Frame & Reference Podcast - 196: "Friendship" Cinematographer Andy Rydzewski

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

We've got Andy Rydzewski on the show this week to talk about his work on the recent Tim Robinson comedy Friendship!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this episode 196 of frame and reference. And you're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Andy Ritziewski, DP of Friendship. Enjoy. no and well and the other funny thing too is like if anyone works in film there's a small chance they've heard this podcast or watched it which then they would have seen me but there was a time so when the when astera first came came out with the pixel tubes right not the titans the original model um the rental house that my friend runs called stray angel we went over there oh yeah and we uh we drove like a little fiat 500 onto the stage and and and And we did like a poor man's process with the pixel tubes, you know, because they were assignable and stuff. We were like, that could be a cool thing. And I guess Astera got a whole. I'm now friends with like the Astera team because they let that thing hit their whole office.

But it got shared out a bunch. So for that first like year that the pixel tools came out, I'd go to like Cinegear or NAB or something. And people would be like, I think we've worked. I'm like, no, you Googled pixel tubes the other day. And they're like, that's what it was. Yeah. It's funny. Because our world, the like world of cinematographers and then whatever filmmakers are in around that bubble.

I did years ago, I did like a breakdown of a commercial that that I had shot and and it got pulled down pretty quickly. But I went to NAB and Cinegear and that year people kept coming up to me. It was exactly that. They were like, hey, I know you. Right. And I was like, I don't. Maybe. I don't know.

And then I'd realize like, oh, just everybody watched. this breakdown in the like five days that it was up right well and then you feel like a douche if they say I know you and you're like the commercial breakdown they're like no no no we were best friends for 15 years man yeah yeah and so it goes did you grow up in Boston I did a fishing town north of Boston so like 40 minutes north gotcha what brought you over here just weren't movies yeah I yeah I basically um I went to grad school in way, way, way, northern California up in Humboldt County. Oh, my, my girlfriend went to Humboldt University or whatever it's called.

Oh, no kidding. Oh, holy Humboldt, yeah. Oh, cool. And I'm in San Jose. So, yeah, very familiar. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I really, I loved it. I honestly, I assume I'm going to retire up there.

I really love it up there. And it was like very, very formative years up there. But yeah, I moved. I did like an exchange program, domestic exchange to that school. I was going to school in Massachusetts. And then I went back for grad school. I lived up there for a while. I did not want to leave.

It is the world's most comfortable couch. But yeah, I moved to L.A. to basically like a lot of us nerds to just pursue filmmaking. I don't know anybody. Just kind of showed up and waited for a long time to start shooting. Who's got just a script, just anything? I'm ready. I've got a DVX 100. I can try.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I did move down here with exactly that camera. Yeah, I had an XL2. I still have an XL2. Go away. Yeah, my friend, it's the same one. I still have like everything, the documentation, everything.

And speaking of like internet videos, my friend, he's prepping something and they wanted to potentially shoot on DV for a look. And he texts me, do you still have that Excel? 2. And I was like, how do you know that? And he goes, well, I was researching how to film without tape. And a video you made came up about how you ran the XL2 into your Odyssey. And I was like, yeah, do you want that whole rig? So I just gave it to him. And he hasn't gotten back to me, but you know, I don't like I was using it. Wow. That's cool. That's actually that I still, you know, I have an Odyssey kicking around. I don't have a DV cam anymore. But, but that's pretty, that's pretty

fun that does it's it's interesting it does come up every once in while like shooting a camcorder whatever that might be various versions um and it's funny i've been running into the problem recently of where i'm like oh great yeah we'll shoot this with a real camcorder so it'll look like you know shitty and then i realized like oh actually the camcorders quote unquote whatever that even counts as these days uh they're really good yeah like they don't look shitty anymore and i'm just like oh crap Like I have this old idea of how it looks. And now I'm like, well, it may as well just keep shooting on our camera because it's basically the same, just a deeper depth of field.

Yeah. You know, it reminds me of, I was talking to Eigle Burl for the holdovers, which I've mentioned a bunch of times. But like the, I just love, first of all, he's a great guy. So much knowledge and shit. But the holdovers was one of my favorite movies last year, two years ago, whenever they came out. And he was saying how they really wanted to shoot like 16 or 35 or something. like that but because 5219 is made to be scanned they in all their camera tests they were like

it looks like digital so let's just shoot Alexa knock it down because otherwise they were like we had to add grain to the film stock so what what's the point that's yeah it's it's funny because that that particular i i heard that interview um oh but that the holdovers is my favorite of all the digital to film look, that's my number one example. I love the, like, and, you know, I think a part of it is also that it was shot on Alexa mini. I'm a big believer in that particular camera, whereas all the digital cameras, I talk about this way too much, but all the digital cameras that have come out since, they're all,

of course, like incredible. And they all, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. But on your aesthetics, I still think that original. Exa Mini is the number one. And I think that's part of the holdovers. Like they, God, that's a beautiful movie. And I think that Beth,

I forget the name of the particular grain that they use, but that's, no, it's a different, it's a different one. I mean, they might have used that on set, but what they ended up using for the final film out, it may come to me,

but I, it's like, that's the one. Yeah. Well, I guess you heard the interview, but I guess they use the guy who I still want to interview. I want to have a colorist month. I have Joe Bogdanovich on the hook. I've had her on the hook for a year.

And I'll check in with her and be like, you want to do it? And she's like, yeah, I'm like, but obviously she's fucking Joe Bogdanovich. So she's busy. Yeah. But I want to do colorist month. And I want to get that guy because having your main job be restoring criterion disks. I mean, this whole top, these two top shelves are all criteria. you know and uh that having that institutional knowledge like when when your job is to reverse

it is like such a brilliant stroke we know let's get that is that something that joe goller does he i don't remember his name or something oh the holdover colorist is joe goller oh yeah so then i guess i guess that'd be him oh incredible i had no i mean he's there are a few colorists that i'm like i've been chasing for a while trying to get and he's one of them that's the only reason that i know gotcha but you you know it's it's funny you mentioned the the mini sensor and stuff because obviously I actually just interviewed the product specialist for the Alexa 35 I don't know when that episode's coming out but the you know they were talking about their design philosophy was like longevity you know and but technical longevity so it was like at the time when they made

the Alexa no display could show more than like X amount of stops reliably so they made the camera past that and then the same thing with the 35 you know with HDR and stuff they're like we just need to go past it and stuff but I had I'm right when you said that I started looking around because I'm an idiot and I just write notes on sheets of paper instead of in fucking notice like I should but I was thinking

because I was watching a video about how this kid had tried to replicate a PlayStation 1 game like a scene in Blender and stuff and he had to go through and replicate all these things that gave the PlayStation 1 that kind of weird

shifty vibe and the like edges of everything not quite sitting correctly and and it made me think like the people often talk about oh I love the movies of the 70s or the 90s whatever those felt more real and there's just like Brian Eno quote about how like whatever the limitations were of a medium he's talking about like CDs and vinyl and tape that will be the thing that is representative of that format in that time and that's what people will love. And I, and I'm fascinated by, and I think you're touching on it with the mini, but I'm fascinated by the idea of what now looks like to us, because now looks perfect. But in 10 years, what, what limitations will people then point to and go, I just

