Frame & Reference Podcast - 198: "The Day of the Jackal" Cinematographer Christopher Ross, BSC

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

This week I'm beyond privilidged to have the splendid Christopher Ross, BSC on the program to talk about his work on The Day of the Jackal!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this, episode 198 of frame and reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Christopher Ross, BSC, DP of The Day of the Jackal. Enjoy. every time i'm in a q and a for any movie i always feel really bad because everyone what was it like to work with any redmayne all right well good yeah yeah exactly exactly but i was like you know what i'm gonna if they're recording this for a podcast i better help out yeah yeah yeah exactly it's a it's a tough one isn't it because it's like you never know I think, you know, I think Roberta did an amazing job of moderating.

It's hard to know what level to pitch the questions at. You know, so, you know, there's frequently the kind of what camera system did you employ on the, you know, on the project, but, but, you know, but then when you go a little bit deeper, it's like, why do you choose to put the camera where you choose to put the camera? Why does, you know, how do you, you know, why do you turn your back on the doorway, that kind of more philosophical questions. So it was good.

It was a good balance, I think, from, from, you know, for people to take away what they want to take away from it. Yeah.

Well, and, you know, what's funny is I actually ran into Roberto at the airport a few, like last year. Uh-huh.

And he was wearing a mask, but he had like a CSC button on. And I was like, oh, are you in the CST? He goes, no, why? And I was like, you got a button. And he goes, oh, no, I'm in the ASC. I was like, oh, great. And then he just introduced himself, but I didn't see his face. And then I'm like, on

the airplane looking up Roberto ASC. And I went, oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I missed opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Should have asked about Daniel Craig. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've actually found, to your point about like, the depth of questions that, you know, I've been doing this show for five years. And I found, that you know it did certainly start with like what did you use and then it was why and then after a while it's it's a lot of it has become like so how do you like job security not like do you think the industry's dying but like uh you know working being being the the team manager being the head of the apartment you know because at a certain point the answer seems to be like

yeah big soft source over there sometimes a hard light and then it's like all right we did that how do we run the team because that's the one thing you study you can study as long as you want film school whatever to teach you everything you go to AFI and then you show up on set you're like oh there's a whole crew yeah

yeah it's like it's like you never there's no there's no AFI course on HR interaction you know or like you know it's it's really hard some of the crew that I've worked with

certainly in the UK so like the grip that I just worked with on my latest project he and I work together he gripped my fourth short film ever in 2003

2002 so that's 23 years and we must have made you know I don't know 11 films together and nine TV shows and you know when we haven't worked

together a huge amount in about the last six years because, you know, once you get to a certain level as a cinematographer, a lot of your work is international and the, and the crew tend to stay locally, etc. But we're, you know, we're really great friends. But, you know, one of the things that we've, in the last 23 years have stumbled around is like the idea of, the idea of like, if I was a corporation or if we worked for a corporation, there'd be like performance reviews and there'd be like a training program that employers would pay for employees to go on.

And so we have this curious scenario in the world of film where we're kind of like self-supporting HR mechanisms and where, you know, frequently interacting with each other from an employment perspective leads to, you know, greater depth in the relationship, et cetera. So I think it's really interesting. Obviously, you only realize that after you've been working for 20 years that you, you know, yeah, I was a really terrible boss, you know, 10 years ago.

And that, and therefore I must have been a really, really, really terrible boss 20 years ago. So, you know, well, it's a good, it's a learning curve for all of us. So hopefully, you know, everyone forgives everyone and we all grow together. Well, it's great to hear you say that because I had almost to the letter that experienced in my own life. Yeah. Luckily, it was like mostly collegiate, you know, and then. Yeah. So I was like, oh, God, everyone had to put up with me as a, I was a terrible leader.

It had nothing to do with film, luckily, but just like, you know, I ran a ski club at the school. And it was like, you know, 70 year history of that thing. and I just ran it in the floor. Yeah. It can happen. And also it's like it's weird, you know, in a way you're hired. I mean, this is like the subtext of the industry is you're kind of you're hired as a young cinematographer because you're less expensive. Because the budget is smaller.

and you're hired really much by experience producers for that naivety because they don't want you to be so defensive of your crew and say that you can't do certain hours or you don't want to do certain things or you need, you know, the number of times I, you know, shot a night exterior with four electricians back in, you know, my first few movies and now it would be more like 25 electricians And so, you know, somewhere between, somewhere between, you know, I guess theoretically nive and theoretically enlightened is the difference between four and 25.

And I'm sure in another 20 years' time, I'll have another set of regrets that, you know, as yet, as yet unrevealed. Well, you know, it's thinking about like your history, I was looking up, you know, doing research. interesting to see that you went to school a lot of DPs go to school for architecture I think you might be the first astrophysicist yeah

maybe maybe maybe yes physics and astrophysics combined so yeah it was it was mostly so I when I was so like a lot of people that love films I assumed that the only job that you could do on a film

was to write them produce them or direct them. I thought that those three people did everything. And then when I was sort of around about 15 and paying a lot more attention to the credits and reading a lot of books, I read this amazing, the amazing Scorsese on Scorsese,

a Faber and Faber book about the, you know, about Martin Scorsese's career and his process. And throughout the book, he sort of talks really fondly about Jack Carniff, is who was um uh howl and press burger cinematographer you know shot black narcissus and the red shoes it talks really really really fondly of um of michael chapman michael bow house um freddy francis um i'm a huge fan of kent wakeford who was you know martin scorsese's first cinematographer

shot uh mean streets and alice doesn't live here anymore before sort of banishing from the from the feature film worlds. Anyway, so I kind of like 15 to 17 I developed this sense of actually perhaps cinematography was a thing for me and I was very lucky.

