Frame & Reference Podcast - 206: "The Man in the White Van" Cinematographer Gareth Paul Cox

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Today I'm joined by the incredible Gareth Paul Cox to talk about his work on The Man in the White Van.Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this episode 206 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Gareth Paul Cox, D.P. of The Man and the White fan. Enjoy. I am a new, new-ish father, so I have a nine-month-old, and I have been very busy prepping like a proof of concept that shoots in Atlanta next week. So I haven't been watching a tremendous amount, but one of the things my wife and I like to do at the end of our day to decompress once we get our baby to sleep is to watch elementary. And I don't know if you've ever seen it's your lock homes series.

and it's been it was a long running series um so we just kind of like veg out and space out to that that's so nothing i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's necessarily like you know amazing cinema pushing the boundaries by any means but it's you know it's quite entertaining and it's well shot you know that can that i was going to say that reminds me is like everyone who always goes like oh it's a guilty pleasure i'm like it's only a guilty pleasure if it's like objectively bad if it's just like something that you if you like something that's not guilty like right yeah no that's very true yeah i wouldn't have said it's a guilty pleasure it's just something we just tend to bounce around and and i myself and kind of like a very much a hands-on just like

to be active all the time so i watch a tremendous amount of youtube videos on how to do things um so i either get sucked down that path late at night around 10 p.m. or my wife and I get to meet together and watch something that just kind of turn it off, but, you know, still be mindful of things, investigative reporting and things like that. And I guess,

you know, murder mystery and thriller are kind of, obviously with this movie, man in the white band, it's kind of like right in line with that. I'll be it very formulae when it's in a TV series. But, you know,

I don't think we necessarily like rewrote the book on on horror or thrillers um you've obviously seen the movie um but i think we tried to do some things that you know would would be similar to what is kind of like uh um natural for the genre sure so it's kind of interesting elementary and just see how like different you know a series can be and how formulaic it is um and then think about applying that to like a feature sure It's kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when you're on the YouTube rabbit holes,

are they all filmmaking related? Or do you, because I had to bail on filmmaking YouTube. I can't do it anymore. Yeah, yeah. Actually, none of them are, are filmmaking specific. Woodworking. Not me. Oh, nice.

Nice. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I just like to build things. I've been renovating. I renovated this house that we're in. here in Florida? No, to answer your question, not a lot of filmic related stuff. It's mostly how to build things. I'm converting a 20-foot open-side shipping container into my office and equipment space storage in our driveway right now. So I'm watching a lot of commercial building techniques

and, you know, steel studs and steel wiring and all sorts of stuff like that. So it's a lot of how to build something or make something or finish something. But like I was saying, I renovated this almost entirely this house. Free pandemic, I started the project in 2018 as an investment property and then during the pandemic decided to really invest my time as opposed to contractors' time. And that's where it all stemmed from. So the last five years have just been like how to do this, how to do that, how to fix things. I rebuilt a DF50 a couple weeks ago that I found on eBay bay that was like completely beat up and real fx hooked it up with some some of the parts and you know it's just random things here and there that i just try to find what's a df 50 oh like the

hazer uh df 50 like a real fx uh oh gotcha gotcha that's yeah sorry sorry i jumped i jumped back into um kind of film world well i just i don't uh if there's haze it's usually like they they got a haze i've never i've never had to write down the part number for yeah yeah yeah yeah lucky you yeah these are just things i've acquired having done a lot of um kind of indie stuff that i just started picking up random like buying for some reason just to fix and use so yeah it's the problem was you space like moving away from la i think that was one thing that i realized how much space i could get for a reasonable amount of money and then i was like oh well now i'm filling it with all this gear and yeah it's digressed and uh something awesome but a lot of gear

yeah i uh i was just in uh spain like i said um should just document about this guy who's got uh the largest collection of um english language like iranian persian sort of like manuscripts and books fiction nonfiction all and everything adjacent and he shows us this massive he's got like a villa in Spain is huge. And he's got this massive library. And we're like, this is cool. And he was like, oh, yeah, well, let's go downstairs. And I went, what? And downstairs, he had three more libraries. And I was just like, this, I was just shocked by how much space I wanted. Like, I could fill this all with Blu-rays. I could do so much. I want to collect books. Yeah, that's amazing. That sounds like a cool trip. Pretty wild. It is.

when you can have that the luxury of space that you you know you're not paying necessarily a premium for and you can you can kind of acquire it's also a bad habit though too right because then you start leaning into kind of these i don't know strange obsessions with things or you just need to get whatever how many copies of one thing or whatever it is spent speaking of that guy has over a thousand copies of the same, not copies, but like versions, uh, editions of the same book. Like that's one very specific like Persian like important book that he has. I think he said over a thousand, just one like wall. Yeah. I mean, I guess at that point you're just, you're a collector. So I mean, I don't know why he would need that many, but it's, uh, you know, history. Like,

I've always thought like if I got enough space, have you ever been to the, ASC Clubhouse? Mm-hmm. Yep. So you know how they have like some of the like historical cameras on display and stuff? Yep. I want to do that.

Like I want to buy. Same way. Just for no reason. I want to buy like a red one. You know, not to use. Right. Dog should camera, but just to have it.

Right. Yeah. Well, the nostalgia of it all is kind of fun. I mean, just to think in our lifetime how much has changed in the film industry and technology advancing. just from the red one like this massive weird tubular brick thing that needed ice packs on it to cool

it you know it's like now we've evolved into the comotos of the world and this more boxy looking still strange looking at times the build forms but yeah it is kind of nice i've actually started doing that to some degree i regret selling some of my early cameras like i had you know kind when I first started out and was able to afford something that was semi-legitimate, it was like an HVX 200. I have an XL2 still. Oh, nice. Oh, wow.

Okay. Yeah. That's pretty sick. Micro four-thirds, right? No, it was one-third. Two-thirds? Oh, that's right. Yeah, but it had a two-thirds.

Yeah, that was a cool camera. Yeah, I mean, the HVX came out, like, shortly after that. Um, but yeah, I sold that like a long time ago in, in LA for nearly nothing. Um, and ironically, the P2 cards in that workflow, I came back to Panasonic and, um, not to necessarily tie it into man and the white van, but obviously that's kind of why we're talking. Um, but man in the white band, we shot on Panasonic barricams. And so it's P2 card, P2 card express. So they're, they're different.

You know, they were a slightly different format. they're faster. They have a more robust architecture. But those parts had transcended all those years. It was kind of funny. It was like weird to go back to that. And one of the reasons, I'm sure you're curious about this, but one of the reasons I went with that particular camera is Warren and I, the director of Man in the White Van, Warren Skills. He and I had been shooting a TV show for a long time for MTV. And I was an early adopter of the Panasonic very cam. kind of along the same timeline as Ozark was using the VARICAM for season one, specifically. I think they switched to Sony for season two and everything thereafter. But yeah, the VaryCAM offered as the dual native ISO, and this was before Sony or any other, you know, main manufacturer had really adopted that. Sony had it in their SLR digital SLRs, but they really hadn't adopted it in the cinema world yet. And so I started shooting with that because that show was a docu-drama series, and it involved a lot of night shooting. So the dual native 800 and then 5,000 at night, we could use the same cabrio lenses.