wish it looked like the mini. Yeah. Or whatever. I mean, this is, I'm like very, I've become weirdly obsessive about the texture of an image. Like, really, like, what is that? And I get, I mean, really go deep down the rabbit hole and part of the reason is because all these modern sensors are so perfect and so clean and I have when I shoot and I can't speak to why this is exactly I keep trying to dig into it and is it just my age is it just that I grew up watching grainy or things but I there's something about perfect images that I find to it's fake like they're that they are they feel artificial like overly you know i i shoot a lot of comedy and there is this sort of trope which is thankfully is going away but a comedy needs to be right right

like lift it and i've always been very very resistant to it and i actually think this is a new theory so what you know i'm just i'm just kind of taking it for a spin but you know with ai and it's getting better and better and all this generative AI video, the perfect, the like perfectness to skin and those kinds of things, like, which is literally artificial, I think might help nudge toward the aesthetic that I like,

which is a little dirtier, like mistakes, full of mistakes. Obviously, this is all project to project, but the projects that I tend to lean into want a little dirtiness. There's this this Japanese concept of wabi sabi. Oh, yeah.

So that's like basically my aesthetic philosophy. I really think like the flaws are exactly what make it beautiful. Like that's it's important to have the flaws. And so all of these new sensors and clean lenses and all that I think are it's it's too perfect. It's too present. Even this Zoom that we're on now, like there's some like I do not look as smooth. as this this computer is implying that right so you know I think that I think these these flaws are

something I check again project to projects for sure but I tend to like flawed people in flawed situations and I think the image should reflect that well yeah because like the opposite of that's like speed racer right like it's supposed to be infinite depth of field infinite like cartoon like intention I remember when that came out and everyone was like what the fuck is this and then you know, with time, you're like, oh, that was actually a choice. That wasn't like limitations. And also with the, I trust the Wukowski. They make good choices.

But what you're touching on is something that I've thought for a long time. And that is that like artifice, how do I phrase this? Like people will give themselves to a story as long as it doesn't seem real. like the idea that we want people to suspend their dis or no no sorry immersion we want people to be totally immersed that's not true at all imagine watching seven and you're totally immersed you'd be vomiting right like you would be terrifying you don't want to be fully immersed you just want to believe it and so whenever there's available you know animation is obviously the the end of this thought but like whenever you have your film grain or your or your mistakes or you're just that that barrier between

you and the work um i think the audience is more willing to give themselves as long as the underlying work, you know, the editing and the mixing and everything, especially with, you know, great mixing and mastering on the audio side. But that's when they can really start to get in there. When it's, you know, Angley's, uh, what was that? Gemini man. Great, great, um, experiment. But definitely the audience was very, or like the Hobbit, you know, resisting to that, um, presentness. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, all of this. Like, I spend so much time thinking about this and I don't land anywhere. Like, there is no right or wrong, which is the beauty of the episode.

Absolutely. But yeah, I like that. That's an interesting concept. Just the idea that that barrier is part of what allows you to, like, be with the emotions, but not be inside of them. That's very interesting. I'm going to toss that around a bit and see how it feels. Well, especially now that people have, you know, know, cell phones are incredible image makers now, and every day on TikTok or whatever, you have

reality. And even on like Twitch streams and stuff, people are granted overlighting. Like, you know, there's certainly, now that's its own aesthetic that kind of like, well, I heard three point lighting and I've never exposed something in my life. So it's all just kind of blasted. But it needs to be the, it doesn't need to be, but it, it oftentimes, especially for narrative, or even doc, like the three docs I've shot have been a lot more like, every time I'd try to light it though the one direct I've worked for all three is always just like that stops that stop

because he'd be like we're just going to put the subject next to the window and I'm just like no can I get one light and he's like you know yeah that deep ass contrast you know he wants it to be that like and a single source just super naturalistic thing but it doesn't mean it's yeah

yeah it's I mean it's it's you know again no right or wrong so it's and you know for for for us for cinematographers, we're in an odd position where it varies job to job, but we are, we have our, whatever tastes we bring, then we're trying to interpret what the director wants. And then there are, you know, all the technical either limitations or time, finance, you know, whatever it may be. And it becomes this sort of strange amalgamation of choices and restrictions that, and then an image comes out of that but it's also you know it's all all the gear is so good now and it's

i heard somebody talking about it at some point they were talking about the difference like it used to be you bring in lights to get your exposure up and now we're bringing in negative fill to bring exposure down and give it shape and that it's it's still ultimately like however you need to shape it like that's the thing and the gear has now gotten gotten so good that the methodology changes but still the goal is the same like give it shape give it the feel of whatever this project wants or needs that that is kind of the frustrating thing because i know you learned on film i learned on film and that that everyone i've spoken to about especially like the older dps who basically lived on film their whole lives on switch digital they'll often be like

no i don't really shoot it any different but i'm like you do though because like just the mental like i don't think we paint with light anymore you know that phrase i'm thrown around a lot in film school but you you you you you paint with flags yeah yeah it's also one of the things that i've been actually struggling with this a lot on my current job and my last few is because of the LEDs which are so you know you have full every color available to you and dim up dim up dim down and you could be sitting in a chair and adjusting like it's it's incredible but hard light has just like disappeared and that's and right now because of everything we're talking about where you want to find more contrast it feels like now is the time where we

need hard light and i have to constantly get in gaffer's ears and be like we need to find and and the LED is just it's starting now we're starting to turn a corner but for the most part it's still tungsten. You still, if you want true hard light, it's got to be tungsten, which is a huge pain in the ass. And you need generators. If you're on a small set, like it's, it, the whole thing heats up. Like, it's, it's not straightforward, but I am constantly, constantly trying to work hard light in for all these reasons, because everything has this like natural flatness to it. If you're just using all of the most common tools. And I'm, I'm, I'm, constantly battling against it.

Again, it's kind of just, you know, it's the natural world. It's unless every day is a cloudy day. Like, sun is pretty damn strong. Well, and it's like the, I grew up kind of like really drawn to as many people. David Fincher's methodology when it came to cinematography, you know, and and watching like behind the scenes for Fight Club. And I actually got to talk to Jeff Kronweth about this, like the kinos coming out was a revelation because they were constantly trying to make things just a little softer like fuck and that you know like best you got was a zip light and so I feel like that's where LEDs picked up is they're like well the kinos are the new hot thing and so then but now like you've got what cream source made a hard panel already finally came out with a hard panel obviously all these bowens mount like you know aperture and analogs yeah yeah but the thing but even going back to film like you could nail someone with an open face light and film would look it would look

good as long as it was exposed properly and now it's like you can you feel it's immediately sourcing even if it's at the even if it's a peat yeah no it's true it's yeah i i mean it's it's always it's always the struggle i find that i'm you know using light mats or tubes or some bounce for for people's skin but that it's the background that so i'm always i'm trying to get um grips pretty early on in pre-production i'll always talk to my grip team about like just any like tinfoil broken glass like this was just fucked up pieces of metal like bring them all it's all and just let's shoot light into it and get a splash on the background like something that looks like a mistake i'm like fighting for mistakes constantly on set because it just feels more real to me uh so it's yeah it's strange

it's strange how the these like improvements in all our equipment i feel like i'm battling them constantly because I just I have a real resistance to perfect images now again I hope to get a project at some point that wants to look perfect like I think like some kind of sci-fi or so I'm I'm gonna say like elite a battle angel yeah like I'm sure there's like I keep every job I think I'm like male with this one maybe maybe because it's the same thing I wear filters multiple filters on every single project. I can not remember the last time I didn't put filters in front of my lenses. Like, I, it's possible I've never done that. And I keep waiting. I'm like, well, this is, you know, per project. This is what this project wants. This is what that project wanted. But it's every single

project now. So I'm like at some point, I assume I'm going to shoot something clean, but that sure isn't playing out that way. Well, the two things I think of when you say that, like one, obviously limitation breeds creativity and all the technology being so good ostensibly you have infinite choices so that certainly hurts so you start self-limiting in a way but in like a good way

but also on the flip side of that coin I have discovered there is this Eric Messerschmitt turned me on to this plugin called scatter that they used on the killer and I email that company because I'm a journalist.