I was, you know, I got a great education in London and my dad my dad was a highly opinionated man. God rest of soul. And he he proudly informed me

that the film industry was full of charlatans and raconteurs and that it would be a short route to bankruptcy. Right. And it was like, yeah, three quarters, true. Three quarters, correct, or two thirds correct. It is full of charlatans and raconteurs. You know, the raconteurs are a lot of fun and the charlatans can be sidesteped. So anyway, I promised him that I would do.

something normal that you could be a normal person with. So I did this degree in physics and I and I specialized in astrophysics, but mostly because in that course there was a module in geometrical optics, which in the world of physics is optics that physically have glass and use the electromagnetic spectrum. And that bit proved pretty helpful in the, in, I guess it doesn't necessarily help me day to day anymore, other than the fact I have a huge addiction to lenses and Mrs Ross in the other room will attest to way too many doorstops. And, well, I don't basically in my house, I never have to reach very far without binding.

That is a thousand millimeter Nikon, a catadiotic lens that I've done. bought, because I thought, and this is actually this is an interesting one. So I bought this for the day of the jackal, but didn't ever rehouse it. Didn't rehouse it, remounts it. Basically, if, so this is a thousand millimeter lens. I don't know whether anyone knows what one of these.

Oh, the reflective lens. Yeah, whatever you call that. Yeah, like catadiotric. And basically, it expands the focal length by bouncing the light. But what is really peculiar about these lenses is that the defocused areas of the image are bonuts and not circles and so I thought it would be really super super interesting to use these as a rifle site

of the jackals gun but in the end we needed to zoom so I ended up using using the 150 to 600 can with a bunch of extra things. But anyway, that was a dumb idea that I had. And there's plenty more of them. No, you know, what's funny is it must have been a Bond film or maybe one of the boring films or something. But I remember seeing one of those as a rifle scope. And I think they probably use them for scopes or something.

And just, and I was already interested in filmmaking and photography and stuff. And I started really young, luckily. So I'm looking at this scope and I was like, that's got what, how? do you do that? Like it never, I went on a, I remember to this day going on a very long tear for like a week trying to figure out what the hell, why is there a mirror, apparently facing the wrong way in the middle of a lens. And I was just like, what is, what is that? And it would have, I would have given you, had you made that work, I would have given you a lot of credit for pulling. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess that's a, that's a reference. Yeah, yeah, it's a reference.

And one of the reasons why I thought they would be useful is there are probably in the world of large sensor imaging, like, you know, full frame 35mm, the only way of achieving a handheld 1,000 mil. Now, not that you necessarily want to do a handheld 1,000 mil, but should you want to do a handheld,000 mil, that's the solution. at a T-11. They're incredibly slow lenses because of the light loss in the mirrors. But yeah, and the fact that the entrance people were so small. But yeah, so I had this, I had like a love of lenses, a love of glass, a love of all that stuff. And then I was very lucky, and I went to work at Panavision, and my love of lenses got me talking to an amazing guy that worked as the head of, at the time, he was the head of the...

camera and lens service department he then became the technical director a few years later his named jim bud and jim hired me to come in as like a trainee camera lens fixer um and i was quite a lot younger i think i was at least i think it was 12 years younger than the next next youngest person in the department and so i was the i was the kid and they used to rip it out of me every single day and I used to break stuff, but I was very, very enthusiastic and I would do every bit of overtime. I'd get sent to every country that nobody else wanted to go to where someone needed to have a camera fixed. So I was, yeah, and that was my film school, really, was, was chasing, you know, the likes of, you know, Panavision clients such as, you know, John Seal, Slavamere

Jack, yeah, chased them, Robert Ellswick, chased them around the world, fix, fix lenses for them and and fix you know cameras and yeah that was the that was the learning curve that was the ladder well and if i guess if being a deep heat didn't work out you could just become like a dan sasaki type you know after a while exactly exactly which uh to be fair i guess to your point i really want to talk about lenses but you said something earlier that i wanted to point on which is uh you talking about how you were like i'll go get like a normal degree or a normal job or something. And it just started burrowing into my head

because I'm like, I feel like being an artist is a far more normal job than most people will give it credit for. Like I feel like normalcy is expressing yourself. Not normal is burying that and giving yourself to the machine of capitalism, I suppose. Yeah. Like, I think that, I think it couldn't be, you couldn't be, it couldn't be speaking more truth, you know, like, as far as my dad was concerned, like the, you know, he was, he was a, you know, he was a kid of the Second World War.

So as far as he was concerned, the route to total happiness was to have a regular paycheck to attend the same office over and over again, have a regular paycheck, join a, golf club and and retire at 65 and yeah that's you know be a good contributor to society and a good worker and have stability his life was like you know he was born you know in 29 so he was like 10 years old when the second world war you know happened and so as far as he was concerned anything that lacked total stability was a nightmare he never had stability in his career. So, and I think, I think he also, he just, he wasn't a part of the film industry and he didn't realize that despite the film industry's very unusual, you know, HR methodology of getting hired for a job and getting, you know, you're finding the next gig and the fact that you

might only be, you know, for some people, you know, it's totally normal that we just do a day's work. we turn up we shoot you know sometimes we do like three hours we turn up and we're shooting

an interview or we're filming we're doing a recie for a commercial whatever it's like yeah just I work three hours today

I'm going to do two I'm going to do two days next week I'm going to have and then I'm going to work nonstop I'm going to do

six day weeks for the next eight weeks of my life and then I'm going to have a month off for most people that is that is terrifying

a terrifying a terrifying relationship with your mortgage. And so that's, I think it breeds a certain personality of those of us in the industry that are like, yeah, yeah, we just, you take the rough with the smooth and some years it's really tough and some years it's really good. And you have to just, you know, find the balance and, you know, try to glide through it, you know, and also there's all those hidden, that hidden time that, especially at my level, you don't get paid for like pre-production that's that's just uh stress management that's you you yeah

there you're not getting true for that yeah yeah yeah that's true and also it's all the you know i think i think you you make it as an artist in the industry when you all like your best ideas that come to fruition on a film set occur to you when you're in the shower or walking the dog or driving, doing the school run or something. And so our jobs are 24-7. Like the moment you, like I suffer from insomnia, I'd really struggle to fall asleep at night. And it's mostly because I've got my iPad open on,

I'm doing some stupid drawing about something to try and make some facet of my life simpler. What I'd really love is I'd love to do a drawing that made me fall asleep, but they never do. they just make me more and more awake. I think that's the interesting thing about our lives is that we're sort of permanently on.