They were a T-29, but we could still, you know, shoot at night and get a decent exposure. And most times was eliminating a lot of the light in the environment. Because 5,000, let's be honest, it's a pretty sensitive. Yeah, so, sorry, I digress on that one. No, no, I was going to say the Panasonic has always been, before I bought my C-500, my Mark 2, I was looking at the Veracam 35 because they were going, they went on sale for like nothing. Yeah. But Panasonic has always been like the first.

I have an AF 100. I've never sold a camera. I have an AF 100 when that came out. And they were like on the forefront of, you know, right, I don't want to say digital cinema, you know, in like A21 red, whatever. But, um, or D21 rather. But, uh, you know, built in NDs and shooting to SD cards was like a huge deal. So Panasonic's always been on top of it. Yeah. Yeah. Now that it's all kind of under the Lumix family. Uh, they kind of got away from the cinema line specifically. But, um, yeah, it's funny. You mentioned buying. those and they came on sale for so cheap. I did a lot of unscripted stuff. And up until like about a year ago, I was still shooting a lot of unscripted stuff as well as scripted in commercial.

And now I'm very much transitioning out of that, mostly just into scripted and hopefully to continue that. But, you know, it's one of those things where I actually purchased the Veracam 35 that we shot men in the white van on because at the time, the production. and I were, we were quickly in prep. I was shooting a show in, in Vegas for HBO Max, an unscripted dance competition show. And I was coming straight in demand in the white band. And we were just trying to figure out what the best platform would be in architecture for

our post workflow and everything thereafter. And I just knew that we were going to be limited creatively in some, in some elements of like what we could do on lighting scope and things like that. And we had talked about trying to keep it a little bit more indie. Um, so I was like, you know what? Maybe I should just look into purchasing this camera. So I bought one off eBay and, uh, it turns out it used to be the one of Claremonts. I guess it had gone through their auction and somebody had purchased it because it came in the

yellow case. It came with like everything labeled Claremont, um, which was pretty epic, low hours. And it was like, you almost couldn't find a better camera body in the condition and everything else. So it was like we basically had a brand new barricam 35 to shoot. the movie on and that was our primary camera and then our secondary camera which was floating on gimbal was a very camel t the smaller you know version of it without the additional back on the on it so yeah besides the um price obviously and just the familiarity was what were some of those conversations about platform because obviously you know Alexa probably came up um you know

maybe but uh you know was there Was it more just like, ah, this is really convenient and all cameras are good? Or was when you're talking about some of that post-production stuff, was there like something that really put that ahead for you guys? Yeah, it's interesting because we didn't have a tremendous amount of VFX in the movie. So it wasn't really like we needed, you know, the Verkan 35 is natively 4K. It wasn't like we needed to be in that space. So we had also talked about, you know, what airy camera could we use?

Could we use an Alexa? Could we do that? And once we started bidding it out for quotes, this is kind of like the natural progression of it. The most cost effective for what we wanted to do with multiple cameras, but only shooting basically single camera, the movie as a single camera. So it was like, you know, I was operating. So I would take either the A or B camera, given whatever. We didn't have an additional camera team. We didn't have a B camera operator or anything like that or an A and me filling in the B.

So it was really a single camera show, but we wanted to have that gimbal for some shots and we wanted to do remote head stuff. And we also wanted a camera that we could do for some rigging and things like that. So we knew that we wouldn't necessarily be able to get to Alexis, for example, or something like that and just have that extra body onset or an Alexa Mini or something like that, whatever it would be that would be our gimbal camera. So it was like, well, I'm familiar with this platform. I know the architecture, I know the workflow very well, and we can shoot, you know, pretty quickly with it. Our post team and everyone over through the post pipeline was really cool about it. And one of the things we did here is, you know, we're a 239 to one aspect ratio, but we didn't actually capture anamorphic. We shot spherical and did a center extraction.

And I'm sure you can tell from watching the movie that it's not, you know, there's inherent things. that are anamorphic about the image. But I was going to say literally my first note was, my very first note was, this is clearly spherical. However, there's like random like flares or something where I'm like, did we use a filter?

Was that post? What was the deal there? And also what lenses? Yeah. So it was cook S force, primed for the majority. Yep, yeah. I knew I wanted that contrast,

the cook look, not to be cliche, but, You know, the warmer skin tones. We wanted a lot of that. This is kind of a throwback movie, primarily set in the 1970s for any part of the story. But I used glimmerglass. A lot of that is glimmerglass.

There was no additional filtration except for a polarizer, which is used a lot in the movie, as well in some night photography. I used a polarizer, just to take speculars out and things like that. And we can dive into that in a little bit. But we also had an ingenue 30 to 76 that I was using. And so part of the movie is like this thriller element, this slow burn. And it being a throwback, Warren wanted kind of a contemporary look, right? He didn't want too much in aberrations.

He didn't want, you know, barrel distortion. He didn't want kind of like the weirdness, some of the weirdness of older anamorphic lenses. So we made the choice pretty early on, also knowing that we were going to do some very close proximity work and not necessarily want to use diopters or split diopters and allow for that focus to really eliminate some of the breathing that we might feel if we were anamorphic and things like that. So there were there were like technical reasons for it, but also those led to or were directly influenced by the creative, right? So he knew that he wanted it to feel timeless, but also be kind of nostalgic and a throwback. And so I was like, well, how do we blend those two, not shooting anamorphic, but getting that feel? Very early on, though, he knew he wanted that widescreen aspect ratio. And he really wanted to play with like where characters could be within it.

And I'm not sure we ever really found that language, but I'm not sure we really played into it a tremendous amount. There are moments where you feel the frames kind of like breathe a little bit. But the other thing is I've shot features and we've done anamorphic zooms and we've used them extensively. I think that the thing with the Optimo is we just knew we wanted to do some like slow creeping zooms and just things that just like slowly, very ominously pushed in. And we wanted to let those frames breathe a lot. And I think that was the main reason we went with that 30 to 76. And that that wasn't necessary. It's not like you can't do that with anamorphic.

I think it was just like a different feeling to that lens, right? Totally. To do it spherically. Yeah. I definitely couldn't tell. You know, it's surprising because like with the prevalence of like Alexa footage and And just now I can't tell what any lens is shot on unless it's like a fucking, you know, Panavision, you know, C series or something like that where it's really obvious. But, yeah, you definitely created a look that was that I couldn't put my finger on in a good way.

Because a lot of times, you know, when I'll watch these scenes analytically for these interviews, I'm like just kind of making mental notes of like, oh, clearly this, this, let's talk about that. But this one, I was just like, you know what? This just looks like its own thing. And that's very cool of you to be able to pull off on a, on a, I'm going to assume, modest budget. Modest, yes. Yeah, that's probably a good way to put it. I appreciate that.

I really appreciate you watching it. And actually, you know, that's how you felt watching it. Because I think then we achieved what we set out to do. And Warren will probably be very happy when I tell him that you said that. too is that you know it really was about finding like what i think people think of as the 1970s and and what it would look like you know if you saw it today like in our own eyes and i i appreciate that you you found the cinematography to to be kind of like ambiguous in that way well i mean the obviously the camera and the lens choice whatever but the the lighting

especially it has this beautiful balance between you know kind of like sunlit naturalism and like really colorful expressionism and I was kind of wondering like A like were there any references that you were pulling for

this because I have one that if you say it I'm going to laugh because if you if you hadn't seen I sure you seen the film but in any case but also like kind of what were the approaches for like you know there's not too many locations, even though it feels very expansive, you know, if you, if you, like, skip

through it, you're like, oh, okay, yeah, there's only, um, but like in the house, for instance, like the daylight versus nightlight, the, the way you shaped light outdoors, I was wondering kind of like what your, if there was a generalized approach to those various kind of scenes. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. I know it's not like top light and kind of like hair light that a lot of people don't do very much anymore.