I write for this website called Pro Video Coalition. So I have a little bit of pull. I can be like, hey, can I see that for review purposes? And because I'm not like a YouTuber, I'm a journalist. They're like, yeah, sure. They don't pay me, obviously,

but that's better for journalistic integrity. But I was playing with that. And I was really interested by how I never got to test like the accuracy before my trial ran out, like actually doing a to B. But my friend Jake Bain just released a product called DigiDiff. which is basically the same thing. And they did go to one of the bigger rental, Kesslo maybe,

and did A-B test. And they found that this is going to suck because my Scatter review hasn't come out. I haven't written it yet. But he found that like Scatter wasn't actually that accurate. And they couldn't necessarily make theirs that accurate. So they picked a different model. But does the digital equivalent,

need to match exactly a quote unquote Hollywood black magic or whatever or is the point of doing that in post because it looks realistic like the diffusion in either programs like it looks like a diffusion so if you can art direct it I don't see a problem with it not being obviously it's salesman its ship is one thing like it's a black bromist if you just click this but like I've started doing that I've started because that's the same way I filter everything And then now that I have that tool, and oftentimes I'm the colorist of my, or at least I fight to be my own colors, because again, lower level, but lower level work. But especially when I'm shooting my own stuff, I'm like, I'm just going to hit it with the post diffusion because it looks good. And I can, you know, if they're backlit, like big window, I can just key that out, you know, and bring that down.

And it's a little less. And I use, like, vintage NICORs a lot. So that has a little, like, veiling glare sometimes or like a little bit more. Good man. through the image. Yeah, I mean, this is a whole rabbit hole unto itself. I think about this a lot. I have a very nice excuse.

Well, maybe I should call it a very frustrating excuse to just be using filters because over the last five years, I am noticing a real reduction in color days, in post days. So I am, yeah, so I'm really, and often I'm not getting paid for it. It's like volunteer time, and if I happen to be on another job, I'm like trying to squeeze in color time. And so for me, it's, and you know, if I'm honest, I've run into almost 100% of the time in post. Usually it's around VFX, where when I see the final product, I'm like, oh, I could have, if I was involved in this, I could have helped these match, these two images. just do not match the VFX.

Like sometimes the stuff in camera looks better than the final product. And it's because like the, you know, I'm doing all this work to get the texture, as I mentioned, to be a particular way. There's a particular thing that I'm doing for a particular reason. But I don't get to talk to the VFX artists about that. And so somewhere down the line, somebody's making something sharper, more contrasty. And then when they lay it in, it doesn't match. and so and color it thankfully isn't that extreme like color is always it close but i'm not getting

the time that like fincher spends forever in post and i don't get to do that so that's a nice excuse for me to do it in camera and i will also say uh i find that directors really fall in love with and producers what they're seeing in the edit and so in post when i've tried to change something like well this used to be much cooler can we go to the what what happened i'm like oh no but that was you know and so now i'm really intense about like if i if i die on the last day of production and they just use dailies but of course matching and sweetening or whatever it they should be able to get the the product out in in a way that feels like what we intended so i don't i mean that that was the the early problem with when cameras started shooting log right is they'd be editing

I call it the Vice Effect, but they'd be shooting like S-Log 3, and then you'd finally throw a 709 conversion on it. Sorry, BT 1886. I just watched that fucking diatribe from Steve Yedlin, and now my whole brain is, yeah. Did you see that? Is this a recent one, or is this connected to Zolt? Oh, no, I have not seen it.

It's a two and a half hour, or 211, a demo he did at Photochem for like, we're like Roger Deacons was in the audience like it was a small audience but it's like everyone important and it was basically talking about the difference between or talking about the inefficiencies of HDR and why it's like

not with things like WVision and HDR10 they're fixing a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place but in one thing he says it's not actually 709 we're all talking about BT 1886 709 is an old that's CRTs we don't do that anymore so I Oh, that's good. I'll try. We'll definitely not make that adjustment, but I'll try.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I mean, he's the king of respectfully pedantry, but not, but in a good way. You know, we need an objective truth. Yeah. No, I love, I love Yedlin. And it's similar to just because, you know, there are, I've sort of stumbled into becoming a technical DP. I don't think of myself that way. I have realized like, oh, I actually know a lot more than I, maybe give myself credit for about the process but you know people like yedlin who are so deep in it and understand things so much so deeply it's so important because as we constantly learn and improve having people like that that can really point to like what is happening why is it happening and this is what you can do about it is helpful even if i want to not be thinking about that It's still like having my head wrapped around those things is so helpful because I love, I'm, I'm the big fan. I'm always trying to break things. I want to break sensors.

I want to break the lens. I want to push the light to like everything. I want to break it. I want to see what happens at its edges. That's one of my favorite things. And so having people explain to me what those edges are is so helpful. Well, and have you ever had to do in the great, like, like an HDR trim of something you shot? what do you mean by trim

I definitely had to do the HR well so like obviously log this is necessarily what he's talking about but log is by nature HDR right you're filming a higher dynamic range than your eventual display is going to be

but in the grade you know the more I've talked to DV this is just fresh on my mind and I just talked about it with the silo people so whatever repetition's fine but um yet a little was saying that basically the reason like

HDR assigns a knit value to your display. This thing, you know, key is going to be at whatever, 45 nits. Whereas 1886, 709 is a value from zero to 100%. So if you're viewing situation is not correct, things can look incredibly dark. And you've seen people probably online talk, oh, the show's too dark, whatever. And it's like, it's a display issue or it's a conversion issue that your TV is doing, maybe the Dolby vision's not that good, whatever. Whereas with 7.09, it's a percentage.

So whatever you set the brightness of your display, especially if you have like a good OLED, that black point doesn't get raised. It just everything gets proportionally brighter. So his sort of thesis at the end of the day is like SDR is actually a better way to do all this than HDR is right now. There needs to be another standard that's somewhere in the middle. Yeah.