And it's beautiful in a way to dedicate your life to the craft. I'm so glad you say that because I don't know if I look tired, but I went to bed this morning. And what for me, it wasn't drawing. It was I had just purchased a Sony F-55 because I own a bunch of Canon stuff and people kept asking for Sony gigs and I just got sick of renting FX6s

but I don't really love the FX6 it's great but I don't you know and I got a screaming deal on the F55 it was like two grand and so I was just spending all night last night like putting it through like dynamic range tests and like you know like just seeing

how it holds up 13 years later and that kind of nerdy nonsense yeah it's like season season one and two of the crown with the F-55 I think Andriano yeah I think so

I interviewed him for that and and or and literally like two nights ago I sent him a DM I got to get his email and I was like hey so I bought that camera do you have any advice yeah you must be thrilled

that now that like all cameras are mirrorless because it's for the lens options yeah totally I mean, that's the huge, you know, when I worked at Panavision, one of the big things that we used to do was try to be rehousing bits of glass or remodifying bits of glass, especially in the, in the, yeah, just in the wider end, in the pursuit of, you know, of doing something interesting or doing something challenging, you know. and yeah now the fact that you can you can essentially take an m39 lens or an m42 lens and and and partner it with an email that's a you know that's a hugely you know a hugely liberating experience you know if you obviously you can take some glass you know canon range finders and have them rehoused to you know LPL or PL you know but it's very expensive you know I'm a big advocate of the trawling eBay and, you know, finding a I love of biotar, 58 mil biotar, 75 mil biotar, if you can find those, they're real beauties. I'm a big fan of the 40mm biogon that you find on the robot

cameras from Zeiss from the 40s and 50s. Yeah, big fan of Russian glass, you know, the Mier, the Helios, the Jupiter sets. You know, they're all it's you know the fact that we can now utilize them on on on video cameras is um yeah it's incredible what what are you know what a you know in 2005 when the choices were a role of 5279 and brimos or cook s fours as your as your like paintbrush as your tool set you know when i think back to that as my that was like my my my my when my career first took off and I was shooting my first sets of films,

it was really much the, the, like, you know, is it a panoflex and primos, or is it a movie cam compact and for guess force? And, you know, and you've got some variation. And now the variation is infinite.

I mean, it's more than infinite. You know, it's like infinite factorial. So it's fun. Makes it hard sometimes to narrow down the choices, but certainly is an, adventure getting to a place where you can feel there's a unique voice for your

project. Well, and the high resolution capture now is kind of breathing new life into some of those older lenses that you, you know, on film would have said, no, those aren't resolute enough. And now it's like, oh, now you can like see the glass almost,

you know? Yeah. And now there's all these primarily Chinese, but companies making all these super affordable like anamorphics and stuff coming out, which don't have a ton of character, but it's still like, you know, especially if you're on a... Yeah, yeah, I've got a set of

Lao and Anamorph large formats. They're amazing. Yeah, yeah. I got the fantastic bed of glass. But yeah. But yeah, I think, I think that's the thing is that the you know, the digital sensor technology has, really has

sort of democratized image capture. And, And, you know, from the, even if you, even if you just have like a Canon 5D Mark 2, you know, from 2012, that camera can shoot feature film quality imagery if exposed appropriately on an infinite array of lenses. Yeah, yeah, don't pan, don't whip pan, but it's going to be fine. and or lean into it, you know, one way or the other. But, you know, it's some, you know, that the series of inventions, that series of innovation has put some, you know, I think it is much harder to stand out from the crowd now

in the work that you do as a younger cinematographer. You know, back when I started, you know, one of the biggest things you had to do is shoot something on 35 millimeter get sort of rubber stamped by a completion bond that you had that you had photographed on this medium and that was like the thumbs up in a way that was more significant than whether the film was successful or looks beautiful it was more just you know have you

have you stepped over that hurdle whereas now it's much more nuanced It's much more about, have you captured the, the, you know, the spheric of the story. And, you know, all we've done is make ourselves better filmmakers. And so that's a good thing. Well, and the thing that I'm going to speak to the point of like, you know, harder to break in and stuff. It's also, I think, in a weirdly unique way, it's hard to stand out because, like, I was just thinking about this. If I'm going to remake my reel and I love. at what every producer friend of mine shoots, they all kind of look the same. You know,

producers are not looking for uniqueness necessarily. They're oftentimes in the commercial world. They're oftentimes looking for, you know, whatever, whatever Under Armour or Nike just did. You know, like watching the Super Bowl this year, it's like everything was like really hard, warm light, wide angle lens and obviously a lot of people on the couch. And, you know, a lot of times like anamorphic and it's kind of that same thing. And so, yeah. I've just been thinking about how, like, there's, there's, it's like you got to do all that until you get the job. And then once you start getting jobs, you got to start, uh, delineering yourself visually as opposed to being. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Everyone, I think, I think it's safety machine that everybody wants a reliable maverick.

Yeah, I think that's the thing is that, is that, is that, is that you need to be reliable enough to produce the imagery that everyone is, but for that imagery to be maverick enough to be unique and and and that and sitting on that line is you know it's a short step to lunacy if you know like you'll find yourself chasing ever decreasing circles of of you know how so i think in a way it is what makes us artists is when when we say enough is enough that's you know that's the last brush stroke you know like the difference between a Picasso and an a level art student is that Picasso would make three strokes on a canvas and they would be the image and an eight level art student would make three then five then nine then keep going and you know keep layering and layering and eventually it loses the

simplicity of the of the approach and i think that's the that's the thing being trying to know when to know when to stop yeah and make your and make your peace with it yeah you know it's that idea of like uh what was michael angelo or whoever who was like well the way i do it is i look at a block of marble and remove everything that isn't the piece and that sounds so stupid if you're not an artist yeah yeah i remove everything else that isn't yeah that isn't the the the the subject the idea yeah I think that's a better way to think of it is if it's if it doesn't fit your idea that needs to go yeah what don't you do well this is not yeah but what I'm interested if if there was a moment for you where the sort of nerd brain um broke free and you started to think more um I suppose artistically or if that was if more it were you always more artistic and you had to because you're trying to get the, you know, quote-unquote, real job. Force nervous upon yourself.