A lot of big stuff. Right. obviously right yeah it's funny because in terms of the film language in what we would have pulled for visual references there weren't you know i wasn't using shot deck i don't even remember if shot deck i think shot deck was just coming out so i don't it might even been slightly because we shot this we shot this in 2022 i want to say so it's been a it there were a few hiccups i will say in post-production that led to it taking longer for it to come out and just things that needed to be adjusted and crafted and ultimately led to where we are today. But yeah,

it was a it was a little bit shot deck would have been around that that would have been around, but it was in its infancy. So I wasn't necessarily pulling the way that I do now for a lot of films. But one thing we looked at was strangely enough is like a lot of editorial from the 70s, like print editorial for wardrobe but also for color for light and I think a lot of those

photos blended those two worlds and mind you they were shooting on films so some of it was higher contrast and a little bit different than what we ended up with in the movie but a lot of it was interesting in tonality and I think I I inherently just picked up on that

It's like a lot of warm tones. And the movie has this progression. And it's not a complicated color progression, but it's warm to cool to warm again, right? It's like what a lot of people do. But I kind of leaned into it. And I wanted to lean into like warmth and silkeness to skin tones. And I think that's something I had been playing with from the series that Warren and I had worked on, which was a docu-drama series.

So I was limited in what I could do. But I would play around with filter. like the polarizer and blending like where specular meets like actual non-specular highlight or well we'll just call it like a mid-tone and blending those two and then using contrast subtly but a lot of times like increasing it we had a telehandler like petty bone kind of situation where we'd bring in some negative fill usually using like black china silks for a lot of the exterior stuff so I would try to keep it as natural as possible, but also incorporate, like, contemporary lighting techniques. Yeah, our AD was very, very good at helping me schedule and vice versa.

And we had a lot of conversations. And it seems, again, like in this world of this indie, a lot of things were moving. There were a lot of moving parts. Obviously, we had child actors. We had animals. We had stunts. So there were so many things on each, any given day. that we're just kind of moving around.

So we would just talk and a lot of times reconvene at lunch and just say, hey, can we shift this a little bit later? Can we slide something in today that we can just pick up? Or can we push this to another day? There's a lot of that and a lot of meetings with producers and things like that. But to get back to your point, I think what Warren and I really talked about was like this thriller genre.

and the references we used there were like older films like Jaws and Conjuring and the Conjuring series or franchise I should say Halloween and duel um the old there it is fucking new it was dual yeah yeah and I told you I think for Warren too is like how does this the van the van become a character in the movie, and how do we portray that? How do we say that it's not, you know, it's supposed to be a symbolic thing, right? We're not really getting into who this real serial killer is too much in this film. It's more Annie's story, and it's her journey and her being conditioned to kind of feel a very specific way and in some ways groomed to be a victim um and so dual dual was like very much a key a key in what those visual elements would be with the van so we were that was a that that was more

thematic to thriller like how can we be more thriller how can we do some jump scares how can we do these things um and how can we implement them into annie's story to be kind of feel now Because obviously the cinematography of this movie is a slow burn. We want it to feel, you know, it's not until you get to the end. And then we did, I think, find some contemporary filmmaking. And I experimented with a few things that I don't, I'd be interested to see how you feel like the canting of the camera at times and things like that that I kind of played into. And I was like, hmm, did I really make the right choice there?

It's hard to be objective about it when you're kind of of in it. Yeah. Those were some of the references. They weren't necessarily for tonality or skin or like that. I think some of that really just from that editorial stuff that we had been exchanging. And Warren's really good at putting together kind of like a lookbook or I guess he'll call them a look book or a deck that has a lot of these images in as we're going into, you know,

so a lot of the pitch material for the movie as he was getting financing for it. And it'll have a lot of that in it. And I think that just gets ingrained in my head. And I'm like, okay, so skin should really feel like this. Because that's, that's him putting that together without any influence from me. And then I'm like, try to dissect that. Yeah. I know that was a long wind answer, but no, it's, hey, people are here to listen to you, not me.

The, I literally, it was like the third, yeah, third note. I was like, dual and just underlined it. Because it was like, not only the way that you shot the car, but also the sound design is very like dual adjacent and so that I'm glad that was the movement

and I wasn't just being snooty yeah you nailed it you know that I guess we yeah absolutely yeah maybe we were a little too overt in

no but here's the thing when did dual come out 72 like that's that's a reference that's not copying right right well and it was perfect for time period right

because then we're looking at or feeling like what that media was around that time period, which was, yeah, stuff like that. I did want to ask, speaking of cars, there's one shot where the whole family's in the car. And it's like this massive move that goes from one side all the way around to the other. How the fuck did you pull that? Was that like a Russian arm or like what was that? That's our Scorpio 23. So we had the, I will say, the benefit of having a Scorpio on the entire movie.

It was a deal that was our key grip and his company and what he had available to him and on hand. And so we had a Scorpio, which is like such a treat, right, just to have this tool, especially when we're doing single camera and we need to get like over here and over here and a lot of natural daylight settings. It was like, okay, we're doing this side. Okay, quickly, you know, I'd put the base in the center and we just telescope out. We get the other side. You know, there was a lot of that. And then it's like, okay, we need a dolly shot here.

So for that particular shot, it was the Scorpio 23 on a camera car. And then we had the car on a process trailer and minimal lighting. We didn't have a huge lighting package for this. I think I just took, I don't even think we couldn't fit much in front of the hood. And I definitely didn't want to throw a camera. shadow. So for the most part, that was natural. I think I threw something up just to push in a little bit. And I want to say, I've got some photos and I could look back at them and we could clarify, but I want to say I just put something small that was just mostly to push into the car.

And I also didn't want to illuminate everyone in the front because we also have the kids in the back. But the advantage of those cars, like from that era, was they had like massive windows on 360 degrees basically and so I was like well let's no pillars right pillars yeah full pillarless pretty sick very slick cars um so process trailer and then it was a single move and we had I think our our run was two miles out and two miles back so it was a four mile round trip on a straight road and we had to also coordinate the van in the background because it's all that's not a VFX shot So it's not complete in any way and it was just getting that timing and I think we were also up against a little bit of a wind a storm had just come through. We had a rain delay.

It was like anything and everything you could throw from Louisiana in the summer, late summer at us was basically coming out of us. So we we nailed it. I think it was like the fifth or sixth take and then we got a couple per safety as we were on our way back. And that's that's what made the movie. how we did it. And I was, I was just operating actually on a joystick. I didn't have wheels. So I had no inertial wheels or anything like that to control.