That's, that's, it's, it's, this stuff is all, it's funny, I use these frustrations to calm myself when, uh, I get AI anxiety because, like, we have like our, our cameras, our lenses, our televisions. And when I say our, like, it is most people have an incredible TV now. And yet, images are being displayed preposterous. motion smoothing, skin smoothing, the blacks are too black or too bright, like, everything is a mess. And so just because the technology is capable of something has nothing to do with how the execution and distribution are. And I, I'm in awe. Like, obviously, this is something we understand. We like the cameras and the sensors and the displays and the nits and all this stuff. Most people don't and shouldn't. And that's why we have jobs.

But it's shocking to me how often I would say 90% of the time I go and see a TV in the world. I'm just like, oh, God, everything is terrible on this. Like I grab remotes at hotels, at relatives' houses. You know, you've got to fix their TVs. And so whenever people get freaked out about AI and all that, part of what I'm always thinking, like, just because it can't. do something has nothing to do with how it will be distributed, with how it will be executed. We are terrible at that side of things. Like, truly, it's embarrassing how bad it is.

You know, this is somewhat of a diversion, but I, someone on Reddit was like, you know, you can get chat GPT to make you a lot. And I was like, I'd love to test this. So I go to the chat GPT and I say, uh, okay, uh, your AI assistant is a, See? It's terrible. AI's terrible. That's hilarious. And I don't even know how to turn it off.

Yeah, it's probably on some website or something. But anyway, the, so I go to chat GTT, chat GPP, and I go, can you make Lutz? And I went, absolutely.

And I went, great. I would love, they were like, tell me what your references are, blah, blah, so I go,

all right, I want to replicate 5247. Here's some movies that were shot on it. I want something like that. It goes, great. What camera are you using? I was like, great question.

I go C500 mark two, C log 2, blah, blah, blah. And it goes, awesome. Let me work on that. I'll get back to you. So about two weeks goes by where every day I go, is it now? And it's like, we're right there. We're almost there. I'm just packaging it up.

And then after like, again, like 14 full days, I was like, it sounds like you're in a bit of a loop. Are you stuck? And then it sent me this fucking diatribe of, I'm so sorry. I actually can't make Lutz. I was just trying to be cool. blah, blah. And I'm like, this, first of all,

terrifying that it was like this is so on me I feel so bad I'm like no you don't but also it just reminds me that these things are trained on the past it is it is a it rhymes with intelligence it's not you know

I had a kid on Reddit go are like did you just ask chat GPT about like like kids in school now are just going to chat GPT and getting answers and someone in that comment thread was like uh because I was like no I'm a fucking journalist like I I know how to write a sentence.

And the guy below it goes, you know, it's funny that all these like younger folks are claiming that we are chat GPD or AI because that was all trained on the way we talk. Oh, that's interesting. I don't sound like AI. AI sounds like us.

Oh, man. I am so glad that I am not like a teenager now. You are. They're fucked. Yeah. I mean, we were fucked in different ways, but this is a unique. This is a unique one. At least we were just getting drunk in parks and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, we were breaking our brains with alcohol instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard pivot to your film. Yeah, perfect. Let's do it.

Yeah, see, we'll talk about flawed, flawed men in a different way. Yeah, yeah. Because I, so full disclosure, I was not able to get a, screener for it. So I'm going off of trailers and and whatnot. Okay. All right. Perfect. I will I will be careful with spoilers. Well, luckily, I mean, you can for the sake of the podcast, you can spoil whatever you want, but I'm going to see it on Thursday because that's when it actually comes. But I know, you know, obviously with like a Tim Robbins. I was going through your IMDB and I saw you shot Dropout, which is cool. I have a few friends that work on the, I guess the current

version of it. I don't know how far back it went. But that's, wait, dropout. I don't think I did. Oh, did you get misattributed? I don't even know what dropout is. Oh, okay. On your IMDB, it says for three, two years you worked on like an online comedy show as the DP. Oh, I mean, yeah, I don't know what that is. It's funny. I looked through my IMDB recently and there were a couple of things.

I was like, I don't remember this, but if there was some, like I did a whole bunch of, like, funny or die and college humor work. and some of those so I don't know if that is one of those some of those are real I just don't remember what any of them were called gotcha well it doesn't matter anyway but they have game shows now they're very funny um but either way you know like you've done comedy in the past just from what I'm seeing and again talking about you know everything needs to be bright whatever whatever uh even just looking at like the footage that has come out from friendship I did notice the diffusion a lot of that I did also notice that kind of restricted dynamic range, you know? But it is, I guess that kind of is like a Tim Robinson thing, like very serious settings with absurd dialogue. But it looks like a drama. Like if you turn the, if you mute it and just watch the trailer,

you're like, this is the first dramatic role for Tim Robinson. But no. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really, because I'm a huge fan. I know it's not, like, it's not for everyone, but his Netflix sketch comedy, I think you should leave. I'm one of those people who's obsessed with it.

But our movie is, I mean, it's certainly not entirely different, but visually completely different. When Andy, the director, um, wrote the movie, he sent it to Tim and he told him, like, I wrote this movie for you, and I want to shoot it like the master. all Thomas Anderson's movie and he didn't mean like literally that movie like let's copy that movie but he meant like we're going to treat this seriously like this is going to be cinema he he would joke uh when we were in prep he would joke about he was fascinated by the

idea of taking like an a pitch upon movie like you know uncle bone me and and putting Tim Robinson in it like true true like art house independent cinema with Tim Robinson like that that kind of approach and you know i've i had worked with andy on a couple of tv shows before um and we got along well of course uh but with this we both of us we were just like we we are cinema nerds and we are both believers in like the cinematic approach which you know to me there are many ways to sort of uh interpret that but it's sort of um i sometimes call it cinematic empathy I think it's always like character first. What is a character's state of mind?

What journey are they on? Where are they in this particular scene in that journey? And then what is the cinematic support system that we're building around that? And so for me, you know, texture, as I mentioned, like this is a flawed man. So like grain noise. We shot the original Alexa mini.

I shot the entire thing at 2000 ISO. We wanted to pull up the noise. And then on top of that, we added a light layer of grain. I was wearing my little act of filters, which would change depending on where in the story we were. But really, it's the idea of treating it like, oh, as this all this silly thing. It's like, no, no, no. This is a man who is struggling to connect to other people. This is a man who has, like, been shut off to the world, meet somebody who opens it.

up his mind and starts showing him other things. So how do we interpret that visually? And we shot it with that emotional journey in mind, like not thinking about comedy, just like how would we shoot this if it were a drama? And I am a big fan of, you know, I shot a TV show some years back called Penn 15, which- Yeah, and that's really like that show is a good example.

of how I like to interpret comedy. It's like it's not, it's very imperfect. It's, you know, flawed people living their flawed lives. And so the image should also be flawed. Like it's constantly,

whenever I'm talking to my gaffers, I'm always like, turn that off, turn that off. No, that beauty light away. Like it's, it's that restraint of trying to make it feel real and flawed. Because it's how,

you know, in support of the characters and this for sure is that way and you know we do I don't know honestly how other cinematographers do this but I am

a big fan of holler as like little symbols not for anything conscious but just subconscious like you know how how like warms affect the viewer versus cools and then like an

an intense green that feels like gross, something that feels like, oh, somebody screwed up. Like you have an old fluorescent bulb. Like that was something that I would place with the team. We'd place things in that seem like mistakes because that's where, you know, in the story, it's like, no, no, see, this is fucked up. Like, this is wrong. Let's stick that in there so you can see that in color. Again, not consciously, hopefully.

