here. Because it's too wet. Well, it rains all the time. And the 360s are not waterproof. So it's the same. So they just said, oh, we just, they just use vortexes like you mentioned before that Marcus had. So cream source vortex is up in a bucket hanging off a thing so however many you might have you know eight or ten or whatever um off a machine however many you could hang off a machine um it doesn't matter if it rains 100% water and so but and so you and also if it's windy you don't want a big soft box around it because that'll just blow off and the whole thing will fall over it'd be terrible so you just

have them raw but you might have a little bit of diffusion in them but because you can spread them out you're basically creating the idea of a you can sort of play them out you're creating the idea of a soft box without it actually being in a soft box so that tends to be what i do now other than building you know if something was quite specific and you were coming back to something night after night and you really wanted to be a sort of nighttime sort of soft glow from above then you might rig up something more substantial but often you're often i've been in and out lately with a lot of those things and vortexes has become a bit of a go-to thing in rigs.

But you also might have HMI's up there as well, you know, 4Ks, M-40s and stuff, just punching through and throwing highlights here and there into the night scene. So you can get a bit of depth. So that's often a thing. I'm definitely still a sucker for the sort of late 80s, early 90s, wet street, HMI, clearly in view. You know, like there's a neighborhood shot, and there's just a massive, of blue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you see the reflection all the way up in the puddles of your huge light. Yeah, and look, and often sometimes that's the thing. That's what you want to do because you've got this deep background street and you need to just show it. You just needs to be visible on camera. You know, it might be a very dark street or so you just put up a big 12K or something like an Arimax or something way, way off in the distance and just bang it in from a long way

way. I did that in, down in San Pedro in LA, actually. I had two Aramaxes up on a lift top for lighting up a beach charier at night, just with a low level of, I think that was for dead to me for that show. And so you just, yeah, you can use very traditional ways like that. And then you, then you might have up close around your actors, another machine with the 360s or the vortex. You've got the traditional HMI's way off in the distance, giving you a bit shape to the landscape which is you know half the time's out of focus anyway so it's sort of it all works you know but um so that's a combination yeah this is kind of a pivot but i just remembered i i grew up on uh you know the jackass show and stuff what would you worked with

jeff germain on a project i did work with jeff tremaine on the dirt which was the um the narrative movie about Motley Crew, like a rock biopic. And Jeff somehow became, was the director of that, I think because he knew the guys. He knew Motley Crew. And he ended up directing. And that was, I have to say, Jeff's a pretty funny guy. And it was one of the most fun projects I'd ever worked on. It was just crazy and very silly.

And I think captured probably the tone of that band of most guys. Sure. And they were behind, I mean, Mickey Six, Tommy Lee were all, you know, totally behind the film, approved it. So I think it was pretty close to what they thought their lives were like back in that stage. Or what they want you to think it was. That's how it was, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there was that many women there. That was great.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it was pretty funny. And Jeff's, you know, he's a lovely man and very hilarious. And I never was involved with his jack-ar. things like that's his whole that was a whole lot of still be here if you did that's right probably be you know you know with a plaster cast in a wheelchair or something but yeah i was just that was a lot that was a lot of fun yeah i was just fascinated by like the

idea of him directing a because i'm sure he's directed other things but i feel like jackass is like wrangling cats and then there yeah which a lot of directing is but uh yeah yeah i was just fascinated by what his approach was to like an actual film like if he was good at it or if he took different hands. It was interesting because he kind of, he really loved the parts that in the dirt of which there were that were sort of pranks and were stupid things that the Motley crew guys did, like set a hotel room on fire or something like that.

So as he'd expect, Jeff was very excited about those scenes. Other scenes that were more like talky-talky talking about their life or their future or how they're going to get the band going. Those scenes weren't Jeff's, you know, forte. But he's smart, so he surrounded himself with people like me and the AD and, you know, producers who were very experienced with narrative film. So we were able to, you know, steer Jeff and help him put together all of that stuff. That wasn't, you know, he had a ton of experience doing narrative.