It was a, um, a ronin on the end. Yeah. Yeah. It was a it was a, it was, I say this as a compliment. It was bordering on too flashy. Like it was, it was like, as a D.P. I was like, all right, buddy. It's like, you don't see, you know, there's like

maybe a drone shot here. There's a couple of, and then there's just this sick fucking move around the thing and I was like all right showing off yeah it's funny because on the day it was like do we cut this right I was like we need to push for it but you know I'm I'm we're like half I think we're three quarters of the way through filming I was like we got to get something you know I feel like we're not getting as much as I'd love for the the real um but I was like we all these oneers in the movie we had planned the movie to have three or four different oners and the dining room scene at the beginning of the movie, when you meet Sean Ashton's business partner, Sean

Ashton playing Rick. When you meet his business partner, that is actually a oner. It's a dolly shot that starts outside, very tableau style of the whole family sitting at the dining room table, and then comes in, goes around behind Sean Ashton, and eventually reveals that Annie's there when she chimes in for her story. We ended up not really feeling very good about the oner after like three. five, seven or eight takes. So we went in and grabbed some additional coverage,

which obviously ended up in the movie and cut it up for timing and made sense. But this was one of those where I was like, we need to, I would love to fight for this car moment. And honestly, it took so much from production and I'm so thankful they gave it to us because it's one of those trailer moments that I think really, also in the movie, it really sets up that Annie is, going to be pursued by this van. So not only was it cool from a cinematic standpoint, but, and from what we got to do

technically, but I think in the story, it was like, it's nice to reveal that the van has actually been there the whole time, but the whole family is oblivious to it, but he's already set his sights on Annie. And that's, that was the dynamic. And I was like, we just need to show this in one shot. If we break this shot, then it's like we're kind of just falling into a cuddy version of it. So, yeah, I did fight for that.

And it took, it took so much because we had to arm, I think we had to get a, if I'm not mistaken, we had to get a, what did we use to get that, that Scorpio on? We ended up getting a forklift. I think they had to bring a forklift out so we could get the Scorpio onto the camera car. Because it's like, you know, we didn't just take the head off. We took the whole thing with the base, put it on there. They strapped it down. and yeah it was a rate yeah well and it's also like I'm I'm a big proponent of and I don't know if this was just like something that taught us and I don't know if film school still like give this advice but I mentioned it a few times on the show but like the classic um example is is following you know where Chris Nolan like really fucking dials in the first 15 minutes so you won't so you'll you'll believe it's like intentional so that the rest of the film where he's just handheld running around like you're like okay that's a choice you know it's one of those things

where you get this big sick move and you're like oh okay this is a real movie you know even though that's so silly as a filmmaker to think about but like you do have to kind of lure audiences into trusting you right you know there's that there's that uh my friend niles just posted this online but like i don't know if you've seen it but there's this old video of the killers playing mr bright side for like the first time like two years before the album came out and the entire audience it's like oh yeah and it's like a mini dv clip or maybe the word world's oldest phone, but like the entire audience is just like completely disinterested, you know? And it's like people don't know when they're in, when they should trust a musician,

a movie, a piece of art until someone tells them whether it be subconsciously like putting a sick move in or or having really great establishing shots or whatever, or whether it be, you know, the radio telling you to listen to it. Right, right. No, that's true. true that's interesting yeah i've seen that before this a lot of things were like bands things but bands were discovered or something like that where you do see like an audience kind of in shock they're not quite sure how to feel you know oh this video you can tell people are literally looking around like is the bar open like they were not interested granted they're playing it kind of rough but yeah right right oh that's funny um yeah you you did mention uh uh uh

not having a big lighting package, but I really thought you handled the interiors of the home, both daylight and night, but the daylight stuff really looks great. It all looks great, like the daylight stuff. But I was kind of wondering, how were you rigging up the house in a sort of, I don't want to say a low budget, but if you were limited in your package, how are you handling that kind of nuts and bolts-wise? Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up because that also reminds me of one of your previous questions where we're talking about like the look, the overall look and kind of the quality of light that hits people. And you mentioned the kind of the back light, the hair light a lot. I really took inspiration from a lot of the references like those editorial things. And then obviously some of our actual movie references and watching them, they have these elements. Right. They're kind of like old Hollywood where you have like, you know, a nice. subtle key, but a key, or maybe it's an overt key, like a real in-your-face key, and then a

hairlight and things like that. Warren and I, we have a shorthand. We've worked together for well over, almost two decades at this point, on various different things. A lot of documentaries, a lot of unscripted and then scripted stuff and commercial work. So we've kind of played the gamut. And I think one thing that we really like, and Warren really likes is like the freedom to explore the space with the actors. And this being a single camera movie, if we did it again, I would probably push more. And I would, I myself as the DP, would probably say,

let's try two cameras. Like, let's make that work just so we can get some of these inserts and some of these other things that a lot of ended up getting cut out of the movie. But I'd be like, you know what? I think we can work a two shot in here and like get this more dynamic with two cameras. And then the other camera can wander off and go search for random things around the house while we shoot single camera. But we did a lot of the grip team was really on top of it. They were able to secure locally and tree port, you know, kind of a speed rail, like a pipe dealer.

And so we were able to get a lot of different random pipe. And they cut a lot of it down. We ended up doing grids. So it's a lot of on stretchers. so it's it's a lot of grid stuff in there and we pre I had them basically on day one we didn't really get a pre light day we went into the house and it was like let's put a grid up here here's where I think our sources will need to be a lot of it is indirect lighting inside the house which I'm sure you noticed it's not necessarily like straight e2 face one thing that

I think is probably a benefit fit in this movie, but also at times can be like, it counters what I would normally do commercially, which is I use that ambient lighting and I don't necessarily even augment it with anything. So it's like with the 5,000 ISO, I'll get like a stop in the room. I'll balance it out to make it look natural with practicals and things like that. But I won't necessarily find like a key for an actor in any given space. And I think that's why you're feeling a lot of those hair lights and stuff because a lot of it was like, oh let's let's flip the key but instead of flipping it to the foreground it was always the

background so it was always far side keying if you will but a lot of times they wouldn't necessarily end up catching any of it so it would just be a hair light so i'd be like okay cool i mean it still looks natural in the environment um but a lot of it is like that very strange sometimes muddy ambient um which we thought and i still feel this way but i i think it leans in to kind of that nostalgic look. Well, there's just a very 70s look, even if we're not talking about like nostalgia mentally.

Like it does feel very of the time. Perfect. Well, I'm glad you say that because, yeah, that's what I was trying to do is like find that balance because I think a lot of times I default that to that because I do a lot of or I did a lot of unscripted. And I was, you know, you have to be very fast.

I use source fours and punch things around and kind of bounce off of things. and mostly far side coming back. And so I would try to find that, but I would end up kind of in the toe or the lower end on our sensor at times. And that's where that 5,000 kind of really saved me. You know, knowing that that's where I was on our scale,

like looking at the waveform and the IRE, I would see that I was pretty low, but kind of leaning into that because at times I was like, it's kind of nice to have like a textural granular feel to it. to almost lose characters at times. Maybe to my own detriment when you watch it, you know, in a lit, very well lit space. But if you're in a dimmed environment, I think the movie really shines well for a lot of those night interiors.

So that was kind of the ideology behind that. And then the rigging, the grids that literally we, our package was, you know, sufficient for a feature of this size, but it wasn't like we had doubles or triples. of a lot of units. And so it was like, you know, we've got a Titan kit. I think we had eight tubes. It was like, let's put, and I had all the control grids for them. So it was like, let's put all, let's put six in this room and two in the hallway.