But that that's sort of all in support of the, of the. story so well long diatriat this is the podcast or diatriats the uh but the it's the same kind of idea of when you've got like a really good score right obviously nerds are going to be like did you hear that one song during this thing but like in general it's it's supposed to be felt not necessarily listened to uh so yeah exactly like a broken fluorescent tells you something yeah yeah and i i really love that stuff i think i think part of it also is like you're talking about immersion before for story i have found i've been thinking somebody asked me like two three years ago like what is my pre-production process and i realized like i have no idea and so i started

really thinking about it and observing myself like what is it that i'm doing and i realize that i have this like kind of roast thing that i tell directors but is true i think of myself as like a piece of raw chicken in a Ziploc bag and I just want these like you sprinkle in whatever spices you think are appropriate you think some mustard should go in like throat just give me all the things and music has started to become a big part of that I love when I get playlists from directors and I just want to marinate in it and then eventually it like it it truly feels like the movie is telling me what it wants like I I don't know there's a wonderful talk by a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert that she did years ago.

She's done a couple. But she talks about creativity being outside of oneself, that it's not like we call people geniuses these days. But really what it used to be is that you had a genius that there's like, it's a separate entity that is. David Lynch thing. Oh, is he that way? That makes perfect sense.

Fishing for ideas. Yeah. That's why he meditates because he's like, you don't come up with ideas that can view. Yes. So I have, like, belief or whatever, I almost don't care about. I've just attached to that because what I love about it is it removes, or at least helps remove ego.

It takes, like, me out of the process in a way. And I'm almost like a funnel. And I really like that because it did. Then I am not doing it. I'm, like, trying to channel the movie. I'm trying to interpret what the script is telling. me often I tell directors this as well is it's important for me that I build my own relationship to a script that is separate from them and I'll sometimes find myself talking to them about something

as though it's mine like I'm like well hold on hold on don't forget like there's this thing here I want to make sure that we're taking care of this beat like so let me and and hitching because I interpreted it a certain way and I and so I love all of that like taking it's the movie is telling us what it wants and you we try our best to listen to the movie there's there's and when you see the movie Thursday um I well this is not a spoiler this is uh this there's a concept I heard years ago called an image system and it's like something that you start repeating a type of imagery for various reasons to various effect so one of the things that I think this movie old us and we just

started chasing it once it um is you'll see tim which uh constantly rising up out of the ground like out of the out of the earth there's this like quiet little image system that we started and it wasn't ever the plan but as we were shooting andy the director was like I don't know what it is about this I like this can we have him rising up out of that and I was like great and then we start and then we started to chase it and it kept and then I started to give that meaning? Like I have my own interpretation of why that is and what that means, but he and I didn't discuss it. It just started to happen in the movie. And then we started to embrace it and seek it. And it's this thing that you just happened. And again, I think the movie did it. We

didn't do it. We just listened. You know, it's that I love that because I think like I'm a huge fan of sci-fi films. And I think one of the great things that I think most sci-fi fans love is just the world building of, you know, that's mostly production design a lot of times. But I feel like a lot of times things aren't explained. And the key difference between not explained and super interesting and not explained and stupid is if the people who created it can justify it in their own. It doesn't have to be justified in the text. But just like exactly what you're saying, you're like, it just felt right. I've said a million times emotionally correct beats technically correct, like nine times out of ten. And if if you're like, you know what, I know why that's that. That means there's an audience member somewhere who either, if that's begging a question and you can come up with an answer, their answer might be the same, might be different, but it creates a movie for them that maybe they like or don't like, but at least they can they can buy into what you're presenting them in a way, you know,

versus just having a random thing there yeah no no i could not agree more and i think it's the same way i grew up loving sci-fi fantasy like those were the and it's that world building i think that was so attractive to me and now i take that for whatever i'm shooting like it doesn't matter i'm i'm like what is the and again like that that texture of the world like what is the texture of this world what's the color palette? Like, what does night light look like? Like, well, all these decisions that you get made are the world building of this thing, even if it's just supposed to be like, oh, it's modern day, naturalistic, it should reflect reality. You know, how you, that's like, easy to say, but shooting with zero lighting on an iPhone is very different than like on a stage

with a Venice 2 or, you know, whatever it is. Like, there are still all these choices on the path And they all affect that world building one way or another, whether you're thoughtful about it or not. I just happen to love that marination process. I love production the most, but I love that early stage of marination second most. Like it's as the world is just starting to take shape. Well, it's like it's like reverse flow state, right? Like it's I feel like on a film, granted I haven't worked on like a feature as a, well, I did, I was second unit on one, but that was one day.

But, uh, one day of just me and an Alexa and two actors and we just owes it down. Oh, yeah. But, uh, it was, it was very, uh, educate. You know what? The lesson that, that gig taught me was, uh, if I think I need a tool, stop thinking about the line producer. Ask for it. Yeah.

Every time someone would tell me, same thing happened on these docs. Like I, I, I kept hearing how. you know, I needed to take a haircut on my rate and how everything's, you know, budgets are really tight. And then I stopped asking for it. And then here I am for two days straight holding a fully rigged Ronin with the, the, the, the, um, yeah, the ring thing. And I don't have, I don't have an easy rig. And I'm like shaking halfway through, you know. Yikes.

And I was just like, why did? And even the director was like, you could have got an easier. I'm like, no one told me that. Yeah. I'm bringing all my gear from home. We're not even renting. Like, what do you mean? I can just ask for stuff.

Yeah. No, this is, I really think for, you know, different personalities, like, we all have different things to learn. You seem like a very nice, kind, agreeable fella. And the lesson of like asking or pushing for equipment that costs money is I find it's one of my biggest challenges. I was just on a scout the other day. and I was like,

we have to get a light in the sky for this because we're shooting at the wrong time. We need the da-da-da. And I was like, oh, and the gaffer was like, so we need a condor. And I was like, I don't know like that. And she was like, yeah, yeah, we need a condor. Like, it's fine.

And I was like, really, look, like I have to, and it's because I came up doing so many indie things. And I do feel a responsibility for the budget. Like I do not take it lightly. but sometimes it's just ask for the thing and if they say no this is what I've started doing this has been my helpful way of doing it is like this is the tool I see that we need to solve this problem and they're like ah we can't do it then I say great help me figure out how to do it then and then I bring them in because I'm like if you're saying no and that's the solution I presented

then I need us to to circle the wagons and we need to make this a discussion And, you know, when you're new on a project, especially line producers, their job is to be responsible about the budget. And they don't know me from a hole in the wall. And usually by the end of prep, certainly by production, they see that like I am trying to help them keep costs down. And if I ask for something, they're like, okay, we probably really need it. But it takes so much time for that trust to get built. And when you're doing shorter jobs, like you're talking about, you never get an opportunity to build that trust. And so it's hard.

I'm still figuring that out. I'm still always struggling when I want to ask for something. Right. Well, then in the back of my head on these like smaller gigs, it's always like if it, I don't want to be seen as like difficult or, you know, I in the back of my head, I still want to get fired, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny because that's a big part. I think about like career, career pads and networks and all that stuff a lot.