But, you know, what, you surround yourself with the right people and you've got some fun ideas, so you can do it, you know, 100%. Yeah, before we get into the TV show, I did want to say, first of all, I'm sure it's, it's not out yet, but I'm sure Megan 2 is going to be a hit. People fucking love that movie. but yeah yeah it's uh it's going to be it's going to be good it's it's it's it's Megan on steroids in some ways it's like you're going to amp to the max yeah uh but i was looking through your i MDV and uh you you shot probably one of my uh sleeper favorites that that my girlfriend was just watching and then i like sat down and it which was barbin star oh yeah yeah yeah that movie took me by surprise that that was phenomenally

funny and just yeah yeah it's pretty it was really nutty i mean i have to say christian wigg and annie mamlow who wrote it and obviously starred in it they wrote the script as well they just really nutty they just think of this stupid funny stuff all the time and it was really i mean they're lovely lovely people to work with and it's all very generous and everything on set but they are that's quite nutty and um so that was interesting for me because it was the first time i'd done one of those a comedy of that ilk where it was very much a true, I mean, very wacky script to start with, but a lot of improvisation as well, which is a lot of these comics, as I discovered, you know, they don't just do what's written on the page. I mean, they do that,

and then they spend upwards of another hour or so doing alternate, alternate funny lines that they just sort of think of as we roll, you know. And so that, was very much, you know, I was talking before about cross-shooting. That's an example of a movie, quite a decent budget kind of big, big-ish movie, where cross-shooting was basically every scene, you know, like depending on the scene, but any scene where there was a fair bit of chatting, talking going on between Annie, between Kristen and Annie or any of the other characters, we would be cross-shooted because they'd do the lines and then Josh Greenblum,

the director say, okay, well, now we're going to do, we'll just keep rolling, and now we're just going to try a few things, you know, and they'd all go, oh, yeah, great. And that would go on until the card in the camera ran out. Right. Until the last thing's flicking. That would go on, well, no, they'd go on until 45 minutes and we'd have to say, oh, we've only got a minute left on these cards. Okay, well, just have a little break for reloading and we'll reload, because I think we're on Sony Venice, so they had about a 40 minute, 45 minute runtime. And yeah, so I hadn't really done a lot of that kind of thing before. It's probably like the style of Judd-Apetal style of comedy where there's just lots of improvisation.

And it was great. I mean, it was kind of fascinating to see them at work in that way. And sometimes the stuff, I mean, there's so much stuff that they went that was got sillier and sillier. That's probably not even in this very silly movie. you were so silly. So I had a lot of fun, basically, working on that. Yeah, and the director was lovely. Josh had a great, you know, great sort of natural feeling for this kind of material and stuff.

Yeah. I've found that hanging out with comics made me a better filmmaker. And the reason being, when you get a bunch of stand-ups, or probably, you know, any type. you know what do you call improv or whatever um when they all stand in a circle you know we're just chatting and then someone will say something vaguely funny and then the next like three minutes is everyone just kind of tagging that yeah that funny thing with something even more funny yeah that's kind of like a bit like what the the uh the ad living was when we were rolling yeah there's a bit of that kind of thing you know well but i find that it was hilarious oh it's

amazing but what I have found is if if you're like not really great with a dead silence you know for the longest time as a DP I was so work like I knew how to do the work I didn't know how to do people you know necessarily yeah and I found that everyone likes it when you tag if everyone's funny at some point everyone likes will say something probably unintentionally that's funny and if you acknowledge it and tag on it and keep going they suddenly they love you you know It's like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've found that, yeah, comics know how to hang out, you know.

Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the hanging out is the best part, right? So it's funny you mentioned on that. I just used to focus on the work, but I wasn't so great with the people. And I think that's, I think a lot of DPs, over my long career, when I was starting out and I was quite young, that was just the work, you know, man. I mean, just stay away. This has got to be perfect. And I'm the D.P.

and this is going to, you know, and you've got to realize, you're not on your own, not set, just with you and your camera and your light. It's the whole world of people who are all collaborating together, and you've got to be part of that as a, you know, as a human being. Even though your work is, you know, very complicated and, you know, very important and all the rest of it, everyone's job is like that. You know, everyone's job is very important. And it's true on a film, you know, or a show.

if it's a everyone's everyone's little part has to be put in there otherwise one that little piece is missing the thing doesn't work at all you know so I think you that's a really good note it's like yeah

get good with people as well as being good with your you know with your cinematography well it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier which is like the standard is so much higher for images right and and it's easier to get those high-quality images.

