Frame & Reference Podcast - 209: "The Handmaid's Tale" Cinematographer Nicola Daley, BSC ACS

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

In part two of our Handmaid's Tale journey, I get the privilege of speaking with Nicola Daley, BSC ACS!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this, episode 209 of frame and reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Nicola Daly, B-S-C-A-C-C-A-C-S, DP of The Handmaid's Tale. Enjoy. Yeah, I find that all the, like, Australian DPs that I, you're Australian, right? I can, well, I'm British by birth, but I lived in Australia for many, many years. I consider myself half, half. Gotcha.

The ACS threw me off, but I guess we do have an American BCS, BSC, right? B.S, A, C, yeah. Yeah. So it's, yeah, basically I have two passports, so I just think of my. myself, or they am British. Yeah. But I find everyone who came up, or at least like has worked in Australia for a long time, seems to have a certain like workmanlike ethic that I don't, that I don't see with a lot of other, I don't know what she called, not nationalities, but just like localities,

you know, it seems to be a very like, yeah, we'll just get it done. Like talking to like all the people who worked on Lord of the Rings down to the production designer it was just like yeah well we had to do it so we did it there was not you know there wasn't a lot of fault we're all about it yeah it's a very can-do place i mean i came up there through the in the film industry because i was 22 when i moved there i lived there when i was a kid and um and my dad is from kent in england but if you met him you would just think Aussie because he's been there 40 years or something so he's just full-on australian um but i went back i lived in nottingham with my mom And then when I was 22, I went back to Sydney.

And I was going to be like three years maybe, and I stayed 15 years. So I did, I started in the film industry there. So, but you're right. You're absolutely right. That attitude is very, it's very positive. It's very can do. I remember John Seale came to give us a talk at film school. And he just sat there and basically just told stories for about two hours.

which we were all just like, you know, in awe of because he's wonderful. But what you realized afterwards, and I had this massive penny drop moment, I think, was that he was just so positive and so can do that he was like, you know, he was talking about, I forget which film he's talking about, but they were really high. And then the director was under the tent going higher,

we need the shot higher. So they were moving ceiling tiles and poking the camera up. And what you realized, after him telling you all those stories was there was solutions, no problems for him. It was just how do you get around doing something? How do you try and do the best you can for the director and say yes? And I walked out of that seminar and was just like, no wonder he gets, I mean, obviously gets hired again and again again because he's so talented, but no wonder directors love him

because he was just like, you know, he'd pick up a broom and start sweeping. and you know he's a real hands-on let's all do it together teamwork kind of guy yeah do you ever get handed those situations even now where it's like just thinking about that where it's like they you know maybe I work on a much smaller budget obviously than you're tend to do these days but you know it'll be like the director will go or production will go like oh we definitely wouldn't we're not going to do that so don't worry about that gimbal whatever you know yeah and then like 10 minutes into the shoot they're like so what if we did want to do that yeah like add do you ever run into that and if so how do you stop from going like nope

it's a Harvey like that's interesting because the film I'm working on at the minute is quite low budget so there's a lot of like you know we've already got 25 days it's pretty tight 10 hour days, no overtime, not even a night shoot, too expensive to do a night shoot. So, um, so it's nice on the sleep schedule. That's, yeah. So it's a lot of like, oh, we could do that. I think it's always like how you couch it with the argument and who you're talking to. I always think of it as psychology.

So it's, it's how you present your argument. And then if you can't do. you know, a massive crane shot or whatever because you haven't got the money, then how could you do it otherwise? Or how could you, or maybe drilling down into what the director actually wants story-wise and then thinking up another way that you could do it. Like we had one recently on this film. We wanted, the director mentioned a body rig, you know,

like Requiem for a dream kind of, and we just can't afford any extra equipment because that would be the body rig, which isn't that expensive, but then you need a little camera, you know, kind of a net free and, yeah, and all the onboard recording and all that. And we just don't have the money to do it. And so I thought, I can't just go to him and say we can't do it, although he knows how tight the budget is. Because he's also a producer, bless him. So he knows very well. But, you know, I said, well, we could do, if we can't do Requiem for a Dream, maybe we could do the right thing and put her on a...

On the dory dolly and attached to the real dolly and like floated down the catwalk. And he was like, oh, okay, because I said we can't afford the extra equipment. So he went away and thought about it and was like, yeah, okay, I think that's a good compromise. So I think it's about kind of presenting some options instead of just going, nope, and shrugging your shoulders. Well, and you're going to have to get ready for if people do interviews about that film. So I saw a big Spike Lee influence in this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And then you just pretend it was what you planned all along, yeah.

Right. Yeah, we watched his whole, you know, almost a discophilography. Yeah. Was that John Seale interview or like talk? Was that I had heard you in a separate thing talking about like how they're, how he's talking about like two ways to go and get into the film industry. It was like working their way up and working at an Obranel House.

Yeah, that was Michael Saracen, actually. Michael Serrison, BSC, who shot like all sorts of things, including Dawn of the Planet, the Apes and so many British film. Yeah. I met him when I was 21, I think, and I'd gone to America and done a year abroad at the University of California you in Santa Cruz and they had film cameras and non-linear editing, you know, and like, and we were splicing and we were making documentaries.