And so, you know, my grips and my electrics, they were just running around like literally from each scene, pulling them down, moving to a different room, putting them up. So it's a lot of like leapfrogging at times, but then also just using it for that scene. I would like to say that we had enough that we could pre-light each room as we went into it, but it wasn't that way. Yeah. Were you, obviously you had like a,

for all the sunlit interiors, that I assume that was a unit outside. So a lot of that was a unit, yeah, so you know what I did is I pulled some tungsten units, some 5Ks and, um, for like 10 bucks and a bag of peanuts. Exactly.

Like nobody's using them. Might as well throw them. on the truck, I mean, they take a considerable amount of space, but we pulled a lot of those out. And then Robert Primes and then Robert Primes ASC and then some other mentors as I was going through film school and thereafter and even before headset. And when they were teaching, I was like, you know, sometimes we used to use tungsten units for day interior scenes when you wanted to feel that warmer sun and all that kind of stuff. And I think that just stuck in the back of my mind. And I was like, I've been doing it on other things and commercials.

But I was like, let's put the tungsten units outside, blast those through. I think we had some M18s. We ended up bringing on an M40 at one point just for some of the larger night stuff. Specifically, I think in the Orange Grove, I was able to secure one. But that was like a date unit. Our biggest gun on the whole movie was an S-360. So I had a sky panel 360, which is a nice unit, and we spent a lot of money on that. And I used that like almost exclusively, especially for all the night stuff around the house.

that's all the S60 up on a Condor like up on a boom lift What about the only you? What about the drive-in was that? I assumed that that would have been like balloon. No, that was an S that was the 360. That was the 360 on a condor underslung facing straight down.

I think we had a 80 foot or 90 foot. It was like 85 foot arm on that. And threw that up. And then the actual projector itself was like the projector because it's actually a digital screen that's an LED wall oh it's it's not a comp

no no well no so it's actual practical so it's an LED shot practically this is the thing where we didn't have a lot of VFX in the movie we did a lot practically so I used a Joe Lico 800 because I love Likos and I

love Joe and combined in the two it's it's kind of magic. So we used that literally as the projector beam. And I just shot it off to like whichever side we weren't seeing so they could at least backlight them. We got lucky that the due point in the area was quite high that night. So I had the beam without having to use any kind of fog because we didn't have a fogger and no no you had to fix it yet or any. We hadn't we hadn't any of that. Exactly. And that's why I do it now. Honestly, it's like all these situations I've been in where my anxiety peaks, I'm like, I'm just going to go try and secure one

of those, so I don't have that problem. Not that the DF50 would be powerful enough to do that at night, but in an open space like that. But anyways, regardless, yeah, that was a practical LED screen. We found a company, I think, out of, I think they were in Shreveport. If not, they were close by in one of the neighboring cities. And we brought them in. It was basically an LED wall built into a truck and they do like these pop-up drive-ins and so we brought them in did that the art department put like a base for it because we're trying to find a real practical drive-in and we couldn't find it so we built this whole thing across it was in a field right next to the house that we shot at and basically they just brought in a food truck and they our department dressed some

of it and that's the food trailer is the concession stand which also doubles as the where the projection um is coming from and then yeah it's an LED screen dimmed to like its lowest level I think was 25% output and we just went with it that way and it became like an actual key element for lighting yeah yeah that that's I it looked so good that I was like well that's probably a comp you know I'm just so used to seeing in commercials you know the cell phone that's clearly a comp and my brain right got ahead of me there yeah no you're it might have been you know where it was comped i think possibly the only shot that it was comped is the um i don't know it it might have been comped just for timing was when they drive in

um and i think that was because we were trying to get timing on it playing correctly and we didn't have any free um and i think they're driving in and they they might have switched that screen out in the wide shot just so that they could get it where they wanted to because we just had that movie on Luke over time. Gosh, that might be what I'm thinking else. But yeah, that might be the moment. But it wasn't, we didn't set it up as like a green screen

or anything like that. Right. Well, it was the actual. I was going to say the number of VFX people I've spoken to who are like, honestly, if you don't have a VFX supervisor with you, don't even bother with the green screen. It makes it hard. Right. Just just throw some marks up. Fucking let us roto everything like we're going to have to do anyway.

right yeah that's got of that world now so i did write of it yeah uh i did want to ask about oh wait real quick uh so i said the sun you know tungsten sun whatever does that mean that the interiors were all tubes no i did have a couple tungsten units um like some smaller units mole richardson units that we put up. Like some 150s, I think we had some 300s. I did have a couple light mats. I think I had a little light mat kit. I would just push those to the warmer end.

And then I would use actual source force. And we would use some show card, cove it a little bit, shape it, skirt it, whatever. Do a lot of that. But there are a lot of tubes in there. A lot of the night interior stuff is tubes. and if I could hide I think I had an S-60

If I remember Yeah I think I had one S-60 as well So we would put that in and that would be like the main unit And obviously that took the longest with the weight to rig And do everything But so yeah But yeah that was that was basically it It was pretty lean and mean

But yeah You know I'm always cautious to be like Oh new technology but recently like the advancements of LEDs have made me go like you know what they're great and then every and then someone will show me something shot with tungsten and like fuck it still looks great i should be right i just never i never have a generator i'm always having to run off house power so it's like how much you know yeah i'm not an electricist and i'm not about to start like

you know right just hoping for us yep and yeah it is it is nice when you can work in some tungsten I think especially for a film like this where you know that would have been like the main the main light source other than the actual daylight on day interiors and we did have um some some bulbs that we replaced obviously so we had some rgb bulbs putting all the units um similar on that note though like a lot of the night stuff especially when the uh horror sort of kicks in although i guess i wouldn't call it this is thrilling or not a horror film. But, you know, the, the, the, the color really starts to get worse with a lot of greens, stuff like that. Was there kind of a, was that like that's what our night looks like? Or were you kind of ramping up the emotion with more, I would assume RGP, but I don't, I don't know what you were doing there. Was there a methodology to that? Or is that just what night was supposed to do? No, there was a methodology. It was as, as the man in the van, And it gets closer to Annie that we were going to start incorporating more and more green in the blue.

So I think I really, if you can see the luts that I built in prep, they were like pretty heavy on the blue at night. And I also, what I use, what I would do is I would typically just run it at like 6,500. And I say it, I'm referring to the 360 that was up on the condor. And I would just run it at 6,500, and then my Lut just, like, peaked the blue a little bit more. And so the moonlight was very much like a blue ambient moonlight. And then as the serial killer, the man in the van got closer, it really was to add, to start to add green and make it more of a muddy blue. And then it was a blue. And I think what happened is we also did some reshoots.

We had a couple of different versions of reshoots. And I'll say versions because some had principal cast, others had none, others had like victims. So we ran short a little bit on our schedule just due to weather and some other things that happened in Shreveport. So we picked up actually months later after editorial, we started picking up some of these scenes that we had to cut that weren't vital to any story. principal cast. And especially like our main cast. And so we went and shot some of the victim scenes. And it was just little pieces here and there that that we just didn't have time for in the main schedule. And I started pushing more. And so part of what we reshot was actually the end of the movie as well. And I say we reshot because we had a different ending of the movie.

We went back. The producing team wanted to craft something else and add some elements. And so we actually went back and re-shot a lot of that. And that's when I leaned into it even more because we had already been through the start of color. We were locked and then came back out of the edit. So we had already done a few days of color. So I had seen like what the end was going to look like. And I was like, you know what? I can improve upon what we originally did and kind of streamline it. So I ended up adding more. Yeah. Well, and it's funny you say that because earlier when you were like, it's hard to tell if you're doing things right when you're in it. Like I remember who said it.