Everyone, you know, cameras are green. Well, it is because you've got great cameras, you've got incredible LED lighting, you've got beautiful monitors, you can see exactly what you're getting. When I started out, of course, I didn't ever have a video split. So you had to kind of wing it because you're shooting on film and no one can see it except you in your head. And it's a very different world now. And I think, but what makes a good DP, you know, now?

If that's all so much easier, it's the communication and the ability to, you know, plan ahead and, you know, shoot the schedule and all of those kind of things, make your days and get on well with your team and all of those kind of things equally is important. It's almost at, depends on what level you're shooting, but it's a given that it's going to look good. Right. You know, as they bring you in as a DP, well, of course, it's going to look fine or it's going to be great or one of the, you know, in between a range of being totally acceptable. But what else are you going to bring to it?

You know, is it your management? Is you getting on well with people? Is it a creative collaboration? We know the cinematography is going to look good, but, you know, how else are you going to contribute to this show? And that's part of, you know, why people get hired, I think. Depending on the show, I guess there are still projects that are very, very technical and they you need to be able to bring those kind of skills to something.

Maybe some of the things that say your friend Marcus does, I know he does some of those very BFX heavy productions. So obviously not every DP in the world can step into that role that he's doing, you know. So there's still horses. Did you see September 5? No, I haven't seen it yet. Oh, that's the last one he shows. Yeah, right, right.

Yeah. But you'd mention something and then I lost it. That's fine. That doesn't have to be there. But yeah, the point being, well, personally, I think it's almost easier to learn people because film is only 100 some odd years old. But people have been around since we can, you know, forever. So it's language. Yeah.

You know, and if you can get good with people, as long as you have your work, you know, and you're nice to get along with, you'll get hired. Someone who's a pain in the ass to get along with. I think so. I think so these days even more. I think back in when I first started out, you did find there were quite a few assholes that got work, but that's because they could do it and they could shoot film and they'd get a good result. And because not many people, that wasn't, you can just walk off the street and do that.

And they might have been an asshole, but people just put up with it because the result was great and no one else could really do it or not many. But that's changed now. You can't get away with that anymore. Speaking to assholes, apple cider vinegar. Yes, yes, she's a piece of work. That woman, Belle Gibson, yeah. Well, it was, it's the thing that came to my mind was, you know,

if I had a nickel for every person who faked, like, medical stuff for money, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, you know. All right, to you personally? No, no, I just mean, like, in the world, there's been like a, few people. You know, there's like the Theronis lady. I guess you didn't fake a sense, but there was a fakery going on there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a wild story. I had no idea that had happened. And when I went to go watch it on Netflix, I had seen all the bars were full and I was, I guess my girlfriend watched it without me before I got there. Oh. Oh yeah. A lot of people

binged it. Like they just watched the whole thing in one, almost in one sitting or two sittings or something yeah because it's it's a bit addictive I think that's oh for sure if you if you get drawn into that story and uh I think it's quite um yeah it's uh it's one of those had good responses you know it's got the um not in the same way but the this sort of um velocity that uh what is it uncut gems you know how it's like oh yeah it's stressful watching someone try to keep all this up here you know oh yeah that was good too yeah and it has that sort of momentum where you just sort of more tumbling over itself and it just and as you go through the episodes it just gets worse and worse more extreme more extreme she like lies on top of the

previous lies to you know it's like she just doubles down right over and over and it just gets um she ends up you know this is a disaster yeah um but uh we had a lot of we had a lot of fun making that too I mean, I guess what drew me to that show was that content, you know, was the fact that it was a true story about this woman who is a charlatan in the health and wellness sphere, you know. And I think there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation in that area in the world online. And there's a lot of people telling you stuff that just isn't not true. And there's a lot of people buying this stuff.

There's a lot of people saying, believing all of this stuff. I know people who do. And it was sort of like, well, it'd be nice to work on a show that's hopefully going to be entertaining, but actually says something about this, what's going on. It's still going on. She was not just one isolated little thing that happened once. It's an ongoing machine of disinformation. It's real bad here in the US, I'll tell you what.