And it's kind of where I discovered that I wanted to be a cinematographer because I shot, I think, five short films. And I was like, is this a job? I hope this is a job. You know, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So then I went back to London and then I was like, I had no idea. I never, I didn't know anyone in the film industry. and I had no idea how to get in

and I knew someone that knew him whose dad knew him or something and so I managed to get coffee with him and he said to me yeah there's two ways you can get into the industry either you work your way up the camera department or you work in a camera rental house so when I went to Sydney

it was a bit easier to get into the film industry in Sydney rather than London was no one would answer calls no one would answer your email nothing. So Sydney was a bit, a little bit easier. They answered you. So I ended up getting a job at Lee Mack, which is a rental house, kind of the rival to Panavision. And the comedian. And a what? Sorry. And the comedian. There's a comedian named Lee Mack. Yes. Yes. That's true. Yeah. It was actually, I think the owner used to smoke camels. So it was camel backwards. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. That was a cinematographer called John Bowering

is not with us anymore, but he shot the Paul Hogan show. So he put, Paul Hogan had asked him to put money into this small film he was making called Crocodile Dundee, which he did and made a lot of money. So he was able to open a rental house in Sydney and Melbourne with all cameras. And so I started on reception in the Sydney office. So it was actually, Michael was right because it was actually a really good place to start because you learnt all the equipment. And everybody that came in, obviously,

you met loads of focus pullers, cinematographers. And then I went to the technical side, so I did prep. So I took the cameras apart and put them back together and checked everything. So it was a, yeah, it was a brilliant place. to learn. How do you stand out in an environment like that? Because I imagine at least at the

rental house next to my house here plenty of people are in there and also it's L.A., so it's really crowded. But you know, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed like, this is temporary, you know. I swear to God, I'm not a rental house guy. I'm a

I'm budding, you know, or whatever. I'm a cinematographer. Yeah. John, I mean, John was, he was pretty hardcore. He used to make us learn all the technical things. And it was when HD was coming in.

So Sony and Panasonic would come and give us talks on, you know, this new exciting format, you know, 1080 by, you know, it was all very the Olympics. I remember the Sydney Olympics were on. So it was very kind of, you know, ooh, HD, which is now kind of funny, considering it's 6K and 8K and all. that. But he would like make us learn all the technical stuff. And then I kind of was a bit cheeky and I took all my sick days that I had and shot short films and music videos with no money. And we used to go around like all the commercial houses and get short ends that they just had in the fridge that they didn't want anymore and shoot shorts and yeah, shoot any, basically have shot anything anybody had anything it was like i'll shoot that i find today that like

when you tell because i i try to take on an educational event with all of my various dealings with the other film you know you end up talking to people when they hear this or you know i write this website and stuff i find that the advice like oh just go shoot something usually gets followed up with like literally just use your phone because you having to find a uh you know 16 or 35 camera finding short ends finding lights that's expensive phone is free and your first i think the hidden advice is always your first stuff is going to suck yeah so you got you got to keep shooting until it doesn't suck and you might as well not spend money on the suck stuff yeah like why rent an Alexa for suck exactly yeah exactly and the more you the more

shorts you do the more you learn don't you i mean i remember when i started afters the that's the australian film school in sydney we did documentaries we started with joc documentaries and so and they used to go make us shoot anything you know on a z1p it must have been um go and shoot your family sunday lunch dinner that mum's cooked and get all the shots and then edit it together you know it was like shoot anything that's happening and go, because then you'll learn how to edit and then you'll learn how to shoot better. Yeah. Well, and I'm smiling just because you had said that because, again, I'm just having an argument

with an anonymous film student in my head where they're like, well, how are you supposed to make dinner look good? And I'm like, well, if you look over here, I've got Babette's feast. Yeah. We can talk about making meals look good. Yeah. Or like any anime, to be honest. Yes.

Yeah. There's ways to shoot anything. Yeah, definitely. It was, I mean, I must have been 22, 23. I was just, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just shooting stuff. I remember being very frustrated about lighting. And then when I went to film school, knowing that it was interesting

because then obviously they learned you as a cinematographer. They taught you, you know, all the basics of everything. So operating, lighting. and then you realized that your instincts were good but then you knew the then you were learning the techniques and how to do you know how to soften the light how to shape the light you know all the things that you were kind I was kind of like fumbling around in the dark

and in short films with two redheads and a blondie or something before you know and you suddenly realize oh okay a silk you know an eight by eight silk wow that changes everything it was like yeah it was a very steep learning curve film school but it was it was an amazing place it was just two years and they um it's an m a basically but they just took four students in every discipline so there was very few students and then you all got into groups and made four films um and there was documentaries then 16 super 16 and then 35 mills in the second year and then visual effects and all sorts so

It was actually brilliant, brilliant place. And then people like John Seale, Peter James, Andrew Lesney, who's not with us anymore, unfortunately. They all came in and gave, like, the most amazing classes. So it was a privilege. That sounds very AFI adjacent. Yeah. Yeah.

They've changed a bit now, but it's, yeah, when I went. And people like Dion Bebe have gone through that school and, you know. decent yeah so it's a great is a great school do you find yourself excited by the technical side of things or did you because i know like i certainly as a as a giant nerd was far more interested in i learned much later like like props and special effects and then i just figured oh cinematogic like in my brain as a student i was like cinematography must be close so that i just started to be, and then, of course, just straight into camera tech and stuff. But eventually I figured out how to learn art.

Do you still find yourself excited by tech that don't think? I do. I mean, I'm much more interested in storytelling as an artful and the art of lighting, which I think I learn about every, you know, every single project. I guess I have a technical background because I, I learned all the camera. You know, that was kind of the first thing I learned. Yeah.