Yeah. No, I think it was a, I think it was a case of, you know, it's such a learned, what we do is like an eternal learning curve. There's no, you don't ever get to the point where you go. Oh, yeah, kind of got that sewn up, know how to do it now. it's like light and faces and light and textures and lighten lines and lighten architecture so I realized quite early on that I didn't know anything and so and and so I started to learn you know when I was at school and university I shot a lot of things on on videotape you know

early camcorders that kind of thing so that was my that was the beginning And then when I, when I joined Panovich, and I realized that there was this whole photochemical approach that I knew nothing about. So I went on a, you know, I went on a learning spree to catch myself up on that stuff.

And then when I, then when I sort of knew what a, how to expose a negative, I then started shooting short films. And I quickly realized that the light was in the wrong place and that I didn't really know anything about lighting. So I then embarked upon some great relationships with some fledgling gaffers

who were super, super supportive in helping me with that knowledge. And I guess slowly every job got a little closer to, you know, yes, when you first start, you know, back in 2002, I was just happy that the actor's face was exposed. You know, I think that's the thing. It's like, can you see the cast member? And that's what a lot of early short films are. It's like I want to make sure that this performance is visible.

And then you realize that that has no nuance. It has no atmosphere. And so that was the thing. I kind of embarked upon that learning curve. I was never a painter when I was at school. In fact, I was, you know, art was actively sort of discards. because it was about, you know, making yourself a productive member of the capitalist machine. And so, and so, yeah, and so that idea, the idea of light and shade that you would learn in pencil sketching was something that I learned through, yeah, taking thousands of photographs and, and, and analyzing which ones I was happy.

with which ones I wasn't, and then onto the next project and onto the next project. So, yeah, that was my thing, was say yes to everything, suit everything, make as many mistakes as you can afford to make, you know, and, and, and, yeah, and where I think, to be honest, my, I think my learning curve really steepened very sharply at the point where at the point of the digital revolution where I was able to be very experimental on a film set. So I shot this TV show called Misfits.

Yep. That where we had to, where we had to, there were five main characters. Everybody, well, the world has been struck by lightning. A whole heap of people got superpowers. and so there were five people in our main cast that had superpowers each superpower had to be visualised

in some way because we couldn't afford the effects or any of that sort of stuff and so the character that was invisible ended up being photographed on a 35mm slant lens where he could throw the focus in a smeary, smushy sort of a way one of the characters

went into his his superpower on a on a slider with a contra zoom so it was a you know a short contra zoom idea and a shot of the reflection of scenes replaying in his eyeball um basically just lots of photographic techniques and and every day was an experiment and and every day I'd come in and be like we should try this version we should try free lensing we should try all sorts of things. And it was then that I sort of found myself into that reliable Maverick methodology. And yeah, and I like to think that's, that's been the MO ever since, really, is to be, it's to push things just enough to be unique, I think. At least that's, that's my hope.

Sure. I mean, the, I mean, how many awards did you get nominated for for two episodes, one episode of Shogun? Yeah. It seems to have worked. But was it breaking free of the steeper, I suppose, danger cliff? Well, that's not a phrase, but of film where now you could actually, when you say like digital was what steeped in that learning curve, was it the ability to just look at it and go like, oh, we can, we can play here.

We're not spending money necessarily besides time. Yeah, I think it really was that. I definitely felt like, you know, there's, there's. Just there's such a weight of, I guess, a form of expectation from producers, but are usually significantly more experience than you when you're making at that level of television, basically. And so what was great about the system was that I was able to, like now I could pull up, you know, if I wanted to describe to, um,

describe to a producer what that concept might look like I could pull up a whole heap of things on shop deck I could pull up frame grabs I could show them in the cut you know that kind of thing but at the time the ability to share references

was much more limited and so you could say oh it's going to look a little bit like this and and yeah on celluloid they'd be pretty nervous and the director might be nervous and if you've got a nervous director who's not entirely convinced

and nervous producers then, yeah, then you'll, then really you want to be making the decision as a collaboration. You know, I like to think that all of the decisions I make as a cinematographer are pushing the boundary

of the things I've been asked to deliver in the collaboration with the director. So it's like we are, we're running up this together and and you're in the lead and I'm giving you a good shove from behind to take you over the crest is like the working methodology and so that's what that's what on that project the red one allowed me to do was to be able to show everybody this is this is it's crazy right but this is what it looks like you know we used uncoated zy super speeds that had horrendous flares

at times, but we could always see how bad it was. We could always see, I think I shot that whole show at like a T1, 3 and 2 thirds to a T2 in order to be like... Oh, film ACs. Yeah, I mean, amazingly, my focus puller on that show is amazing, but I called Tim Battersby. He's now an incredible steadicam operator.

But we did, I shot two seasons of the show. He pulled both seasons. So it must have been fun. You're right. He couldn't, I couldn't, I might have gasless him once, but I didn't gaslight him twice. So I think he really enjoyed the process as well because it meant, you know, with all of these quirky lens choices. And he was like one of the primary storytellers because he would be pulling between, you know, on the slant lenses, between why, eye and another eye and a jawline, lips, the ear, you know, it was a really fun, it was a really

fun journey. So, yeah, it's trying to take that, you know, to each experience now moving forwards. And it is a little bit easier to be, to be a little bit Maverick, because everyone is reassured. You don't have to spend a lot of time explaining to everyone, you know, it's going to be okay you'll wake up tomorrow morning with the rushes and it'll be great you'll love it now it's just like everyone walks off set and everyone's high-fiving because they saw what what we produce do you find at uh your level because certainly i've experienced us uh that so for instance i i still use the light meter quite a bit uh because if i find if i set up the camera set up a monitor and then start playing with it, people will start asking immediately why it looks like that. It's like

I haven't, you know, I didn't set the light. It's not at the right. Let you please leave me alone. You know, so if I do it all with the meter first and then turn on the monitor, they're like, oh, that looks great, you know, hopefully. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Does that, is that still your experience or do people let you kind of work until you say, okay, now come look at it? Yeah. No, I mean, you still, there's still some, there's still some notes about, you know, is it, is this, Is this the intention kind of thing? And that's just the nature of the speed at which we work in the, you know, in the, in the, in the narrative filmmaking world.