And I do think one of the biggest things is if you can make other people's jobs easier, then that makes you more attractive for a future hire, you know, so you don't want to cause issues. You don't want to balloon the budget. You don't want to be, as you said, be viewed as difficult. But, you know, also you want to do a good job. And that balance is off in life as in our industry. Yeah.

Well, and I think at the end of the day, you are serving the director, not the line producer. So if the producer wants, if the director wants something, I just have to be like, let me help you do that. And not like, oh, man, now I have to ask for something. You know, it's like, yeah, it'll be fine. But all of that jumping back was to say about like flow states, you're talking about the marination process and stuff. I feel like in the middle of shooting something, there's often. very little time to hit that flow state because you're juggling so many people it's it's that like flex you know you're actively flexed and then when you finally get to relax is when the flow state

happens that's when the ideas come so that that idea of like marinating ahead of time not only I assume informs your instincts but also gives you the room to be in that flexed state for 14 hours a day and not feel like fucking wheels are coming off yeah this is something I've become really obsessive about, and the director of friendship, we talked about it constantly. He calls it monk mode. I would call it playoff mode. But we are extremely strict about, he and I had slightly different approaches to it. But like, I'm extremely strict about sleep, which is really hard to come by once you're, especially in production.

But I'm like, I really am strict about how much sleep I get. my diet gets really controlled i really am trying to yeah that's it's become and part of it is i'm getting older so like i can't survive but um finding exercise finding downtime daily daily meditation never miss a day like i and these are all things and it's purely for what you're describing is on set you know we have our plan we have but i want to be as in the moment ready to be ready to to improvise do I see something let's alter the plan but then if we change this that means this has you know your brain it's such a nerdy thing but I truly this is how I consider my work my most useful tool is my brain there's nothing more useful than that and if I'm tired if I'm stressed

if I'm you know suffering from malnutrition my brain moves slower and that's the thing that I'm protecting the most. And so that's become, it's completely changed. It's funny because it's changed my life for the positive. I used to go into a movie and then I'd come out 20 pounds heavier bags under my eyes and all that. And now I'm still getting the bags under my eyes, but I'm, I'm often healthier by the end of it because I'm, I've gotten so strict about what, how I'm treating my body simply because I want to make sure that I'm as present as possible on day 22, on hour 14, and that takes like real discipline about the physical art of my life, which has been kind of this like slow process of after shooting TV and movies over the last

decade. I'm like, oh, that's what I need more than anything is just health. Yeah. I mean, the, the certainly a couple years of therapy and then not a strict meditation practice, but trying to find that type of time. You know, I always tell people like who poo poo meditation, like, do you like to go on runs? Like, do you know, do you read? Like that's, especially like working out can be incredibly meditated. You don't have to sit there all like that. You know, that's not, that's iconography. That's not actually what the practice is. But the big one for me after kind of getting the brain set was core strength

I'm so mad dude I sit so I'm here like editing a lot or just whatever and just dude yeah going handheld I'm better now I started doing strength training last year

but geez that was bad for a while just getting gas like walking upstairs doesn't instill confidence in production you know you're carrying two things of equipment you're just flop sweating one second

light meter I need light meter time you know yeah Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it's funny. It's our, you know, it's the, I'm fond of saying the brain is the most useful filmmaking instrument, but then, but like the body, especially if, you know, I love to operate and, and I, it sort of alternates job to job because like when I shoot TV, it tends to be multiple cameras. I mean, honestly, movies, everybody's trying to use multiple cameras. And so it's harder to operate when, because then I'm not seeing the second. and image as often, but I love operating and just through years of doing it. I'm a pretty good operator. But I handheld, I don't shoot handheld as often as I used to. And when I do it now, I'm like reminded of like, oh, my knees. Like they aren't the same that they used to be. Like there are, it's really tough. And I've started thinking about that now. I really, I'm about to start a project

that is all handheld and I'm just like I got a I guess it's yoga I don't you know like I got I have to improve my joints so I'll I'll give you two two things one early on in the you know five years ago when I started this podcast I would always ask the documentary DPs about their footwear and I I I could make you a list of all the but I you know like every DEP you get a pair of blundstones right because that's part of the uniform the blundstones and the puffy jacket and uh I I I I could make you a list of all the list of all the The blendstones after like six hours, my feet would just start to hurt. The knees would start to hurt. And then somebody, I can't remember who somebody suggested down. There's one in Santa Monica. I think there's one in the valley. It's called Roadrunner Sports. And you can go in and they will custom make insoles for you.

You're like, you step on a platform. They like measure you out. Then they form them to your feet. And once I threw those in the blendstones, 12 hour day, no problem. Maybe hour 11. But yeah, it just getting, because I'm a little. little, you know, I stand a little kind of funny on my, I'm not very flat, you know. And those, those, um, insoles just fixed it, you know, lower back, start hurting because the alignment was a

lot better. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you. So I, I love, I have blunt stones. I love them. Um, I only wear them on set if I'm like in the mud. I wear hokas. And I got I, it's changed my, it's changed my life. Now, I injured my feet. So I, five years, ago like I threw overuse um I developed something called sesamoiditis um and it's I have a chronic it's like this whatever but when I wear hokas I it's it's perfection like I my knees never hurt my ankles never hurt my hips never hurt and then I wear blumstones which I love we're we're giving all this all these uh all these brands all these shoutouts I need a sponsorship uh yeah but no it's it's true. I mean, ultimately, I guess

it's talking to the same thing, is like having, be it inserts, be a particular shoe brand, is whatever works, but really thinking about how that affects your filmmaking, you know, like I am, I grew up

naturally just, like, painfully shy, like really problematically shy. And as I started to get more and more into film, it was, they kind of fed each other. Like, I had more opinions so I was a little more outspoken when I was on a film set but then that fed into the rest of my life where I started to be a little less shy because I had this one thing

that I had some confidence about and now as the years have gone on I was like well I have to learn to speak in front of bigger groups I have to learn to interact with you know a hundred people in a day and I'm so exhausted afterwards like that social and is probably the most exhausting of all. But it's, I like, again, it's to everything we're speaking to now. It feels like my getting

more focused on the things I need to make me a better filmmaker have turned me into a better person. Yep. And I love that. It makes me just so happy and it speaks to you know, the value of passion about whatever it

is. It's like, we happen to be passionate about filmmaking and the idea that being dedicated to that then improves your life in some way and that those life improvements make you then a better filmmaker and it just is like this snowball effect and I'm so grateful and did love with that as a as a concept yeah for you know for me it was uh finally getting like larger gigs and realizing I had to be that the production head you know and I used to run this the ski club at my Arizona State and I was I fucked it up so bad I was not leadership material just in any in any capacity beyond the fact that I had the job um you know and I knew how to work

with the tour company that we worked with and I still worked with them to the stay actually but in terms of this there was 600 members at one point and I even my staff I was bad and being a filmmaker now and realizing I had to like learn leadership capabilities like get it you know jocco willanix books were really helpful and there's a few other uh who give me the names of those books I want things uh it's uh the um I keep saying the second one so there's a sequel to it called a dichotomy of leadership for extreme ownership uh and the the follow up is dichotomy of leadership which is kind of like after a bunch of questions got asked when he would tour He does like business consulting, but he used to be a Navy SEAL, and he, in the book, he kind of juxtaposes stuff that happened into SEAL teams with business, because that's his job, he's a business consultant.