Lenses and cameras and, you know, we had all sorts of things. So it's kind of, I like it because I love cinematography, the fact that it's a craft and a science and an art all together. But the thing that really gets me is the storytelling side. Well, and I don't know why I never thought about this. but you saying those three together it's like oh those are like like the science of it there's it's not like even uh well maybe maybe uh costumes department's not the best example because there's new textiles and crazy shit you can do but like writing for instance it doesn't necessarily like things don't

change in that art form you're stuck there but having like the science part of it now just just unlocked. I'm like, oh, that is something I'm really interested in, but I'd never thought of it. It's like, oh, it is, I guess it is science, even though it's the Academy of Arts and Sciences. For some reason, it just thought it was like, it's, it was a word. You know how you hear a word and it just

attaches itself to a meaning and you don't think about the word ever? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because when I was at school, which is a while ago now, they make you do one of those terrible sort of psychological tests to see, you know, and there's this sort of graph that's like this

And if you're in this quadrant, you're good at science. And if you're in here, you're a journalist or if you're down here, you're an architect or whatever it is. And they made us all do one of these tests. And then they call you in for the results. And then they say, you know, you could go do this. And so she took me in the office and she said, right, you are right in the middle of this cross. So what do you want to do?

Yeah, we'll get nothing for you. And she was kind of surprised that she didn't really know what to tell me. So it was, yeah. So I think cinematography probably fits that. Yeah, I'm going to have to think on that because that's an exciting thing to learn about myself just now. Because I love, I've always loved, you know, new, not just new technology as a toy, but like the actual science, like, especially with, with color grading becoming more accessible at my level and stuff, learning about like the imaging pipeline and stuff. and like down to like

photons you know just like physics is very exciting not exciting in such a sense but yeah anyway

but to your point about lighting oh go ahead I think Kenny I am I sort of nerd out more on the psychology

of things so sure like I'm a huge color fan so this the not

necessarily the science of it, but the psychology of how colors affect people and what a blue room does to you. Or if you eat off a blue bowl, you eat less. You know, stuff like that, I really get a kick out of that stuff. There's a book. I have it somewhere. It's like, if it's called like, if it's purple, someone's going to die. Yes. Still haven't read it. But I do have the book. Yeah, that is fun. I mean, that's kind of like a manipulative tactic that we all agree to be part of, you know. That is kind of a fun way to think of what you're doing is like it next to lighting. Like, yeah, I think color, do you just go off vibes?

Are you actually studying like the psych? You must be studying the psychology of color. Yeah. I mean, I read nerdy color books about, I think Joseph Olbers had an old one about, I forget, the name of the title of that book is now, but it's all about those colour sort of exercises that you do, you know, where you look at something and for ages

and then you look at a white sheet of paper and your eye does the inverse and how your eye actually works. And then you take all that into consideration and then painting and then the history of painting and how, you know, people, you know, impressionisms and how pointillism worked and how that colour vibrating against each other worked and then the psychology of that your eyes actually attached to your brain so it's not

just you know if I said to you green you know you would imagine a different green than I probably would and how do we ever know that we sink the same green and then your upbringing influences is how you see green and then, yeah, or if it's red, you know, if you're from China, then you would have a totally different idea of what red means in your culture as opposed to maybe the Indigenous Australians. So like all that put together for the psychology of colour and then applying that to how you tell a story, you know, I love sort of colour journeys of films. So when I read a script, I often think, you know,

A bit like, I mean, it's, I mean, Starraro's the master of this, right? So, you know, Apocalypse Now, that color journey throughout that film is just astounding. And the way he's kind of, you know, it goes, if you look at all the images on shop deck, you know, through and you can see what he's doing. The same with the conformist, you know, that blue, the parents. Yes. Yeah. film seeing that like when I started actually trying to like focus on um cinematographies and our form and really trying to get a bearing on like because I because I grew up just watching

the fun ones you know and I was very intranced by the fun ones and so I was like I need to go back and watch like what people consider to be incredible films and somehow I got that on Blu-ray and like 10 minutes in I'm like when was this made like 19 69 like it looks like it was shot yesterday yeah beautiful beautiful in fact at afters in sydney they the first one of the first things i make you do is watch a 35 mil print of the conformist really and i don't think any of us there was only four of us in class but i don't think we did ever seen it we sat there and just went what i'm sorry you know he did what yeah it's just beautiful so i think yeah go that and lay samurai both have

like very modern lighting sensibilities, I felt. Yeah. It's like a lot. And maybe it was just because at the time, I feel like there was a lot of indie film coming out in the US. And so everything was just like kind of hard blasted handheld and stuff. But there was just a lot more like considered larger sources in those films. I'm like, I didn't know you could do that back then.

Smart people. Yeah. So I think Stororo is a big influence on me. I love his. I love his psychology and obviously he's written huge books on it and, you know, what each color means to him and what it represents and stuff. So I'm a big, I'm a big fan of all that stuff. Well, that, I mean, getting handed a project like Handmaidstale probably was joy. That's just like all color, what?

All color all day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did say when I went for my interview, because I did season five. and six. And I did say in my interview, you know, I thought it had gone a bit monochrome. And so I wanted to sort of bring back the colour because she'd sort of, spoiler alert, but she'd escaped, you know, Gilead by that point.