But yeah, no, it's a lot less than it, than it used to be that. That's absolutely for sure, yeah. And I think I still use a metre. I use a meter more for reliability on the, the on the negative so I know that I'm chasing often I'll have like a room tone an edge light and a key light and that and I'll chase that trio of lights around the space and so just to make sure that from you know nine a.m. to four p.m. I haven't entirely re-archistrated the you know the the way you know the balance of everything.

But I like more with my eye now in terms of shadow placement and shadow density than I used to on film. But mostly that's, I think, an experience thing. And also just knowing your negative, even though the negatives are a digital one these days. yeah i mean watching those first three episodes of jackal that was one thing i really noticed was the the shadows like it is a very contrasty film but it's not one of those like uh oh let's just you know let's have five stops down like or i guess two you know whatever it just slams to black um you it's very it's still very visible and i was wondering because i've interviewed a lot of people who shot dark stuff like i just interviewed the team from silo and

they're they're really playing on the toe down there um Yeah, Baz and Ed and Kate. Yeah. But how did you, how, what was the kind of impetus for that? Look, obviously it's a very cinematic look. Everyone wants it to look like a movie. But it, what were those references to get you? Obviously, there's a lot of bond in there.

There's a lot of, uh, Fincher in there. Yeah. What was the other one? Oh, Sicario. As a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of, yeah, some Sicario. some um yeah we did a lot of a lot of gordon willis in his alan peculiar movie so um parallax view three days of the condor plute particularly particularly clout and um i forgot i still need to watch clooks everyone

clutes yeah cloutes uh cloutes a real lens nerds paradise as well it's like an autopanatal masterclass um And, yeah, for me, the thing was I wanted, I wanted there to be a mixture, because we were shooting so much on stages, so almost every interior on Jackal is a stage. And, yeah, there's probably only, in the first three episodes interior-wise, there's probably only maybe, and we've been seeing interior locations that are like you know the the places like the the garage um in episode three where he picks up the car that kind of thing things that you couldn't really build but almost any of the sort of domestic interiors or the MI6 interior all of those were were set builds you know the the would never have known yeah the Munich apartment where he where he uh where he does the first assassination, that's a, you know,

a very small set build with a, you know, not a bad way, just my brain, yeah, filmmaking brain was like that's, yeah, exactly.

And so, and so one of the things that I like to do with, um, in set-based environments is trying to make the light more complex. So, um, this, uh,

Jacker was the first time really that I was, uh, lighting the shadows. So every, every scene has some form of room tone in the space that lights the blacks so that there's nothing truly black. There's a hum of colour. So there's a hum, you know, in the warmer scenes, there's a hum of blue. In the cooler scenes, there's a hum of green. So even though it's got a sort of a punchy contrast, hopefully, when you're looking at the image, you're like, okay, like it feels there's a sort of, you know, an aggressive, um, elegance to the imagery, hopefully as the, was the plan.

Um, well, there's a richness to the depth. Yeah. I think that's kind of what I was getting at was I found, I was, I was, I was, I was very interested in the, in the idea that there would, you know, for instance, he's like at his computer, right? And there's this gorgeous hit of sunlight, you know, we're seeing hard light again. Thank God. Yeah.

But your contrast ratios were so managed that, you know, you weren't exposing for this massive highlight. And then, you know, everything else went down just by nature of how film works. Yeah. But yeah, I guess. So was the, were you just hitting like a bunch of top light to like get everything going? Or were you just come, were you coming in with fixtures to fill in? So that, that's, that's in his house in Spain, right?

Yeah, yeah. that just as an example but then when you're talking about this top of color thing yeah totally so that's got a that's got a warm side light from a you know a big a big um my version of LED Dinos the studio force um uh outside the windows of his place and they they're cut so that there's um no hard light on his face it cuts across his body but there's textile on the floor so that there's a lot of soft bounce and that's what gives it the the warm side light basically and then and then there's another set of fixtures directly in front of him as a giant eye light basically i think there's something like um something like a row of uh s360s um coming through the windows with a text aren't in front of them that have just got like 6,000 Kelvin on the shadow side that. So one of the things I like to do is I like to fade the colour temperature.

So the thing that's great about LED fixtures is that you can say you've got, if you've got a soft box that you've made with, I don't know, nine lights or whatever, then one half or one corner can be like 6,000 Kelvin and the other corner can be 3,200 Kelvin. and you can graduate the rest and so you get this. So yeah, so in scenes like that, I would have a, well, that one, a blue, a deep,

deepish blue of like six, six and a half thousand Kelvin and then as it meets the key side, it would fade to the key colour temperature basically. And then, and the same would be, the same would go, we'd bounce into the ceiling. And so

the front fill is like a room tone that wraps around his face that changes from deep blue to amber as it wraps around. And nowadays, especially with the big fixtures, you can do that per unit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really smart. So, yeah, so I like to do that with, you know,

so if you're on Shogun, as an example, we add exteriors that were built on the soundstage, the gardens were all on the sound stage. So I would create in prelights, the predetermined camera position would have a fade across the skylights so the Shogun silks were all slate grey silks so that the slate grey reflected in the costumes

and they would fade out away from the south. So I would say, you know, on this scene, the sun is, you know, on the northwest corner of the garden. And then the sky would fade from an amber color to a deep blue over the tops of their heads. And hopefully that builds some of that randomness, some of that complexity. You know, Mother Nature is a curious, as a curious, a relationship with electromagnetic radiation. And, you know, there are color combinations that we find, as humans, we find really beautiful. We stare at sunsets.