I think it was on the shitty rigs podcast, but they were like every movie should shoot for a week and then take two weeks off and then start again because you'll know exactly who's not going to work. What's not, you know, like I truly believe not just for personnel, but just in general because you just learn immediately everything that's going to stress you out for the next however many months or weeks or whatever it is, like day two.

Right. Yeah. No, that's so true. There's something to that. That would be an amazing, amazing luxury if we could do that. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully we as DPs would still be attached. Yeah, right? Then you get cut. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, well, that didn't work out. But yeah, no, that would be incredible. Yeah, you would figure out a lot, I think, in that, and then reassess. And it's always that, that prep period. that you're just like on this movie particularly because I was coming off something Warren and I had done a soft prep like months prior I went and shot a show and then that show ran over an extra week so I was still shooting when I was supposed to be in Shreveport prepping and so we really had like a very consolidated crunched prep period and it would be nice to have that luxury to just shoot a little bit press pause figure out some things um but yeah i guess i guess technically in on the big side of movies that is what you know

camera tests and whatnot are sort of kind of for but i don't i don't know if anyone at i was gonna say our level but i'm below your level i certainly don't get uh camera test days and uh a whole crap done a prep a lot of production meetings but not a lot of prep right right yeah there are a lot of meetings um yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't necessarily say you're below my level though um i i think we're all kind of in the same crazy pond of what is filmmaking um but well i haven't i haven't shot a feature yet a few docks i was the second unit dp for one day on uh the last bruce willis movie oh nice friend of mine pulled me wait so that i cocked he shot it yeah yeah

or no it was Laffer I think I think Lafrey shot it Oh okay We've gotcha But yeah it was the detective night Movies Detective Knight Independence

Was it right That's awesome But Brandon's rad I love that guy Right Brandon That's what I mean I didn't mean Brian I don't know why I saw Brian

Brandon Well I heard Brandon anyway You could have gotten away with it Okay Well Brian Cox is the actor That's right Yeah. My dyslexia is coming out now. You see? Oh, dude. I have, when I have like through the deep, dark weirdness of my brain. But I'm also terrible with names, but actually something funny that did happen. So whenever I get like screeners, I don't look up. I just watch them, you know? And, well, a lot of times there's no information out about them anyway because it's a screener. But like off rip, you know, a few minutes in, I was like, oh shit, it's Allie Larner. And I don't know why I remember.

her name, but the last time I saw her was in Jane Silo Bob Strikeback in the Resident Evil movies, but I really like her as an actress, and then she just popped up, and I was like, oh, hell yeah, all right, we're in. And then Sean Ashton popped up. I went, this is great. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, the cast

was awesome. We had a good time. I mean, they really started to function kind of like a family unit, which was neat. And part of Annie's story is, you know, she kind of isolates. She alienates herself from our own family. in a little bit. They stopped believing her because in that time period in that in that community,

uh, which is Brooksville, Florida at that time period, it was a very safe community. You know, these things weren't really happening there. And, and serial killers, especially ones in white bands, this was kind of the start of that, right? This was the time period in which these things were somewhat starting and becoming more normal, I guess, if you will, normal in the sense of broad understanding that these things exist out there. And they all started to really like find that dynamic. It was cool to watch

that in an ensemble cast like this and really find what you know makes them unique about this telling this particular story. So that was pretty cool. But yeah, Ali and Sean were great. There you go.

It's really good casting. Well, and just like you know you get Sean acid in anything and then there's going to a whole sea of Lord of the Rings fans that they're just going to show up, you know, and the second they hit. At the end of the movie, there's like a shit ton of people that are listed.

Was this like a Kickstarter deal? Or like, what was the, what's up with the 100 million supporters? Are you familiar with Legion M? Are you familiar with that production company and how it's structured? It's like a fan-owned production company, I think, is their,

their their catch line but that's also like part of the reason that I think all those names are in the in the credits is Legion M was one of the one of the producing partners on it and they were definitely there on the ground with us so I think a lot of their supporters ended up supporting the movie and to I'm not sure on the financial side of it but I'm pretty sure they could invest in this particular film and then I think a lot of the names are also the investors the company. Gotcha. Yeah, because it's definitely, when I saw the movie ended and there was like 10 minutes left, I was like, how long are these credits? And then there's like a whole music video and like a bunch of days. I was like, oh, that's neat, you know? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot.

Yeah, that was a lot of that was brought on by Legion M, including the, you know, part of it. And and then some of the music in the movie is original. And so it was a collaboration. I think They pulled in some social media influencers, and they actually scored part of it. Or the movie was scored by Scott Thomas Borland. But, you know, they put in some tracks and things like that. Some of the original, like when the vinyl plays, I think one of those songs is actually an original song. Gotcha. I had one of, oh, yeah.

At the end, not the behind the scene stuff, but there's like B-roll. during the credits of like I guess other murders or you know whatever just like inserts stuff I was wondering just you know uh sort of ran and not randomly but what uh what was was that just like hey we need to go get some B roll or were those just shots that you didn't end up using no those were specifically shot for that credit that credit sequence see that's cool yeah yeah yeah now warn has a lot of foresight with that stuff and you know he he being one of the writers of the film, Sharon Cobb being the other one, co-writer, I should say, they knew very specifically like they wanted these elements because it's based on a true story. It was one of those things

where it's like, we need to get this footage. It was going to play, I think, originally a different way in the original iteration of the script. But when they found this new iteration, kind of partially through post they repurposed some of that footage so it was originally shot with the intention of being used that way um maybe not for the credit sequence specifically but it was supposed to be part of i'm misremembering i think it's been a minute but it was definitely it was either like opening sequence it's been a little while opening sequence or the end sequence of the film i just don't remember it ever saying whether or not it said specifically it would have like credit roll over it.

Yeah, I think that's how it came in editorial. They were like, oh, we can push it a little bit further and then go into like the archival audio clips from from that time period mentioning the murders and this case. And, you know, then it kind of d. Some of the FBI agents, one of them's like our AD, you know, it was just like we were shooting one of the crime, the victim scenes. And before we were, we were waiting for the sun to set and get to get into kind of like a twilight magic hour.

And I say waiting. We had like 30 minutes. It was like we were just slightly ahead of schedule. So it was like, oh, let's shoot all this stuff right now. Let's get the police car with the light on top. And we knew we wanted to do it that day. So we could have all those elements because we were actually mostly on a field trip

that day shooting in different locations, not our main home base. And which was the house is where primarily the production was based from. So we had to. Did you stay in the house? No, we didn't stay in the house. It just became like there was a, there's a building that's never in the movie, literally across the street from the house,

before you get to the barn. Like we had to compress that whole space because there's a pretty big sizable road in between the two, which is in the movie. It's just a two lane highway, but the barn is actually pretty far back set on this other lot.

And in front of it is an old general store. And so the production team and producers took over that general store because it was all part of the same land deal with whoever the owner was for the location. But they actually like based out of there. So that was our base camp. One side of the house had all of the trailers on it and like the catering area and the catering tents. Yeah, it was that was primarily while we were in Shreveport where everything took place. Yeah. It is nice when you can have everything, you know, centralized.