So she was a bit more in the real world. And so I said to Elizabeth Moss, who was interviewing me, you know, I want to bring the color back in. And she was like, yeah, yeah, let's do that. So I obviously said the right thing. I got the job so do you do you find this is a larger question but it probably applies to he may so but like there does seem to be a sort of a public backlash to the monochromicity that's a word sure uh of of I think mostly television I don't know if I've seen films just

suddenly become very like tamp down but certainly in television you do see a lot of that oh you shot halo didn't you yes the phenomenal of season two. I enjoyed that show, but I was kind of bummed and didn't get picked up, but in my head, for some reason, Halo popped up in my head that, like, that was a very, but then again, it's

action film and stuff, but do you find there was a technical reason for that? It was the people getting too excited about what they could do in the grade or like what, or even like what made Handmaid's Tale start to, it was just the subject matter? I think it was because she'd come out of Gilead and it was

you know, it's a bit more real world locations rather than the Gilead's sort of beautiful, you know, they had such beautiful sets in like season one and two with all the wallpaper in the old commander's houses. And so I think when they got out, it was a bit kind of like, whereas I wanted to sort of bring that back. And then Elizabeth always said, the beams of light were about, you know,

you're trapped inside. you can't go outside and outside is beautiful, you know. So Colin Watkinson had done a beautiful job of obviously setting that series up. So that motif of, but then I think maybe in Canada, they said we won't have any, you know, mole beams coming through the windows. And then Lizzie said to me,

well, it's kind of like her trauma, that the beam of light is her trauma. And she's still got lots and lots of trauma. so it's the beams of light should still be in Canada they're not going anywhere so it made perfect sense then that it's because handmaids is all absolutely rooted in June's experience and in fact when I started they said to me um Bruce said if you just shoot June what she's thinking and then what she sees and how she experiences the scene then you've shot the show

you know so because we shoot most of those episodes in 10 days so yeah it's pretty quick so I mean if you if you do an episode one or the last episode of a season you get maybe 12 days but if you do in the middle ones you get 10 days

so the way that they get to shoot that show to be beautiful and you shoot it in a short amount of time is we don't shoot everybody's experience of every shot every all the coverage you know they they encourage you to shoot the storytelling underlying feeling of the subtext of the scene and that's why it's so good that's why it's so bold and brilliant i think well that's i feel like that comes any project is like or it's even the same idea of like having restraint if you want to

I think that that way, you know, it usually makes good creative choices. But shot selection, right? Like being, having intent with all you're doing. Because if you had 40 days per episode and you were just like, yeah, hose it down. Like, even if the editor is like, oh, thank God, I think you would end up having uninspired shots. Yes. Yes. Well, I think you end up, and I think as cinematographers, we've all been there because there's so many

different directors. You work with all sorts of different directors. And sometimes you end up trying to get like a shopping list of shots, you know, now we're going to do the over the shoulder, then we're going to do the midshot, then we're going to do the most of it. And I get really bored with that. And I know Elizabeth does too. And so we share that, we get on very well. And so we share that sort of, let's think of some other way that we can do this really interesting thing, you know and let's think and that's why I think we both really love prep too because I think that's the I really like to be prepared and not so that I can't throw it away on the day and the actors do something else and then you go oh actually they're going to do this so we need

to pivot and do this but I think you have to be prepared and you have to have done that hard work and it is kind of hard work sitting in an office not even in location trying to come up with all those shots. That's hard brainwork. But I think you have to do that. And I've taken me nearly 20 years to work this out is because, and I've been on the shows where you just go, oh, this is the block, right? We just make it up on the day.

And I never do my best work like that because I just fall back on cliched ideas. Right. Whereas if I can get rid of those cliched ideas in prep, then I can really get to the part of, you know, what is this scene really about? And where should the camera be? Because there's a million places you could put the camera. But why do you put it there specifically?

This isn't specifically related, but it's the same ideas. I became a much better I don't know, hang is maybe the best. Or like, I hang out around, or I run a stand-up comedy show, so I'm always around comics. And I

learned really fast that the best way to, like, make friends. This is a networking tip for anyone listening, is to stand in a circle and just yes, and people's stupid jokes. Comedians have good jokes, but the average persons, they're not that great. But if you just let them riff, they feel good. But the thing I've learned is,

to your point, your first instinct of a joke is usually terrible. It's like the first pancake idea. So, you know, someone has a name that's, you know, don't say the first thing, because they've heard it a million times, you know.

but that's so that's so smart like get enough time in prep and you can just like throw all those first pancakes out because you know and even if you think it's a good idea it never is it never is and i remember on season five i think lizzie and i were doing the last episode of season five and she obviously she's in like nearly all the scenes so you go to her trailer and she's she it was kind of funny for me because she's wearing the handmaids outfit and we're sitting doing the shots for you know she's in episode eight we're doing the shots for 10 and she i always remember this she said to me you know we've done a first pass and she said you know this scene's not this is not right um these are not what the shots should be and i was like wow she instinctively knows she's such a good storyteller she knows and so we sat down we threw it in the bin and we started again and

I just thought that was so smart for her. She's got those sort of storytelling instincts. I think because she's such a good actress that she comes from inside the scene, you know. So she, it makes her a very, very good director. But we kind of have the same sensibilities. So we, you know, we both, yeah, we both get bored. And we both know that if we're just writing down wide shot, close up, close up, then it's probably time to go get a cup of coffee, you know.

because the brain's gone to mush or something. How do you not do wide shop, close, up, close up, without just being different for different sake? How do you know when maybe it is just time for a close-up? Yeah. And sometimes you need those clos-ups because it's all about the performances. And actually the film I'm just about to start,

you know, I've been thinking a lot to myself, We've got a brilliant cast, and sometimes you just have to step back and go, let's just, they just have to do, you just have to cover what they're doing because it's going to be brilliant. But I think you stop it by saying, I mean, I always say to Lizzie, what is the point of this scene? What is this scene really about? You know, and the amazing thing about the writing in her maids, which is sort of another reason it's a joy. to work on, is the writing, I think Bruce said it, it always lies. So people are lying a lot and there's always some sort of text and then there's something really going on underneath.