Whenever there's a sunset, we stare at this combination of, you know, a very red, a very red vapoury sun disappearing into the very deep blue ocean that's almost inky black in indigo. And we stand there with our mouth agape as if we've seen it for the very deep blue ocean. very first time. And I think there's something quite primeval about our relationship with the sun and the color temperature. So it's something I like to play with. Yeah. Well, trust me, living in Los Angeles, you can always tell when there was a good sunset you missed when you open up Instagram and it's just every story. Yeah. The same shot of the Santa Monica Pier or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, the thing that I absolutely fell in love with, it was probably the most expensive purchase I've made that was borderline unnecessary, but the getting a color meter and just walking down and being like, oh, you know what? Shadow is a different, like sun isn't 5,600.

You know, how many like, all right, everything gets 56 and you're like that, well, that's just flat now. Yeah. Even if there's contrast, you know, exposure-wise, it becomes very flat. really started to enjoy mild you know safe for my work but safe color contrast in a way that looks natural

yeah yeah exactly I think it's I think again it's part of the kind of you know part of the whole cinematography revolution that's happened since like 2005 2007

is that you know we used to be a real partisan industry. You know, it was like, do you like HMIs or do you color your Dinos blue? Do you, do you use tungsten stock outside with an 85 filter? Or do you use daylight stock and then, and vice versa? And so we were, you know, kind of polarised in these two places. And, you know, a lot of great photography, a lot of great cinematography.

that people responded to were still those color mixes, but natural color mixes of great sunsets or great sunrises, great, you know, great moments in Lawrence of Arabia, etc. And the LED and digital revolution that has occurred enables us to, you know, I know so many DPs now that, you know, in 2012, we would have set out camera to 5,600 Kelvin on, you know, exterior shooting. Now it's like 5,200, 6,000, 8,000. How warm do you want it? How cool do you want it? Where do you want to sit in the mix?

I know, and the rise of RGBWW LED lights where you can take a colour temperature, you know, out anywhere from 2,200. to 10,000 Kelvin add a little bit of green, add a little bit of red. You know, it's so our fingertips. Whereas before it was, take a light, by a very expensive role of gel,

hope you're correct. Essentially, that is the, that was like, you know, you know, I remember, I remember testing moonlight. Like I would physically before, before a movie, I would take a,

take a you know a 5k into a like the car park of the rental house and and you know is it true blue is it you know is it um is it half ccb how half ctb with half green is it you know what's the combination what's this movie what are you going to do this time that makes the change between you know and now that's like talk to the desk and and tweak the color temperature, yeah, you want 6,800 Kelvin, half green, you know, there you go. So it's really, you know, it's so liberating. The technology is so liberating. And so if you can master that technology, then the time you spend on set is so much more about actors and about performance and about where you put the camera and all of the other, all the technical nonsense.

That's all, you know, behind you because you've made those. choices and you're away and running. Well, and there's this great, in the jackal, there's a, with all of those tools at your disposal, you do seem to have employed a great level of restraint keeping things, not like duo tone, but there's clearly like, you know, there's like a steely blue kind of look and then there's a much warmer, obviously it delineates like where they are. But was that all kind of in the CCTV realm or were you dipping your toe more into? the RGB type stuff.

Because I'm always fascinated by like, is, you know, is your shadow going to be RGB blue or is it, you know, CCT blue and then played with it in the grate? Yeah, it's mostly,

it's mostly, but repeatability, I tend to keep it because, you know, an RGB mix or an RGB mix or an RGBWW mix on one lamp, is not necessarily the same as another. Some lamps have got, you know, yellow magentrant cyan or whatever.

So I tend to work still in that partisan CCT, push it towards here, push it towards there, and then add or subtract a little bit of green or add to subtract a little bit of blue. That's still my go-to, I'm not sure whether, well, I really hope that will evolve in the next phase of in the next phase of lighting units to allow me or allow us to choose. You know, I'd love to, I'd love to choose a few on a, you know, how about that, you know, on the, on the gamma triangle on a light. I'd love to be able to go, well, let's do that next and then be able to then do the same thing on a different light source so we can go right that's the that's the hue that we're

going for like it's ultra specific lighting which is you know which is sort of you know it it it's a it's a it's a tricky process because everybody uses different chips everybody uses different cobs etc different voltage levels uh different different ways of mixing their color but um but yeah i definitely see that as the as the next phase of the the next phase of the next phase of the innovation. And then that way, that way, when you use 200 of a particular light source on a stage and 50 of another light source on a stage, you're somewhere closer to calibration, which is great. Yeah. You know, because I guess, yeah, I guess I hadn't thought about that. Because one thing with me getting the color meter that I was so excited about was

I could, you know, let's say I'm setting up some window light, classic, you know, just make it look motivated. Yeah, I'm meeting the window, get the X, Y coordinates, punch it into the back of the Kino LED, it matches. But I only own those LEDs. You know, I don't use any other textures, so it's always just been the same thing. But I guess you're right. X, Y only tells the computer, quote unquote, what to do, whether or not that is what comes out the other side is. yeah and then yeah and then each time every time we add another light you add another potential for minor deviation so i mean i'm a big fan of chaos i it's my i much prefer light to bounce unpredictably and for me to try to be shaping that um i much prefer um there to be irregularities in the in the um in color temperatures etc but i quite like them to be my irregularities right quite like them i like to be you know i like to be able to embrace them or exclude them um you know because sometimes embracing them works and sometimes embracing them doesn't so i'd love to like seize an opportunity when it when it presents

itself but also have the ability to correct an opportunity when it turns out it's not an opportunity but a but a trap door waiting to waiting to fall into yeah i can't remember who told me it, but I've really been thinking about it a lot. It was a few months ago, but just the idea that the light should, especially if you're on a set, you know, but the light should look like it had to fight its way onto the set. Like it shouldn't just turn it on and it goes. It needs to be more like, it needs to go through some, some effort to get to you because that's what happens in the real world. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and the light, you know, it's always really hard. Whenever you, whenever I, whenever I,

light a soundstage, despite having done, you know, a considerable number of times now, I'm never ceased, I'm never ceased to be amazed at the difference. Even, even the biggest softbox does not produce the same enveloping light inside a window as just what would exist on a location. And so, you know, somewhere between infinite light sources and, you know, three, you have to decide how many you're going to have outside of this window to try to emulate the sort of space. So, I don't know, the directors that I tend to hide me or that I tend to work with are very natural proponents of naturalism or realism. you know, even, even at our most heightened in the jackal,