And it made it, you know, I was, I'm, I'm a boy, you know, so like, oh, military stuff, cool. But just the idea that every film set is in a way, you know, a military unit, you know, it's, you come together for one, you know, mission, so to speak, and then you disband for a while and, you know, whatever. But learning all that for film made me way better at like problem solving in my own life, having difficult conversations with friends, you know, helping other people, not letting a failure dictate my life in the sense that it, you know, every failure is a learning thing. Like one thing he says all the time is like anything that happens,

the answer needs to be good. Anything that happens, good. you lost your B camera package to a fucking storm good that means we only get to focus on one camera that'll make things easier you know oh power went out good that gives us more time to plan you know just having that mindset oh my god change my life yeah I really I mean all these things I really find this stuff to be just it's it's lovely they're all like life philosophies you know and and hopefully we're constantly picking up on things and learning things and improving and um and you know i think that is hugely important is like not to uh attached to

failure as even a thing like it it is a at worst it's a lesson but often it's an opportunity often like i mean that that be camera thing's a perfect example is like you can get better shots because it's only one camera and yes maybe it's fewer you know whatever it is and so much of filmmaking is and maybe life but certainly filmmaking is just problem solving. That's it. It's like you marinate and you try to get like the artistic mission and vision as ingrained as you can. And then from there, all it is is problem solving. Like that's it. Everything falls apart. What's the best I can do now? Whenever I talk to students, whenever they, I want to be a DP, I want to be a director, whatever,

whatever. I'm always like, do you love emergency problem solving? If answer is no, then you do not want to be a visitor. Yeah. It's not, you want to be a photographer. Go do that. That'll be fun. Yeah. You know, but yeah, it's it. And I do love that. I do love, you know, putting puzzles together, you know, but I always imagine, uh, uh, it's Wallace and Gromit, but it's also, uh, Tom and Jerry, you know, laying down the train track as you're on it. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's exactly right. It really, yeah, it's so, I mean, it's so fun. And it's funny because I don't think of my as these things. Like, I don't think of myself

as, like, an emergency problem solver or anything. But actually, I'm quite good at it, or at least in filmmaking. But I think it's, again, just because I'm so passionate about that particular thing, and I love filmmaking and I love production. And so, you know, like, to not linger, that's always something that drives me crazy.

In life or on set is when, like, something goes wrong, which it inevitably does, is when people like, well, who did this? Who messed this up? And it's like, no, no, no, that's done. Like, we don't, that's irrelevant. What are we going to do now?

Yeah, like, it just doesn't matter. And attaching to that, you're paying, you're looking at the wrong thing. Your light is shining on the wrong item. I don't mean you just need to shine that light forward. That's the only thing. Just forward, forward, forward. Forget about backwards. Yeah.

I mean, so for, uh, with friendship being like an indie, it just got picked up by like 824. right like you guys made it just and then found a distributor yeah yeah they bought it um at um tiff so in in toronto's where premiered so yeah they bought it there i mean great fucking great distribute i mean i've never seen a distributor who has a fan base no one ever goes ooh a new lion's gate film just came out but they do it with a 24 and neon which i think is fantastic no i agree and it was um that was always the dream that was always the hope is a 24 um and i will say i was on another movie when when it got bought and I heard in that the producers tent was behind I was in the DIT tent and the producer's tent was behind me and the director walked in to check in with them

and and they were like hey did you hear A24 bought Handy's movie and and you're like uh what yeah yeah I had only heard like 10 minutes prior um and and from there no joke my relationship with the producers changed everyone when i was like saying i needed this or we couldn't do that or could we adjust for this time of day for this people it bought me cachet immediately and i had been working with all the same people but that one item like a 24 got me a little of that cachet and i'm obviously like what an i'm i could not be happier like i love a 24 i'm such a good nerd and there's nothing nerdier than that. So yeah. Yeah. It's it's funny because that's that's the thing that's always I'm starting

to struggle with myself, which is similarly, which is like you're, everyone always says you're only as good as your last project or whatever. But if you shoot, if you're like really busy, you're shooting a lot, but none of that stuff's going to come out for two years, you look like you're doing nothing. And then everybody goes, this piece of shit. Why should we hire him? And then everything comes out. And then they're like, oh, get that guy, 824, here we go. Yeah. No, it's very funny. I'm, I'm. So fascinated by career and how you shape it. And, you know, then there's a lot of stuff.

We have no power to shape and luck and all that stuff. And with friendship, you know, I don't know when this will air, but it's, it's roaming out, you know, five weeks. Yeah, all right. So it'll be out by the time this airs. I've been actually really enjoying this time, but before it's out because it has good buzz. And honestly, I tell the director, I told Tim this as well,

Like I, this is the kind of movie. If I saw it and I knew nobody involved in it, I had nothing to do with it. I would love it. And like just to have a project where like if I end up being forced to retire tomorrow, like I'm like, oh, there we go. Like I got one. I got a movie that I'm so proud of and that I would have loved. And that and I just like this moment in time where it has good buzz. It's A24.

It has good, like, the talent in it is incredible. And now I'm like, well, once it comes out, it's going to do whatever it does. And then people are going to forget about it. And I'm like, no, no, I like this cool, like little window of buzziness. I want to live in that for a while because you're right. People just forget. What was your last thing? You know, this reminds me of when everything everywhere came out, I saw pre-screening in IMAX.

It was the only time it was ever shown in IMAX. And the whole cast there was really cool. but I interviewed Lark and Seeple for it. And the movie hadn't come out yet. And he was saying the same shit. He was like, I mean, I really liked the movie. I hope other people like it. And I was like, dude, I loved it.

I think this is going to be great. Yeah. And then for a dumb reason, I couldn't release the podcast for like months. So I didn't get to ride that way. But it is that like, if you feel that way, I'm, and just seeing how like many people like who saw pre-screenings are going on like YouTube and going like, this was awesome. I think you might have, you know, check your shoes. You might have stepped and hit.