So if you can work out what the subtext is and then, you know, who's got the power, who's, you know, putting their power over someone else and then you're sort of halfway to figuring out you know where the camera should be right it's the misdirection of it the yeah what because the thing that I'm really loving right now in my sort of cinematic cinematography journey is like you're saying like what do you the psychology the sort of feeling of where you put the camera which I know you learn in like film school but I think I didn't quite like understand what that meant until recently which was just like I think I think I used to try to over-intellectualize.

You know, when you're saying like, oh, a blue bowl makes you less hungry, I used to think that like, oh, put camera here, make people look powerful, you know, and it's like not always, it depends. And you have to start trusting how things make you feel, like how you feel, which is very vulnerable or can be. But yeah, having, having like a known subtext, it's like, where do you, where you put the camera? tell you which track you're on, whether the truth-telling track or the lie track. Like, I love that idea. And sometimes you want to play against, you know, like clockwork orange with the music. Sometimes you want to play against the scene and sometimes you want to play with the scene. So in a way, cinematography is like music, you know.

I mean, the scene that Elizabeth and I always talk about, which is, I think, our joint favorite, in season five and it's Esther and Janine sitting on the bed in the red center and and we sat in an office we drew it out and you know and basically what we worked out was that they're slowly talking but the scene the point of the scene is that it changes halfway so you think they're friends but then they're not friends and they've both been eating chocolate and then it's revealed that Esther poisoned the chocolate with rat poison and, you know, and then they spit out the poison and then it goes to health. And I think that's Lizzie and I both favourite shot, is we do a really slow crane in.

And then when the scene switches, I mean, this is very simple. We cross the line and then we push in on Esther, who's eating the chocolates. and then the chocolates had a blood capsule in them. Oh, smart. So we had to test all this and get the props. Right. Mistress to build the chocolates with the blood capsule in and she bites it and then she starts coughing

and then it starts cutting and it goes to handheld. And Lizzie and I think we talk about that now where we watch that scene and we go, oh, we love that because it feels instinctively, it feels like exactly the right shot for that scene and I think when that's what gets me is when it works you have the idea in a sterile office and then it works and you know in your guts

and in your brain that it's the perfect storytelling camera move or you know light could be a lighting change or something for that story moment that then I get Then I get really excited then. Well, it's like, you know, every shot in some way is a gamble and having your gamble pay off always feels good. Yeah.

We've built cities to that feeling. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't work either. You know, there's plenty of things that don't work. But sometimes you put the lens on and you realize your gut tells you it's the wrong lens. Now, I don't really know what that is. I'm still trying to figure out what that is, except for gut instincts and experience.

But if I had to guess, again, over intellectualizing everything, it's a, a potentially a lack or too much information. Like the second you put it on, you're like, I'm, I know too much and I need to know less or I don't know enough and I need to know more. Yeah. That would be my guess. But I have, I've had the same thing. That's why I try not to use.

I mean, everyone has this. But like, I try not to use Zooms. And if I am using Zooms, I'll usually just not touch it. Like, I'll put it wherever it's going to live. And I'm like, you know what? Today, that's a 24. I'm going to move the camp. Just because, like, you get too finicky and there.

I remember years ago, I saw a short film. And it was Adam Arquipore, who's just an amazing Australian cinematographer. And he'd shot the whole short film on a, on a. 50 million. Oh, not autumn. Adam. Adam. Oh.

Yeah. Adam. Adam was Australian, so he was in Melbourne, Melbourne-based. Gotcha. But he'd shot a whole short film on one lens. You know, and I remember thinking, what a great idea that is. What a great exercise that is, even. You know, if you boil it down to an exercise.

Yeah. Make, to kind of twist your brain into thinking, right, I've only got this camera in a 50-mill lens. What am I going to do? Yeah. I think it works. I mean, maybe, no, yeah, just do that.

I was going to say maybe give yourself a safety-wide, but then it's not an exercise. Yeah. You know, then it's not, if you have an emergency shoot, you're not going to commit, you know, parachute. You're not going to commit. Sometimes there's constraints of, you know,

money or whatever. whatever it is, budget, or sometimes they, I don't know, sometimes they can help you think, you know, if you don't have every lens in the box and you don't have every light you can possibly think of, then sometimes that can help you think creatively sometimes, I think. That was actually something I was going to bring up, Mexico. When you were talking about how much you love color and stuff, the advent of LED must have been a blessing and a curse because now like we're saying you have every gel you can possibly come up with yeah i was wondering if you had like a sort of an example or something of where

that was really helpful and maybe where that gave you uh decision paralysis or something you know like did you just start throwing color and everything or were you able to stay kind of what do you call it disciplined I think I like to because I'm such a planner and a prepper

I think I like to I like to actually plan the colours before I get there so I'm not just dialing sort of things so so I really like to sort of think about it and think what I'm going to

what I'm going to use before I get there like with pin cushion which was a very low budget one million pound British film I did when I came back from Australia to England. There was sort of like, there were all these fantasy sequences that were in the girl's head who was the main character and she was being bullied.