I think it always feels like it's a real place. It never feels like it's, we're faking the imagery. It never feels totally artificial, at least. I hope we don't. So I was saying, I thought the sets were real places. You lit them beautifully. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, that's great. Oh, that's great. And that's the, that sort of the, the energy really is to make these places feel. And so, and so it's about so often, so like, as an example, example on the film I made called Yesterday, we filmed in, we, um, uh, we filmed a few GV shots in Moscow because, uh, one, there's a peripheral character that lives in Moscow and there's a concert that takes place in Moscow. So we, we flew there for a couple of days and just took a camera around and, uh, with a set of lenders. But one of the things that we did was

We visited an apartment, well, this is a bunch of apartment locations, none of which that we could film in because the character was in London. The actor that was playing the character was in London. So we knew we were going to be building that set. But Danny just wanted to walk around one and be like, look, look at the scale of the windows. Look at what this north facing room looks like. look at the thickness of the thickness of the curtains, you know, to keep the heat inside and all that sort of stuff. And so we looked at four different locations that could have been this person's house.

And then the designer has four sets of references. And I've got four sets of references as to what the set should feel like. And I think it is like, you know, working with directors with that level of attention to detail really helps to elevate what you're doing. into a place that is, you know, unexpected, a little bit unique and, you know, goes the sort of the extra mile. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Danny Boyle influenced my career in a silly way, which is, and I've mentioned it before. And it's, you know, when 28 days later came out, I was 16, something like that. And I had seen that he, you know, obviously shouted on the XL1. And the XL2 had just come out.

I was like, if I get that, it's classic young filmmaker problem, but it was very new. I went, if I get that, I can make real movies. And I still have that XL2. Oh, I look. It's on loan for a job. Yeah. It's a great camera. Yeah.

Yeah, a little thing. Yeah, I shot lots of documentaries on the Excel 1 and the XL2 when I was first starting out. You know, what I loved about it was, um, I still love cutting. together reels for things. What I love about the X-L-1 and X-L-2 was that for me, it sort of democratized the editorial process. You know, I could shoot on the XL-1,

feed into the mini-d-vee into Final Cut, Bro, or Final Cut, as it was at the time. And, you know, yeah, it was a great, and was such, again, great learning tool. Not a great image-making device necessarily, but, you know, I guess it has a unique set of characteristics which are really beautiful

and vintage now. It's amazing to say. It's a vintage camera. Well, I was going to say that the kids are all searching for that now. They're all like, oh, I love that old, you know, they all say VHS because they don't know what many TV is. But, you know, and like I said,

that I rented that out for a gig where it's going to make a feature because it fits the aesthetic. But I actually had the fire store. I think it's called the FS2. You ever hear of that? Uh-huh. No, what's that? It was way ahead of its time.

It was made by, I think the company was called Firestore, but it was a belt-mounted hard drive that you would plug into the firewire port of the camera, went into the hard drive. Then you would record straight out of the firewire port onto the hard drive. Because I had a PC, so I didn't have firewire. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you weren't, yeah, it was Mac-only piece of kit. So I was able to record directly to that hard drive. Obviously, you got more space. But the thing that was so stupid about it was it's plugged into that itsy-bitsy little firewire port on the XL.

So that snapped pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, hugely unreliable. Yeah, it's like it's the worst kind of, yeah, yeah, umbilical system you can think of. Yeah. But again, ahead of its time. I mean, yeah, I think that was, I switched to having a Mac because of the firewire port. So I was shooting and the best way, the best way of getting a show reel cut together was to shoot, get your material telecinnied onto mini DV and then cut in final cut on the mini DV and then and then bulk manufacture.

I was still, when I was first starting out, It was, you used to trawl around Soto with your show reel on a VHS. So you'd have like 15 minute, 15 minute VHS cass and you'd like walk around be like, do you want my VHS? No one wants your VHS. And then I remember going, I remember meeting a commercials producer about six months after I'd previously met him and noticed that my DVD show reel was a coaster. on his desk with a mug of coffee. Oh. And it's like, that's, that's, that's, there's the, there's the, there's the, there's the rejection

for you, the rejection of our industry in one, in one, in one, in one cup of coffee. Yeah. But yeah. Well, it doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Well, at least that time, we were all using like the AOL discs and stuff as coasters. So at least it fit. Could you imagine if he had your VHS tape as a coat? That's a statement.

Yeah. That is a statement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actively don't like you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm carrying this thing around using as a trait. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, we're coming up on time, and I know you're, are you back in the UK? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm assuming it's getting late, but I did want to end on two things. One, doing research. I got to watch Terminal. That looks great.

Yeah, that's quite out there as a, as movies go. Yeah, yeah. It's like a modernised twist on the kind of Alice in Wonderland idea. Yeah, beautiful little film directed by Vaughnstein. Yeah, had a lot of fun. Budapest, so same city as same city as Day of the Jackal, or same production base as Day of the Jackal. Same city is pretty much everything now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, if you watch, if the big, the finale, sequence of of terminal is set in this amazing power station control room. It's like one of the most beautiful, I think it's Art Nouveau architectural design to the space. And yeah, if you look at Russian doll, if you look at Atomic Blonde, try to think of the other Budapest set. yeah basically everyone goes there and shoots in this this control room we we used it slightly differently so most most people go in there and and turn all the lights off we we did the opposite but um but um yeah it's uh it's it's it's a great cities to film in and it's got

you know it's got such a beautiful mix it's really uh the very very sensor is incredibly Parisian and there's a lot of them Eiffel the architect who designed the tower he designed their underground railway system so the underground looks incredibly Parisian but then in the outskirts the buildings become very

socialist design odds of sleeping pods effectively for workers so yeah there's a real a mix of architectural designs it doubled and for Jackal it doubled for a huge number of locations huge number of cities