That's right. You've got that fellow RFK Jr., yeah, who's kind of almost the epitome of all of this stuff. He's on all of these conspiracy sites and all of this stuff. And so the story of Bell Gibson's kind of like the beginning of that, you know, back, you know, 10, 12 years ago. Anyway, that really drew me in. I thought, oh, this is, this is going to be a fun show with some people I know who are great as like the director Jeffrey Walker, who I knew.

And but it's actually about something. It's about this real thing that it's really important, actually, in many ways as well. So, yeah, that just drew me in, as well as, you know, the team and the production company and all of those things are very highly regarded. I noticed watching it. Oh, go ahead. No, no, go on. Oh, I was going to say, I noticed watching it, there's, again, I think it has something

to do with the feeling of velocity, but just a handheld, with Zooms that's not funny, you know, because like, obviously the office has that kind of style or whatever. But something about that gave me anxiety. I don't know why. Well, that was the point. The actual reference was Succession. Sure.

Have you seen Succession? Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and that's sort of not funny either. That's kind of pretty anxious. So that show. So we were, Jeffrey Walker, the director actually sort of the one in our very first meeting or whatever, he said, look, the feeling I want to try and get out of the camera is a bit like what they're doing in Succession.

So I, you know, made sure I saw all of that because I'd only seen a few episodes at that point. And so that's why we went. We went with the Zooms. We were in a handheld, largely handheld camera. And the little, maybe not quite as much zooming as they did on Succession or certainly not the office. Yeah, just little reframes and little creeps in just maybe on moments.

of dialogue where she was saying another lie or whatever it was and that was a lot of fun in fact I found because I was operating on that because when I'm working in Australia as opposed to the United States

I'm able to operate the camera as a DP and that's especially when it's a handheld camera of course you can put quite a bit of yourself into the work into the actual physical tangible

sort of visceral operating and so I found that really rewarding actually to be able to do that and I had a really great B operator who was also we were all you know totally the same page Matt Dobson so it was sort of like that that team because we're always shooting two cameras of that stuff that became a really important part of the look of the whole show was and I think it worked well with like you said the velocity of the show it's very very fast cutting I think when we were braiding it with my colorist, he was saying, I had this like, there's like nearly thousand cuts an episode. Normally in a show, there's maybe 600 cuts, you know, or 500 cuts. So he said, so we were like, this is going to take twice as long to grade. Because,

you know, you grade, you cut a shot at a time, right? And we got a bit of extra time to do it, because, so luckily, and we're able to really finesse that. It's funny. You, you're, you you have this very little amount of time to maybe to grade something and then you just get that little bit more as like one extra day made all the difference in the world you know per episode I've read a bunch of fantastic they don't they sometimes they're not even invited to the grade you know that kind of happens outside of them sometimes and it's like I can't imagine that's bad yeah I mean I always have it I always have it contractually in my contract that I'm invited to the grade if I can't actually be there then because I'm on a number.

other show, then fine, and I'll, you know, do something remotely or whatever I can. But, um, yeah, I try to put it in there because you can't not. The worst, my worst nightmare is you work really hard on some, a show or a movie. And then, you know, at the end, somehow they just go off and do it themselves. And it's all different and looks terrible. I mean, that's just like your nightmares, you wake up in the cold sweat about that kind of thing. Uh, and it has happened to me many, many years ago when I was starting out. I think a couple of times that sort of happened where I couldn't be there or I wasn't there or I should have been there and I wasn't invited, like you say.

And stuff came back that's like, you're putting that to air? That's getting in the show, that terrible, terrible grade or whatever. I'm like, horrific. Yeah. Because they made a decision about, oh, it's got to be a lot brighter or whatever. It's like always that, isn't it? It's always, they always make it too bright. Yeah.

Well, that's usually the thing. They think, oh, you've done this very moody thing and it's quite mysterious and then it reveals. And they say, oh, no, we just want to see everything at the beginning. And that is bright and aweling up and it looks awful. So, yeah, got to watch that out. Got to watch, watch out for that. So, what was your shooting schedule like? Like, how many days did you have for the six episodes?

Look, it was around, I think for six episodes. It was around 65 days, 66 days. So I guess we had 10 days and a bit. I think it was around 11 days per episode. It wasn't terrible. It was, you know, we had resources. We had a second unit, not full time, but for a bunch of it as well, and we needed it. It's because of the nature of that story, it's a little bit different to a regular scripted drama.