So it's kind of like an idealised kind of life. So I sort of did that with diffusion filters and made more halation but then with colour. So there was like this sort of aquamarine colour and it went. through and it was sort of you know in the background or whatever but it um or maybe spilling out of a door in the school or something like that but it it tied them all together so it's it's kind of color in a thematic way as well right um which i yeah i kind of love to to think about those puzzles they're kind of like jigsaws to me i think yeah i did see uh uh uh uh Liz Moss called you

the Queen of Darkness. You're the Gordon Willis. You got a Gordon Willis compliment. That's a pretty big compliment. That's pretty big. Yeah. I want to know what, if you know what specifically spurred her,

like if that was just working with you for a long time or if there was like a specific thing where she was like, all right, this lady knows what's up. And then two, how do you achieve that look without just under expose it? You know, what, what, what, what did, not to say you're copying, Gordon Willis

when it arrives, but like what, what have you learned to get there to get that rich, great cinematic look without just being dark for dark's sake? It's a good question. I actually hate murky. I hate murky. So, um, when I moved back from Sydney to London, I also almost like had to start again because I didn't really have the context I had in, in Australia. And so it was actually really good for me.

I had to have a lot of coffees with people. But I also sat down and really thought about what I love as images. And I started to sort of collect all these images because I was like, well, who am I as an artist? You know, those creative sort of crisis that you have. What do I put my real? Yeah. And what I realized is that I love contrast. You know, I think of contrast as a character in whatever I'm doing.

Interesting. So to me, when I do dark, I also do a highlight because I don't think dark is dark unless you've got a white reference in there. It's a bit like all those beautiful magnum photos, you know, the famous ones from throughout the years, you know, in black and white. they're not you know you've got all that beautiful velvet black but only because you've got a lamp on in the background or whatever and that's how i think of color as well that's that color contrast so your eye will just get used to a whole scene in a submarine say that's red

because the emergency lights are going off you know but your eye would your eye is so clever this is the thing it's so smart um that it just gets used to it so how do you make the red redder you know and that's light bulb white light or yeah glue in the background whatever it is you know um so i think thinking about the that that kind of ties us back to that psychology of color but i think yeah with the dark thing it yeah i'm just not a big fan of murky so I really don't like but then I think it's taken me a long time to work out night lighting I think it's for me it's it's been tough to to do it properly I've done a lot of things where I've been like that's not moonlight you know right obviously we're all very picky

of our own work but um I was like that moonlight's too hard you know that's got to be softer and it's not that color it's like a silvery greeny bluey complicated color you know and i think if you've got a room full of cinematographers you could probably talk for hours about what is moonlight oh i i actually do ask most people like especially if it's like a moon or a night heavy show all as because the funny thing is technically moonlight is hard as hell and still roughly 5600 yeah you know, because it's just the sun bounced off. And so, and it's still the relatively the same size, like, you know, and so, but we all have this idea that I think is built in film of, of what nighttime is, and we're all correct.

And I just love that about, like, night shoots. It's, it's the most expressive version of, of cinematography, in my opinion, because it's, it's all incorrect and correct. Yes. and a very good friend of mine who's a very smart man and owns the light bridge company so they make those beautiful reflectors

he and I were talking about this the other night and he said he tried AI and he put in give me an image of a wood not lit by moonlight and the AI whatever whatever programming was in

couldn't do it because only the only I guess the peripheral of images that are out there are lit a woods lit by moonlight oh oh like a woods yeah I thought you meant like a piece of wood no like a forest yeah he put in forest not lit by moonlight

interesting the computer had a meltdown and that's because yeah you're absolutely right because the norm is oh we're doing a scene in a forest at night here's the overhead soft moonlight yeah

or you do a great escape and just hit it with like a fucking 20k or whatever and call it a day I was watching that like I think it was in like Christmas or whatever doesn't matter but like I was just like when they're climbing out of the ground I was like, that's daylight. What are you talking about? Like, it's not even close.

Then it's somehow a spotlight comes through. You're like, that's incredible. I don't know how you got that. Oh, that's what I was going to say about contrast. That just reminded me about contrast. How do you, if you're shooting a night scene or whatever, or you're shooting really any scene and you're working with contra, how do you keep the shadow area snappy without getting murky?

Is it just that you have to get a sensor that is able to resolve in that toe area? Or are you lighting in such? a way that maybe printing down or whatever like how do you keep that area crisp i think yeah i think it's i mean so many of the cameras nowadays are so good you know the the latitudes you know insane so i think it's we used to do you know latitude tests on every new camera all the time and now we don't really do them because you know i was thinking about this the other day because this new the camera I'm shooting this new film on is the Sony Venice 2 and I was thinking oh yeah normally we would have done all those latitude tests

and now we just go oh it's got 16 stops you know here we go let's just yeah do some lens tests pick the lenses and do some costume tests and off we go so so I think you know it's amazing what cameras do now I think it's all about your lighting ratios isn't it I think it's all about knowing which, you know, the zone system is how I learned, you know, the Ansel Adams zone system. So knowing.

There is. There's my Ansel Adams. There you go. There you go. So it's all about thinking about like how, and you know, and that's that thing. I was talking about the best images have that zone. They have all the zones, really. So if you let that go to black, then this one, you know, maybe the windows two stops under and then the lamp is on in the very background.

and that's two stops over. It's that, it's kind of composing the whole thing as a, as like an orchestra of light, I think. Yeah. Well, and here earlier points about contrast being interesting. I was shooting a documentary with a first time director, but he's worked on a bunch of stuff, but this is the first time it's been like a solo.