you know I was thinking about this especially because like when I when I had walked up to you at the ASC and I was just kind of like listening to you guys chat just the and you mentioned it earlier like this idea that filmmakers are all much more international

and I had a few conversations with people that are like hey man if you're trying to get work you need to move to the UK and I'm like well I don't have UK money I have LA money but I do have UK money. But it occurs to me that the whole like everyone's influences all had L.A. shot for other places or L.A. shot for L.A. And now there's going to be this entire generation for all the

films made, you know, let's say 10 years ago till probably 10 in the future, which are going to be like Hungarian locations or British locations or, you know, all this that are going to influence this next wave of people. They're not even going to have any romanticism for what L.A. looks like palm trees or you know who cares yeah yeah i mean it's gonna be um the you know the tunnel the la tunnel that's in you know blade runner and t h x 1138 and in the first terminator that tunnel is iconic and um uh uh i dream of shooting a sequence in that tunnel so that we can um i can over by downtown yeah i can add it exactly that with the shiny tile inner surface so beautiful um yeah i mean i think you know uh from a uk perspective you know we've been shooting in

morocco for like the last 25 years has been doubling as various middle east locations and occasionally for mexico i've shown in south africa a lot and shot south africa for los angeles and south africa for for las vegas which is you know not an easy sell there are palm trees but the similarity ends there really but you can put a blue Mustang in the desert and it you know it kind of fits um yeah Prague has been a real hub lots of lots of you know and sophia has a new york street interestingly Glasgow the centre of Glasgow in Scotland has been doubling as New York for the last 20 years or so as was discovered it's a pretty good got a pretty could kind of brownstone glass architecture combination so yeah i mean i think i think the the

the the world of film has never been as international as it as it is today and i think it'll be even more international in 20 years time i think by the time by the time i'm you know turning 60 it would be, yeah, there'll be a whole other, the UK might not be the centre of streaming services as it currently stands. It might be doing a whole other, it would have evolved again. And that centre of activity might have moved into central Europe, maybe Berlin's the next hub, you know. So I think the the one thing that I've learned from being in the industry since the late 90s, not being a DP for that long, but certainly I've seen a lot of changes is that is that, you know, the positive thing about the industry is that it evolves and it innovates and the artistic stylisations push, you know, push forwards every time they're something. technological innovation so there's a technological innovation there's an economic innovation things evolve and move and I think you know for all of us in

the industry it's important to try to evolve and adapt and chase down opportunities when we see them you know and and yeah try and do good work you know and the good work always comes to the surface right no matter where you no matter where you are. If you're doing good work and you keep pushing and pushing, you know, it'll come to the surface at some point. Yeah.

I mean, my idealistic view of the future is like, instead of there being a hub, you know, L.A. and then you can meet Berlin. Yeah. It kind of this,

especially with the streaming bubble, kind of like settles out and it's just there are hubs. You know, maybe it's not like, oh, major production needs to go shoot in whatever Budapest it's like wherever you are you can make

it there and that kind of evens out instead of like people chasing this dragon of where do I got to work where do I got to be to you know make a beach yeah yeah yeah yeah and also it's like it's like I think you know um

you know in the UK a lot of our local work moved uh in terms of narrative if work moved to the north of England to Manchester so the BBC and ICB were making a lot of shows up there a lot of people move there to

have the to have the work so a lot of people were forced to move there to do the work and then when the streaming services started to use the UK as a base a lot of that work got centralised back to London because of the

because of a hub of cast members etc I think the same goes for like Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York. New York and L.A. have always kind of been the hubs. And then the, you know, the other cities have become brief like spurts of inspiration. And, you know, I think, I don't know, I think a little bit of reliability from our employers would be really helpful right now. I think a little bit, a little bit of, a little bit of sticking around, you know,

there were production houses that used Atlanta as their base for five years, but after five years they'd kind of moved on to other places. I think, I think some reliable hiring practices would be a very, very beneficial thing for the, for the world's filmmakers. And at the end of the day, we're just people trying to make a living and trying to create some art that masquerades as entertainment and some entertainment the masquerades as art and if we can all do it and live our lives and create families and repopulate the human race then that's a good thing right yeah um well i've kept you over but are you are you still the head of

the bSC i am yeah yeah i've got another uh uh six months give or take to go i've had i've been I've been the president now for just over three years. And, yeah, it's time to, you know, I think I've brought a fair bit of energy to the role. I hope people have seen some positive, you know, output from us. And I think, yeah, it's time for me to get behind the next president and give them a big shove and help empower them and energize them to do a couple of years.

at the helm. Yeah. Well, I was just so shocked to see that because you haven't shot any doctor who. I thought that

was a prerequisite for being in a... Yeah, brilliant. Well, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a good training ground for most of our cinematographers.

Yeah, and the brilliant, Ernie Vince, BSE, rest of soul, he was the, he was the person that brought it back to life.

You know, at once, you know, it's really, much died in the late 90s and then in the early noughties he brought it back with Christopher Rackleston with such a bang that it's still going now so yeah it's a real it's a big BBC export probably their biggest export I would say I met my my girlfriend of six years because of that show so it's a really I appreciate the export yeah yeah no probes it was one of

the dating app questions and she was like I like that show and I was like you don't say And now I've got the privilege A bunch of them Yeah Yeah Yeah Are you Yeah all you

Yeah Are you um yeah all you um yeah all you um yeah To be fair I just said I just said what's your favorite show or something And she said Doctor Whoop So I was like well this This is great

I don't have to That's it That's comic on sorted Yeah yeah Well I would love to have you back on Literally whenever to keep chatting Because um the only reason I'm away is because I've been told many times to stop doing three-hour interviews.

Yeah, no, no worries. No worries. I know the feeling well that the BSC does a good job of a three-hour interview as well. So, yeah. Yeah, but yeah, thank you for, uh, thank you for, uh, thank you for, uh, thank you for, uh, thank you for, uh, thank you for, uh, thank you. It's a total pleasure. Thank you for us an honor to join you and a privilege to, to join the conversation. Frame and references 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.