Because it's, so in a regular scripted drama you might have three or four main locations and it's kind of written that a lot of stuff happens at the house, a lot of stuff happens at the, you know, police station, a lot of stuff happens in a few different scenes that are exteriors, but a lot of you, then you go back on a given show, you go back to spend a fair bit of time in one or two places because that's good for the schedule, it's, you know, practical and, you know, you just write it. So the story happens in, you know, whatever. But when it's based on a real life story of a real person that happened that a lot of people kind of know about, that happened over time, to some degree, you've got to reflect that.

And that means a way more locations, way more like that real, real life people don't necessarily to stay in one spot for 10 years. And so we had a ton of locations. We had, in our 66-day shoot, we had 60 or 70 locations. So you can see why we needed a second unit. And also, because some of them, there was, you know, one or two locations who were there for a few days. I think the main house, we were there for six or seven days in one place. But that means a ton of moving around and little grabs here and there

and throughout the rest of the show. To get all these little bignettes that happened in the real. world in all these different places, you know. We shot for, most of it was shot in Melbourne, Australia, and we shot for about seven days up here in Queensland because we needed beaches and jungle and we needed different environments and stuff. So it was really pulled together from a lot of disparate, disparate things. So yes, a decent amount of time per episode, but we had them hugely ambitious schedule.

Yeah. All the stuff we had to grab. Well, and the, the, we kind of touched on the grid, so I guess we'll get back to that the second, but the, speaking of efficiency, like, the lighting in it is, is pretty naturalistic, but it still has shape and everything. Like, what was, were you kind of doing like documentary style, just like get, get something up, we got to go, or were you able to be a little more like, I was able to plan it out? I mean, it was, it was supposed to be just, it was naturalistic, obviously,

but it was also very, this had a slight heightened thing to it all. I mean, some of that was done with the lutch and stuff that I was able to use in the camera and the grade, we were just able to sort of enhance stuff a bit because it's quite a poppy show. It's, you know, it's quite colorful and it's sort of coming at you. And it's sort of, the idea was a sort of reflective of social media. So there's a lot of, well, that's the other thing. We had second unit. We also had social media unit because, you know, in the show, there's all the stuff you see on phones and the stills.

And we didn't just get that off the internet. You've got to make all of that stuff. So we had a dedicated unit, and they had pretty much full time shooting all the little iPhone videos and stills, so many stills that you see going through. And all the little putting together all the little mini websites and Instagram pages, which weren't really Instagram. It just looked like Instagram, of course. Right. And that was a whole world unto itself. That was working sort of alongside us as we shot. So the style that we were shooting is sort of a little bit sometimes reflective of that kind of poppy sort of Instagram sort of style thing.

But, yeah, I mean, again, it was like we didn't have pre-rigging crews or rigging gaffers or any of that. It was all, you know, you get to a new location, you get there a bit early, you set it up and you work your way through the day. So you very much, what I did have was plenty of prep time on this. I had a good and long time from when I knew I was doing the job. I had much longer than usual, actually. So I knew I signed up to do the job probably eight months before we started, so at least six months before we started any prep. So that gives you plenty of time to start thinking about it and start talking about it.

And then when I started the prep, we had a decent eight-week prep period. And so we were pretty well, and we were able to go to all of our locations, you know, so many of them so that scouts were very buried and extensive. We were able to go to those places more than once and pre-plan, you know, pretty clearly what we're going to do because when we got there with the whole crew and didn't have much time, you know, set up the lighting an hour and a half

and then we're going to shoot. So you had to be well prepared. But we had the time to do that. So all of those things sort of became possible as long as we were late. We were talking before, efficient. They can be efficient with that process. So both between me and Jeffrey and our AD, Nathan Croft, we had to be very, very, you know,

we had to work together at a very, very tight team that was about efficiency. But at the same time, we're telling this big story, and we wanted to give it that style, you know. So it was, you know, it was a challenge, but it was a good challenge. yeah what what do you uh because i i um primarily work in documentary right now so i'm always fascinated by and i know you did you used to shoot doc in like the 16 days right a little bit yeah i shot well i used to shoot a lot of short films on 16 mil and i shot um yeah a couple of docos a couple of docos back in the day on on film and um but i haven't done any for a while the most recent one i did was in l-a but that was a doco about um