I like that. That's pretty good. You know, I've kept you a little over, but I do like asking people this because I think it's really informative. And it's, again, stealing from David Fincher. And he was like, you know, we're talking about like how technology lets you do anything. And the audience kind of knows you can do anything. So when making friendship, what were the things that you made sure you didn't do? that's a great question i mean the first thing that comes to mind is something we sort of already

talked about is um is don't make anything perfect like make sure you're fucking things up constantly fuck up the image fuck up the light you know like really and actually you know what i have a better one because this was um really important is so andy the director and i um had worked on some TV. He's directed a ton of TV. I've shot a ton of TV. We've overlapped just a couple times. And on set, and we both, TV has been very kind to us and we love it, but we're both movie nerds. And what we kept saying when we were approaching every single scene, we would

say, okay, how do we make this not TV? We are shooting a movie. Let this be cinema. Let this be cinematic. Let not cover this like TV and that was the biggest thing we made sure to not do is it is not shot like a TV show and and that was hugely important to both of us. Yeah. Were there specific references that you're like that's that's because you know TV these days can be Game of Thrones, you know. Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, we had, I'm not going to, I'm not going to throw any names out there, but we had some and just some of them were movies, some of them were TV. But we had a few things that were in the comedy world that we would be like, it is not that. Make sure we are like if this is this funny moment, this is like a, because all this is something that Tim, and actually maybe this is even more important. This was more Tim and Andy is they were,

Tim was really adamant that there are no jokes. And they ended up on the day cutting jokes out. and some that I've really loved, but he was like, the comedy should come from behavior and not from jokes. And so it shouldn't be like no joky jokes. Let's get all of that out of there. So it was really in a way, both cinematically and then like literally like the on the page and the performance was like don't aim for comedy. Like the comedy will come from the behavior from these decisions that the character is making. but don't like aim for like on your land setup you know like we really was like no the behavior like let this and

Tim is just like the way the opening line when you see it the opening shot is one of my favorite moments with a crowd there's an opening shot which I think is one of the best operating I've ever done it's very simple but like the timing I was so dead and there's this like it's just a line to that Tim gives and it's just this like oh it's it's delicious and only he could do it that's so cool you know what you're going to have to do especially before this comes out is you need to hit him up and get one of his skate decks oh yeah I think I think he just got sponsored by like baker or something he's got like five decks and I'm like yeah there was I didn't know any of this until we were on set and he's like a big skater and there was I think they even started

talking maybe about the Baker thing while we were in production of that. I recall there was some, I'm like so far out of that world. I haven't been in that since I was a teenager. But yeah, he's he's, he's the best man. He's a one of one. Yeah, that's the Eric Koston joke is he would go out to, well, do you skateboard and everyone would go, I used to skate. Yeah, yeah, the 90s, we all skate, you know.

That's right. That's it. We didn't even have cars back then. It was just skateboards. Yeah, it's true. Well, I'll let you go, but I will, I'll hit you up after I see it and then, uh, yeah, chat about it and stuff because I am very excited and, um, it does look funny. And I love obviously Tim Robinson and, and, uh, yeah, it should be good. Yeah.

No, I'll be really curious because it is, you know, look, it's, it's done very well, but it's at festivals, everybody's a little extra kind. I'm really curious how it does when it goes wide because it's not for everyone. like it is it is um i'm so proud of it it is for me that's for sure that's all it matters like like yeah i hate like i'm sure you probably feel this way too but it the second you try to make something to please someone else like it goes you see this in business all the time where there'll be some old fogy who's like you know what the kids love is a tic talk we need we need something like yeah and it's like you don't use tic talk why are you trying to make something like that yeah make something for you, like, the more specific you get, the more universal it becomes, I feel.

I can, yeah, for sure. That's, that's absolutely how it works. And then, and, you know, and then you are what you, I have a director friend who is really strict about what he watches, because he's like, it's just like food. Like, you are what you consume. And it really like, I was like, oh, shit. Because I, I love artsy, fartsy. I like big broad stuff. And so I'm, I'm all over the place, but I really was like, oh, right, because I completely agree. I think you try to do what what makes you happy, you know, like feed yourself and then what you're, what you, as you're developing as a person, like your taste is evolving and you have control over where that's going to go. So it's, you know, this is up my alley. So for what, we'll see how, how you feel about it.

But probably up my alley just based on based on the, I will say to your, your point about like what you consume and stuff I found myself I don't like going on like filmmaker YouTube because it's not it's just not great I try to be the change I want to see in the world sometimes but you know as a

journalist but I got 300 Blu-rays here right I fucking never watched half of them I was because it was just the whole process and the thing so over the past month I've ripped every single one of these onto a server and now I have flex so I can just

bring them up on any, you know, if I'm feeling particularly lazy, I don't have to sit, you know, I can sit there with my laptop, my iPad, or a different monitor. You can do it from a different place, you know, and just bring up anything in this library immediately. And just that, that quick access to it has me watching more films now. Oh, I like that. I'm doing that. Yeah, yeah. No, that's really smart. I think I need to do that because I have the same thing. I have my Blu-Rays, but I'm like, oh, I have to get up and then get him out. Like, what nothing's more difficult than that. But yeah, I think that's,

I think that's really smart. And I think it is, it's good to remind ourselves that like, oh, like what we're consuming is shaping us in some way. So just to be conscious, it doesn't mean you have to be nerdy, but it does, you know,

you are making choices with what you're consuming and what that's, you know, how that's influencing you as a filmmaker. And escapism is wonderful. Like it doesn't have to be, homework movies like it can do whatever you're you're craving there's nothing wrong with any of it it's all useful in some way i've been doing uh because of that i started putting together a lot of

double features that just happened on i would just go off vibes and so like last night i watched air force one and um shit what was the other one i just wrote it down uh it was they and it was just funny how like exactly Space Cowboys. Air Force is a big double feature. Elvira and Black Dynamite was an incredible double feature. And so I

made posters for all. I want to start like I tried my buddy has like a theater and he was like no we'd have to pay for that. But I want to get like a bunch of friends together to do all these double features because I find them incredibly instructive. Because all my friends work in film obviously. So it's like when you put when you juxtapose two films you know like with space cowboys and uh air force one they're very similar right so you see a trend and you're like that's very interesting this is all the same idea um but sometimes you know my

my other favorite one is uh taken and finding nemo that's so good what do you do when your child is lost right there's two different but just that's great i think it makes the the filmmaking experience or a film going experience a lot more fun when you can when you can play with that i also want to do freddy versus jason and alien versus predator oh that's good yeah that's really fun yeah i love that that's a really good i there's so i you know there's like um i like watching scenes i used to do this with some friends not so much anymore but where you'd you would pick a theme so like human versus nature for instance and then somebody would queue up a scene you don't know what it is and then you just watch the scene out of context

and then you choose a scene and you just watch scenes out of context and you can see the filmmaking more clearly and so there's some that's almost like a microcosm of what you're talking about because when you watch two back to back you can see things that overlap like I am willing to bet that

nobody's like watched Haken and finding Nemo back to back but that's like as soon as you said it was like oh my god yeah that's the same movie you know a lot of ways. So that's really, it allows you to see levels of filmmaking that you don't see when you're just watching one thing because you're immersed in that one world. Yeah, the thing that kicked it all off from me was actually Elvira and Black Dynamite because Elvira obviously is of the time and intentionally, I guess Schlocky's not the right word, but it's supposed to be

campy, right? Yeah. And it's fantastic. And Elvira is just a wonderful comedian in general. Cassandra Peterson's your name. But Black Dynamite is a send-up of 70s black exploitation films, but it's still a comedy, and it's still in that same kind of language of Elvira, but they're made 40 years apart. And I was just like, that's interesting.

And then I went and did Indiana Jones and the Phantom with Billy Zane. Oh, wow. Because the Phantom is just Indiana Jones, but camp. Right. Oh, yeah. So that's what's kicked it all off for me.

And that's why I started working all of U-Rays. There you go. Go. Well done. Yeah. I think I'm going to steal this. That's great. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for spending the time, brother. And please stay in touch. Yeah. Cheers. You too. Thank you so much for this. Yeah. Later on. Cheers. 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.