It's literally just me and him, you know, very low budget. And it's a subject that's like close to him. and he was asking like halfway through the interview we traveled across the world to shoot this thing and he's like so how do I write this and I was like why are you asking me like but um I came I came up with uh everything is contrast like if you if you just say one thing about this subject it will not be interesting we need to have at least two things you know uh and and I just more the more more I thought about that I was like literally everything is in filmmaking is contrast how do I make it interesting, there has to be a counterpoint.

If it's just point, no interest. You have to point, interest. Same thing with music, as you were saying. Yeah. That's very true. It's very true. And that's kind of tying us back to those sunbeams in, you know, those more beams coming to the windows in her maids. That's the counterpoint. It's like

she's in this awful situation where she's in prison and yet it's beautiful. Yeah. You know, that horrible awful beauty like a painting that you can't you know sort of take your eyes off you know we've been talking a lot about like the artwork and stuff but I'm also interested in the marketing side I suppose because I'm again you know still still coming up in my career and then there's an

element of salesmanship and I had seen in an interview that like your real stayed the same and then the second you got like Netflix they were like oh yeah no you're good do you find that like that's kind of the world we're operating and now as DPs is like you need to be sort of vetted I suppose by because like my friend my friend was nominated for an Emmy for his documentary and absolutely no one called him to shoot anymore not anymore but like because of it but when he entered he's a producer when he entered rooms and they they would be like, this is Emmy nominated, so-and-so, they'd be like, oh, okay, yeah. And those initial questions wouldn't get asked anymore.

Do you find that is kind of like how you finally get to work is you have to have kind of one of those external validations and it's kind of a slog till there? Did you have like a different approach up until that? I think it's, I mean, it's always a slog. I think there's gatekeepers along the way. And so, because I started in documentaries. So I did, in Australia, I did 10 years of documentaries, which I loved. Yeah, great.

And I got to go to some crazy places like North Korea. And, you know, I went to the, I was embedded with the, you know, you were with the army for a while, huh? Yeah, I mean, like three days. So let's, you know, we won't pretend it's weeks. That's a while. Still a while. Yeah.

But I went to Afghanistan. I went to all sorts of places. and I loved it. And I was also doing, you know, low-budget Australian films that no one's really heard of and music videos. And, you know,

everyone told me when I tried to do a feature, oh, you know, you don't do features, you do documentaries. So there was a bunch of gatekeepers there. And then when I'd done films, then I was think I was in London and then I was trying to get into TV. and they said you can't do TV,

you do films and documentaries. So there's always someone who's going to tell you, you've never done that, you can't do that. And so, yeah, I think it's just all about pushing on and not listening to those people and just, you know, but it is tough to try and get to that next sort of level. Yeah, that story was I didn't change my reel and then I went back to Australia and did the Letdown Series 2,

which is comedy series. And we were doing 10 pages a day and 10 hours with screaming kids, you know, because it's about having, it's a comedy about being parents. And then, yeah, I just had the word Netflix on my CV. And then I got interviews for other jobs. But then, you know, I remember after that I went for Harlots, which is a great British period drama. And they said, well, you've never done.

costume period drama before so how on earth can you do candles and and i said well here's a scene where i've done candles before but it happens to be modern day but there's a bunch of candles right this whole scene was lit by candles and they were like oh okay and they gave me a break and give me the job and so i think sometimes it's about finding thinking beforehand actually a director said this to me once before you go to the interview think about what they're going to have against you and then come up with an argument. So like you've never done action films.

How did earth do you know how to do action? Well, that was going to be my follow-up question is how just because we touched on it earlier, how did you get Halo? And then I have a follow-up question for that because I'm actually interested. But how did Halo end up on your plate if you're doing Handmaid's Tale and comedies? Yes. I do love to do a variety of different things. So, um, Toby.

Yeah. That's it. Um, we must get bored easily, I think. Um, I knew the director who I'd worked with her on a couple of, um, dramas. Uh, and she's a friend of mine now and a great director. And she was doing block one of season two. So she was doing the opening. And so she recommended me to do the finale.

Yeah. Then I interviewed with the showrunner, and I think the producer on Hammaid's Tale had worked with the showrunner, and so she also recommended me. So it's, you know, it's that thing of not only who do you know, but who knows you. So it's kind of the word of mouth. I will say the, like I said, I enjoyed that show, but the second season did look a lot better. You guys did a much better job on that one. It was fun to do. I mean, we had the flood in ours at the very end.

That was really fun. That was really fun to work out how they were going to move. And a lot of them were dancers. And so I didn't, I'm not a gamer, so I didn't really know a lot about Halo. And so when we started, they give you kind of this boot camp and this is the world. And, you know, it's sort of like four hours long seminar about what is Halo. and my director, who was American, who's very funny, was kind of like, oh, my gosh, do I have to sit here through this whole thing?

But it was very helpful, I think, especially if he didn't know the world, because there's books and, you know, there's like so many things to that universe. Yeah, I didn't actually, I played the first one. I didn't own an Xbox when I was young, so I didn't, I never played it either. So I think any of the, like, the hardcore fans are like, just know what happened in the book, you know, whatever. I was like, I don't know, I'm having fun.

Yeah. And was it? I love to read the, I love to read the fan comments after I've done something like that. I don't do that to yourself. I just love all the crazy comments about like, he shouldn't take his helmet off. Yeah. I don't know. I just go down a rabbit hole of internet reading all these.