The roller, the roller, called Roller Dreams, it's about the roller skaters in, down at Venice Beach in the 70s. Yeah, and it was 70, in the 80s, there was this amazing roll skating scene down in Venice Beach that sort of got disbanded. They actually kind of wanted to get, the city wanted to get rid of these, these people made. Those damn roller skaters. Yeah, but they were a huge attraction. People would travel and go and hang. out and watch them perform and it was all kind of the sort of off-the-cuff stuff. But it was a fast, that was a cool little doco.

But that's probably the last one I did, which was like seven, eight years ago, I guess. Well, the reason I bring it up is because more and more, at least I am asked to make a documentary look like a movie. And so whenever there are these more naturalistic shows or whatever that come out, I'm always fascinated by like, how are you doing that? You know, like, what, and I mean, like, specifically, like, what, what's your, like, lighting setups for some of these, uh, yeah, you could potentially pull off as, like, a documentary guy. Yeah. Well, because with Apple cider vinegar, we were 100% on location.

There was no studio sets that were built for any of the places. So, we were careful about what locations we chose. Um, for example, in the early part of episode one, she's in the interview with, um, her, her PR, guy that she just met in L.A., and we just, it was sort of like, we looked at a lot of office buildings in Melbourne, like what's going to look good. And we saw these offices that were kind of, that's sort of how they were. They were sort of all painted and kind of had these sort of elaborate color schemes and quite, you know, mood lighting and sort of, it was sort of like, oh, this is pretty good.

And they were kind of officers that there was no one in there because they were like just temporary, like a company can come in like a startup or something. something and be their formats, then leave and whatever. So they were kind of perfect for filming purposes, and they happened to be empty. We had a few different options. And so really it was going in there, okay, what's here that exists, you know, the down lighting and the accent lighting and stuff, the windows, curtains, what's here that exists that we can use?

What do we need to change? We're able to go back and scout it two or three times, I suppose. And also I work very closely with Melinda Doring, our production designer, because her job wasn't building sets and designing sets. What her job with her set decorator was, okay, how do we re-geek these real locations to make them work for the show? And you think, oh, yeah, that's pretty straightforward, whatever. But choices you make about what kind of curtain you're going to put up can affect the cinematography incredibly. So we're a couple of floors up in a building, so I couldn't have a really busy main street of Melbourne outside. there's no way I can block it off and have machines and have lights coming in through the windows and stuff.

But there's daylight coming in through the windows there. So it was about choosing the right kind of curtain where you can still see and it still lets the daylight in, but it won't let too much in that's going to keep changing the lighting in my scene dramatically. So if sun suddenly hit the curtains, yeah, the ambience would go up, but I could get away with it. I could either adjust it on in camera or we could fix that in post or whatever. But when you're looking at the windows, you know, a bit of sun hits and it looks nice. You know, it looks good and they have the right colour tone.

I think Melinda actually went in and changed the curtains from the ones that were there. And we talked about, you know, how thick they should be and what kind of material and all that kind of stuff. So you do things like that. So it's totally the real location, but you're just going in and making little changes. And the downlights, in the wide shot, I use the downlights as the source because they're all in shots. So we're super wide down the end of the table. You can see the whole ceiling and all the lights and everything. But you turn off the ones above the camera and you block them off and you just have the ones there.

So you get a bit of shape. And then when you come in close, you do that. You bring in your normal movie lights. So it was a case of really being careful. Okay, we'll do the wide shots first and we'll move in. Usual stuff. But you, because you're in a location, it's a bit of, it's a, like if I was on a set, if that was a built set, I could have all the lighting built into the top of the set

perfectly, you know, and it would work for the close-ups as well, you know, wouldn't change much. But you had to then, with something like that, you had to either do the wide shot first or do it last. Sometimes we did it last. So we'd set up and we'd do the close, you know, start up close and come back. And then at the end, you pulled all your lighting out. And it's really just the prac lighting. It's doing the job. And you didn't replace the bulbs? Just didn't need to. Oh. Didn't they to.