I feel like every, you know, regardless of, maybe not everyone, but, you know, I'm sure very famous people don't are used to a certain level of, I suppose hospitality, but certainly on the indie level, like, I think everyone kind of gets into it with a similar mindset of like getting together with smart, creative people and staying in that, you know, the second you get out of that mindset for any length of time you start to like not be and it's just more fun if it's all you know contained in one area because then that contains you in one mindset I think creativity flows better that way versus if you have to drive an hour and a half to set every morning or whatever it is safer yeah yeah oh true true yeah it is nice when you can kind of create that

environment we definitely did have like a logistical thing because that location was actually 30 minutes from our hotels because of where it wasn't so it was tricky but most of the time i think the producers they just made it their base camp because that was like the main they could literally be right next to the unit um so they moved their offices from downtown streetport out to that that that uh that shop within radio distance within within lunch meeting distance well uh it it's a fantastic movie man um thank you really stoked shit i was actually sent to screener it's just talking to someone recently like companies have been real sketchy with the screeners recently and it's just like well how the fuck am i what am i supposed to talk you know because even

this one like in the credits it was like colorist tvd music was still in template mode you know it's like insert insert and i was like uh yeah and charles benang from our uh uh uh uh uh Lightiron. Wow. Lightiron was our colorist, our final colorist. We started with Ariana Shining Star at Lightiron for the first iteration. And then we finished with Charles. But Light Iron was super sportive. It was pretty killer to get Charles on board. And I think he really helped like hone that last little piece of the film and kind of get some of that silkiness in it. We did a full HGR finish. So we were we were provided like a lot of luxury. in that regard and and I had shot you know I'm the kind of DP that I love to protect highlights unless like creative I need to push those highlights outside of the realm of latitude but in a movie like this I was like it all needs to fit in this container because I'd really like to push it around later and I think like you said also from that time period like something that I think about is like when I look at those films because they were shot on celluloid

they have like a textual quality to them and the highlights and a feel and you you can really kind of feel the medium. So that was part of like the post production process and and through production, obviously knowing that I wanted to finish that way. Yeah. Well, and also with film, there's like a limited dynamic range, but in a way that still feels like you can see it. Like, you know, when people talk about like seven, for instance, being, you know, going through ENR or whatever. and having really crushed blacks, it's like, yeah, but you can still see, there's still detail there, but it's just like the roll off into the shadows, which is, I feel like it's, maybe it's just because I'm like an amateur colorist, but like, it is kind of difficult to mimic

that, that, that the highlight roll off, you can, you know, once you protect the highlights, you can kind of figure that out. But for some reach shadows are, can be tricky. They're very tricky. I agree with you on that. They can be very tricky. It's always a, it's, it's funny, it's always a question for me, like, how much do I fill in versus like, and how much do I actually light shadows, you know, when we're talking about night scenes? I think that was something really tricky in this movie because we were limited on what we had resources-wise from a big unit standpoint. I know I do a lot of air quotes, but it's like, we just didn't have some of the things that I would normally use to do those vast areas. And so when you put the 360 up that

high like sure we can get light to to go deep into the space um but the fall off was pretty quick in some instances um and yeah i know the inverse square law and and kind of like obviously it's it's it's less so the further way you get but we're also getting into that world where we're getting in a noise the noise floor of the image like sure we can see there but we are like really in the noise floor of this of the sensor and um it it was funny because i was then lighting sometimes with like smaller units closer pushing in a little bit and trying to like find the balance between that big light that's up there and how much do i push into these shadows to kind of like make them nice and crisp and have some detail there and i think one one scene that really stands out is

like when annie's coming back from the start of her abduction after going through the orange Grove and she's coming around the corner of the barn and finds her horse. It was like, how much do I push into all of these elements that are underneath the roof line? And I, I'll just say it. Like, I struggle with that as a DP. Like, there are times when I'm like, I think I'm overlighting this, you know, like, I feel like this is too bright.

And then I will make the mistake of dropping a double or, or, well, in nowadays terms, like having someone adjust the iPad and pull it down like 30%, 40%, whatever it is, or cut it literally in half or three quarters. And then I'll kick myself later. So it's like now I err on the side of being a little bit more cautionary. And sometimes I'll push a little bit more knowing that in post, we're going to pull some of that out just to get some of that detail. Yeah, that's, that's one of the.

reasons why I started, especially over the pandemic, like really learning, resolve, like taking all these courses from Dato Balinick or whatever's last name is, you know, just anyone who was like offering high quality, like people from company three or a light iron or whoever, you know, just taking all those courses and trying to figure out like, all right, what do colorists need data wise from DPs? And you're so right. Like you'll be watching the monitor and it falls off beautifully, but then you get it and they grade and it's like, no, they needed more so they needed more so they could shape that and post and make it actually look good versus. Right. Although sometimes what is on the monitor is perfect. But like, yeah, there's there's something to be said. Well, I guess either way. There's something to be said for safety and there's something to be said for making a choice. But I think. Yeah. Noise floor is noise floor. You can't like, it's not good. It's not good for it to be. Obviously. yeah it's all dynamic range management you know it's it's it's just contrast ratios just lift everything up everything's got so much dynamic range if you just lift everything same exact

contrast ratio up past the noise floor bring it down a post it looks exactly like you want it without looking muddy or icky right which is which is like the old film technique right and it's like you would open it and then print down and you know because you knew a lot of times your highlights would be fine. So you knew your shadows were your problem. It's funny because digital has kind of flipped that. And we, I am guilty of falling into that because I'm like, well, I can see it. I know it's my lot. You know, I didn't have the advantage of having a, um, a DIT on this. Um, I have, we had a media manager. And so in that regard, it was like, I didn't have a second set of eyes really overseeing that. I was watching dailies. Um, you know, we had post hub on, on the daily side.

so I was getting dailies. I was watching them. I had my luts that I created in prep, which is me on my laptop with my monitor system. I know what my workflow is, but it's not perfect and I'm not a colorist and I know what I want. But I just get us there with like, you know, a primary adjustment. I'm not getting into very complicated adjustments. A lot of times I'm building off a different lot that I might have created or that was built off of like a stock, um, like a Kodak stock or a Fujianon stock. And then I'm like adjusting based off that because it gets me into the right realm. Um, so yeah, it gets, it gets tricky in that regard. And, um, you know, Charles, I think found the subtlety in it. And in those reshoots,

I actually overexposed a lot more. Um, I wouldn't say overexposed, but I exposed. I gave, I gave more latitude and more information in my shadows. And we were able to do things like when the, when the, when The serial killer is standing on the roof, and he's just a silhouette, and his whole front side is dark, but we were able to, like, really crush those blacks. And I was getting a lot of return in that space as well, because it's, I think it's a white house. It's like, yeah, there was like everything. And I know the house in the original movie is white, but the double house, because we actually

shot that in Sarasota, Florida. A lot of our reshoots were in Sarasota, Florida, and not a tree port. not with the practical home. So we doubled another house. And, yeah, I was just getting so much return. But because we had all that information, we were just able to, like, crush a lot of it and really get into some interesting looks that I'm very happy with.

It wasn't, like, too muddy. And I think that's one of the disadvantages. Advantage of dual native ISO, but disadvantage of dual native ISO is a lot of times you'll be like, oh, I have an exposure. I have that information there. And maybe people aren't doing it the way I'm doing it. But this has just been my experience.