My favorite one actually was someone had written, this show's too dark I can't see it on my iPad in the park Give me a break That's my new thing is like And I get downvoted a lot

For this online But it's like Sometimes it's you Sometimes it's the viewer's fault You know I spent $9,000 on this TV Yeah well HDR sometimes isn't the best implementation

and you need to black out the thing behind you. No, no, it's good. Also, I can't hear anything. What's your sound system? Well, it's just a TV, but still, you know? Yes. Sometimes it's the viewer's fault. They need to meet us halfway, please.

And sometimes, you know, a lot of people, I mean, I'm that annoying person who goes around, you know, to people's houses and says, your TV's on the wrong setting. Yep. You know, out of the box, your TV is on a terrible setting. You know, and I think people, like, I don't know, I feel like

Lurieg Murano does a lot of this work of like, your TV shouldn't be set to whatever it is when it comes out of the box. It should be, you know, this. And I know on the TV here in the apartment I am in Wales, I was like, right, first thing I do is change, you know, and there's a mode called

filmmaker mode and it says filmmaker mode as the filmmaker intended. It's like... Still not right. They need to have like, they need to have someone like read probably a bigger name before but like uh and i mean name in the public not between us you know but re's a big enough name for us but um you know spielberg mode or something just so that the the audience goes oh okay yeah that one you know and just instinctively

gets drawn to it in terms because yeah i do the same thing at my house i did the nergiest thing i got i got a color calibrator for my because i do color work sometimes and i did that to my tvs there you go that's that's sent there on the roku app And it was just like, and it was like using printer lights. It was like plus one red, plus one. That's a great. I might do that. That sounds great.

One of these little kind of spider things that you put on. Don't get the spider, though. Spider's bad. But I won. I don't know who makes it now. But yeah, I won display, I think Technicolor bought them or something. But they're better. Everyone I've ever heard using the spider, including me, doesn't give accurate results for some reason.

Okay. Couldn't tell you why. Didn't know. Oh, we got to get on here. Oh, I was going to say, just because we're on the HALA thing, what's something that Halo taught you about cinematography that handmaids didn't and vice versa? I mean, Halo taught me a lot about stunts

and how long they take to do and how difficult they are. I mean, I actually love, love shooting stunts, and I would love to do something like shoot a James Bond film just putting it out there in the universe be the first woman to shoot a James Bond I'd love that yeah that would be really cool but yeah the stunt director was amazing

and just like trying to work out how we did all that stuff and they're on wires and then And Phil, who was a stunt director, he kind of suggested we do some of these, like as one as we stitch with wipes, pass the stunt person, and then you go back again, and then there's the real actor and it looks seamless. And so it was kind of, I think it's fun to do all that stuff, but also work out what the heart of that story is. So it's not just like doof, doff, doff for the sake of, you know, shooting something.

aliens or something that you know what point of the stunt scene and and that was fun on gangs of London this last season I did the middle episodes and and I read the script and we had kind of what they call a bottle episode it was so yeah and I read it and I just went I have to do this I have to shoot this because one of the main characters is pregnant she's being chased around like a sort of abandoned office block by the assassins. And she has to give birth like you do. And so she finds a room. She gives birth and then they're after her.

And then, you know, she's crawling in the ceiling. It's like all the critics called it, you know, die hard for cancer. And then she gives birth to the placenta. And then, you know, the head assassin turns up and she strangles him with the umbilical chord. Hell yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we shot that with three cameras and then afterwards I just remember the crew

going, and what, what did we just do? So I think sometimes it's just fun to do stuff like Halo that's, you know, action, iconic shots of Master Chief, you know, I think it's just fun. It's fun stuff. this actually sorry to addendum the question but it was something I can't remember if I was talking to

because we were talking about replicating light and obviously in something like Hamas Tale whatever you often are using available light whatever

or you're replicating light on a stage or something but it occurred to me you can't remember who I was talking to but it occurred to me that anytime you have a show where you're on set

with like a blue screen or whatever or it's just a VFX thing especially if you have to shoot for VFX you need to be way more precise about how you replicate light and I feel like that's got to be such a wonderful education if you can figure that out

you know but also you're also free Halo made me think because I was so used to thinking okay the window's here you know and the practical's on there or you know whatever the real life sort of based in real life situation

And it is. But it was like, Hilo was like, oh, no, we're on another planet. How many suns are there? Sure. What's moving where you could move the light outside the, you know, the spaceship with the window. You know, it was kind of like it was actually completely freeing to think, how do we rethink that? That prep phase must have been fun. Yeah, that was good.

And we actually got to go to Halo, which was Slovenia, but, you know, what that looked like and how you sort of controlled, because you'd seen it in his mind before that. So it was presented in a sort of idealised, you know, petrol lens kind of blurry way or shift and tilt kind of thing. And then he actually got there. So then it was like, but then you're in the real world. So you're back to sort of, you know, big bounces and negative fill. But I think it, yeah, it was, I'd never done sci-fi before.

So it really taught me about it's like unhooking your brain from reality in a way, which was, which was really fun. Yeah. Well, we'll have to have you come back and talk about those lessons. at some point because I've kept you a little over but it was really lovely talking to you and yeah I'd like I said I'd love to have you back on

especially but it's time to do more press or something whatever the new movie is we'll have you back on to that thank you so much for having me you've had so many good people on you've had Katie Goldschmidt who's my friend the best she's wonderful

yeah she I was like because I had her on previously so for that I was just sitting there watching Last of Us, and then her name came up and I went, I'll just text her. Welcome back on the show? She's like, yeah, you need screeners. I was like, you betcha. Yeah, it's a pleasure to add you to the list of illustrious guests. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Of course. It's been great. Frame and Reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frame and refpod.com on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated. And as always, thanks for listening.