Because they were, I think they were LED. It was quite a modern office. So it was a case of just finding the right level because they had dimmers. I don't think we had them at full stick. I think they would just dimmed down a little bit. And we didn't. And so sometimes I might go into rotation where I've got practical lights like that and I've got to use them. We can't change the bulbs, their LEDs or their tubes or whatever they might be.

And if they're a particular color, then I'll just, say, okay, well, I want them to look a certain way, so I'll adjust the camera tool. I get the right warmth that I like with those existing lights. And then when all the light I bring in, I just adjust it to suit what that is. The color meter has changed my life. Yeah, well, I don't, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I tend to just do it with the monitor, though my Gath always has a color meter and they'll go and do, you know, more exact readings when we need to.

when we're trying to match a practical or something, that's a little bit finicky. But yeah, you match your, because you've got LED now, so great, you can match that practical lighting and make, I guess, in a way, make more use of it perhaps than you used to be able to. Because if it was the wrong colour back in the day, you'd be like, oh, we've got to pull out all the bulbs

or turn them all off and relight it completely or whatever. But you don't have to do that as much now. And I find that's a real time save, especially if you're in a practical location, you've got action happening in the foreground. You're saying way down this big long corridor or a big giant room, just turn on the real lights,

see what they look like, or turn maybe some of them off and leave some of them on and, hey, that looks alright, actually. It's not too bad. So we'll go with that and we'll just light our actors in the foreground, you know, separately.

And then it's so much quicker than having to go in and change all the bowls and relight the whole thing and, you know, you can do that when you've got all that time in the world, but we didn't have that. So, but I think today,

these days it isn't a lot easier to when you're in those tough situations that you um there's ways of making it look good um that you perhaps we didn't have before you know um and also the camera as well i don't you know the cameras now are so incredible i used with this shot was shot on alexa 35 um that's it's it's it's it's it's it's got it such an incredible ability that you know in situations where you do have You know, in the past, where you've got big bright windows that are blowing out the scene and you kind of want to see out there, that's where it excels. Because before, you had to put up nets or you had to light up the inside, like, insanely bright, just so you could see the beach outside.

There's the whole reason that we're here, right? This particular location, for example, you want to see the beach. But it's just so bright out there and so dark and all this. And you'd have 4Ks bouncing off ceilings and stuff. You don't have to do that anymore. You can do it with LED. inside and then the camera will hold the outside that Alexa 35 and you can bring it back in the grade it's quite incredible we never had that before I think

it's like nine stops of highlight yeah on the tension well it's it's it's got two nearly two extra stops from the original Alexa which was already the best right of highlight retention you know so it's um yeah so things like that are really high helpful especially less you know if you're in a studio and it's all fully controllable you don't need that so much because you just dim it down you know it's all going to be great um but when you're a camera like that with you're on location um and you're in those situations it can be worth its weight in you know gold yeah i would i would love an a 35 with the uh variable and d from the best oh yes they're built in with all those n d

Yeah, yeah. That is the best thing about the Venice is all the NDs, but, you know, I prefer the A35 for the sensor. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, we're running out of time, but I would love to have you back on when Megan comes out. Sure. Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. Yeah, no, I love to. That's going to be out June 27.

So I got that burn to my brain. Oh, I bet. Yeah, on a press tour, you're just like. Well, I did that. I think I did the grade for the trailer too. So, you know, that was... Even the trailer is fun. Like, I was just in the movie theater the other day and I was like, this is great.

Oh, you saw it. Yeah, great. It's got to be fun. It's a fun movie that they're actually, we're doing the final color grade on it. It's about to start, actually. And I think they're still shooting a few little bits and bulbs to put in their inserts and stuff, you know? Wonderful. Nothing like last minute.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know. Well, that's the, that's the other nice thing about digital, right? is like the DCP can go out, yeah, three days later, you know, versus having to knock out all these films. Yeah, you don't have to do all the prints and all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I know exactly. So it does give them more flexibility, but it also gives you a director more, you know,

anxiety. More time to just keep going as well. I guess it's the same with every project these folks. Well, it was really lovely talking to you. Yeah, likewise. Thanks, getting. We'll keep it going. Awesome.

No, there was a great chat. Thank you. 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. My stomach will thank us. It's apple butter cider vinegar.