And so that's, no, that's the way I've found just through, at least, you know, learning from others and trial and errors. Like, it's, I literally just had this, I wrote this note down the other day. Like, cameras have made people lazy because you have an exposure and then you end up reading it in post and then you have to, like, build the image again. But like you're saying, like, as long as you give the sensor enough, you're not clip. If you have like an A35, you'll never clip. But you give it enough that you're up past the noise floor and your key is, you know, solid and snappy, as they used to say, it'll all work out. That's why I still use a meter. I'm still like just, like, you know, me and director behind the monitor, I'm still sitting there with a spot meter.

Just like, just like, just like, you know, lean over to the guy. Like, give me a little bit more in the side. Okay, no, we're good. You know, don't. Right. Because I know if I'm like, three stops either direction of key, we're probably good. Right. Yeah, that's clutch. And I think it's, it's a good, we'll call it an exercise, but it's, it's good practice to be using a meter. I mean, I insist that my gaffer use a meter. I use a meter. Because then you don't need the camera. You know, in most case, you need the camera. You can run around with your meter and get, you know, there's a lot of times your pre-lighting spaces limited at times, but your pre-lighting spaces, you need to go in and know whether or not those levels are even going to work for you. Or you're, you're going to say, no, we need to switch that unit out, or this will work, or let's throw a double in it, single, whatever it is.

Honestly, what I'll do a lot of times is I have the old X100, so I'll just have the meter for light, and then I'll use this for framing, you know, or Artemis or whatever, but Artemis on Android is kind of shitty. So, you know, this has, like, digital zoons on it. Hey, there it is. There it is. Literally on my death. Yep. Yeah, a great way to test. I mean, you can literally see kind of where you're going to be at.

A lot of times if I'm shooting film, I do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's what you're shooting film to have a digital version of it. Dude, I'll tell you, for that Spain shoot, I was telling you about, I, again, everything needed to fit in a backpack. And so I could only really fit my C70 and like even the tripod had to fit in the backpack. It's a tiny little travel tripod.

I had one little balloon light that. inflated um and uh we needed it was four hour long interview and so i was like shit i need a i need a be camp this sucks it but i had this with me just for per you know i was going to spain i'm a so i was like you know what let's try it so i just set it up on a fucking ladder and it only records 10 minutes at a time i don't know she's ever tried to shoot video on this thing but uh never tried to shoot 10 bit 4k DCI 24 p i threw it and resolve with just a little bit of shifting hues around, because obviously the color's not exact. Right.

Matched perfectly fine with the C70. Wow. I was shocked. Yeah. Again, editorial is going to be pissed at me because they get, you know, 18, 10 minute clips, but, you know, hey, extreme low budget doc. Yeah. Oh, well done.

I mean, that's sourceful. A lot of that stuff will teach you that. I mean, I came up in the doc world. And I think that's an interesting part of the dynamic of filmmaking, right? Is we're always trying to find solutions. There's never enough. It's kind of the old adage is that we are always searching for more. You could be on something really big.

And still, I've been guilty of that where we have quite a budget. We have quite a few resources. And it's like, I just need one more, you know, 18K. And can we do this? And can I build, you know, know these crazy fly swatters out these windows like how much time do we have how much rigging can we do um it's never enough but that's that's awesome think that way and you can you can work and uh really find quick solutions like that i mean i'm sure they'll be happy that they have a bee angle

regardless of whether or not editorial they'll love that they have an additional angle well and and like well and my anxiety started kicking through the roof with this first answer was like 20 minutes. And I was like, oh, they're going to hate me. They're going to hate me. I got to figure this out. So I like ran downstairs because I actually got that idea from, um, uh, what's his name? Dan Stoloff, who shot the boys. He shot the boys on Venice. And he said that they didn't, they couldn't afford a Rialto. I think it was season one. Couldn't afford a Rialto. So he had his XT3, which this has the stupid little

one's just the disposable lens, you know? Oh, nice. Yeah. I was just stupid with it last night. But he had his XT3, his personal XT3 with him. And anytime they needed like a high angle

shot or something where the Venice clearly wouldn't fit, he would just chuck his XT3 up there. An editorial was able to match that with the Venice. You know, their quick shots or like inserts or whatever or like, you know, but. Yeah. cameras are good man like whenever people talk about oh what should I get like is this still good in

2025 I'm like if it was made after 2015 it's good even 2012 in some places like right have a script that's what I want you to focus on right right on the storytelling elements yeah yeah that's interesting yeah no technology has come so far it's we're really getting into this more um analogous space in which all these cameras can really blend together. And I know that as creatives and the artists, hopefully our work will not continue to do that. And like, we'll still have separate visions and things like that. But it's funny that the pixel war and everything else is really like,

the playing field is becoming much more even in terms of what things can do. And I think even with, you know, Netflix deciding that the 265 is not Netflix approved at the moment, I don't know if you heard that, but yeah, it, like, goes to show, like, kind of, I don't know, like, the whole Netflix approval thing is so dumb because it literally is only for people who are making Netflix originals, here's the cameras will accept. But if you make, if you shoot something on a 265, if Greg Frazier goes and shoots, what's that new movie, Project Hill Mary on a 265, and it gets offered to Netflix. they're going to fucking buy it. Like, it's not. Yeah.

Such a silly thing about it. You're talking about the stitching on it. The hell life is a stitch sensor. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting that people were picking up on that.

And I was like, I don't know if that might be a downstream technical issue in like a compression or something like that. I will say, I only saw the headline. So I didn't, I didn't look into it. Right. Yeah. It just called my eye because I was like, oh, that's interesting that it wouldn't be approved. And then, you know, high end users with high end TVs were complaining about it. And I was like, well, to some degree, maybe it's something in an algorithm that's actually catching it. And it's not on that the original, the originating format is not the issue. It's somewhere downstream that something's happening to that image. But, yeah. Anyways, sorry, I digress on that one. Yeah, no, these are freaking epic for that stuff. A lot of times, you know, I own a Komodo now. I never thought. Did you buy it pre or post price drop?

Free, pre. But I didn't buy it. I got it from a friend of mine, Drew Dawson, who was selling his. Yeah, the post price drop would have been epic. Maybe on a second. I've done some very small indie features recently. and we've needed two, you know, two small cameras. But even like a commoto, you throw that on there.

We actually, it's funny, we bring this up. So we had the Panasonic's and then the Komodo actually did come out in our, in our pickups when we were doing our pickup shots. Because I wanted to get the van driving at both day and night and I didn't want to have any rolling shutter issues. I was going to ask about that, the car mount stuff. Yeah, so the car mount stuff is. commoto for for some of it not all of it we did put an l t on on the car um but that was when we were in shreveport and i think we only did it for a very little thing we just couldn't work it in our schedule so we did a lot of the rigging with a commoto um in sarasota florida uh when we're doing

pickups yeah that i i don't have any use for a commoto it's a cool little camera whatever but when they dropped the price on it i was like i mean yeah yeah it wouldn't hurt to have one right yeah nice little 6k global shutter thing yeah yeah well uh it was great talking i'm sorry i kept you over a little bit but it was fun chat um how do you do it take everybody right peace take it easy bye frame and reference is an owlbot 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 ref pod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated. And as always, thanks for listening.