Frame & Reference Podcast - 211: "I Don't Understand You" Cinematographer Lowell A. Meyer

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Today we're talking with Lowell A. Meyer about his work on the dark comedy I Don't Understand You!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this episode 211 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Lowell A. Meyer, DP of I Don't Understand You. Enjoy. Every year there's this like dinner that Ari puts on in LA right next right around the week of city gear because they know there's going to be a lot of DPs in town and a lot of their clientele so they get a very nice you know fancy meal for all these DPs and so I've been a couple of years and one year I went and you know you just you know it's a kind of big mixer before you sit down for dinner and I'm I was talking to this one guy named James and I was like oh what do you shoot and he was like really really.

like sort of humble and embarrassed and like sort of just not boasting and he was like yeah I shoot for this like YouTube creator I was like oh who he's like oh you you wouldn't know him his name's Mr. Beast

I was like what you're like Mr. Beast DP and I was I wasn't fanning out but I was sort of like dude give yourself more credit yeah and he was like yeah we're going to do this like Amazon TV show which of course now is like you know this massive massive show but like he wasn't giving himself enough credit and i was the

guy trying to boost this like essentially like youtube videographer but like shooting with alexas and all the stuff and you know i do think i don't know maybe i'm not saying that's the future of cinematography but i do think there's a a place for that stuff and you know well i there's a i mean there certainly is but also like on the one hand i get i get why he's reticent because like at the same time there were stories coming out about them using like fucking 200 mini LFs or whatever it was and like it was just a man there were also stories of like

you know the post production team being brand new to this and just didn't know how to ingest or anything like oh my gosh and I can see how that would be like yeah maybe a room full of like quote unquote sure sure which is the other side of the thing that I was going to say that might make him reticent which I agree with you he shouldn't be

which is like I think all of us got into filmmaking so that we could make Star Wars essentially. Yeah, and literally you took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say Star Wars.

And if you don't, then you're like, oh, I haven't made it. And then especially if you're in the room with someone who did or something like you. Sure, sure, sure.

They're a real, they're a quote unquote real DP. And I can't remember. I was interviewing someone and they said it best, which is like, you're a real DP if you've sat in a parking lot at four in the morning

waiting for someone to come get you with like a shitty coffee and you're just like with your crew just standing there. Totally. Very good. go or yeah or if you've had you know a crew don't like a whole cruise uh like livelihood in your hands if you've had to make really hard decisions and uh have huge budgets you know on your

back and and yeah i don't know i i i don't know i don't know where the where this the thread is going but just that like i guess vertical video youtube all that stuff like well just the idea of what a real dp is i think it's yeah yeah it doesn't need to be in a theater or even a big you know big budget could be relative you know if you've still got you're still running a crew i think that's what because i think videographers i think that the guy that you were talking to probably it was like oh i'm just like a videographer but it's like no you ran a crew well it's also just the idea of doing like live event cinematography you know like if you put roger deacons in that scenario i don't know how he would do i love roger deacons you know sure sure

but i guess what i mean is that there's different you know sometimes it's different horses for different courses and I don't I don't necessarily think there's like there should be a shame to somebody I think everybody like you like you're saying everybody wants to make wants to be Roger Deacons and wants to make images like that movies like that but the truth is not everyone will and I think if you the sooner you embrace that and the sooner you embrace okay well what am I going to make what's going to make me unique what what can I offer what asset can i be to the productions i have director i'm with then like great go for it like i don't know i i i just think there's more to life than just feeling bad that you're not roger dka yeah well and it's like

what's gonna pay the rent like now yeah he's had like five back-to-back great films but using his him as a him as an example uh he's got some fucking stinkers on his resume that i'm sure he's not like super proud of but you got to pay the rent you got to do it you know sure They can't all be. I think at the end of the day, too, it's just like, as long as, like, I learned this early on in my career that it's like. Whereas I feel like I try to be processed oriented. And I just say, okay, what can I do every day that is going to. make me feel good about the work I did, about the frames I made, the lighting I chose,

like, and that's all you really have control over. And maybe you have control over what project you can get that. Hold on. Remember earlier we said we have to redo stuff? Yeah. Oh, no. Is my internet just your internet cut out? But it was hilarious because you went, um, whatever the first thing you said, which was like, all I, what the main thing I've learned is. And then there was nothing. And then, and that's all you got to do. That's amazing. It was a really good cut. Okay, I'll all truncated and keep the internet goes out.

But yeah, basically what I was trying to say is, like early in my career, I learned that there's, you can be goal oriented or you can be process oriented. And hopefully there's a little bit of both, but like you can torture yourself being goal oriented. And some people do make it to the mountain top and like achieve the greatest of great successes. But most don't. And I think a healthy way to look at being a cinematographer is just saying, okay, what I have, control over is what I do between, you know, cut and action, or sorry, action and between cut and action and the job that I'm currently on, the director I'm working with,

how can I support them, how can I make this thing, whether it's going to be a turd, whether it's going to be the greatest movie ever made, how can I make it sing, and how can I treat my crew well? How can I get them to believe in this and work hard for me and make great shots? And, yeah, I just, I really believe in being processed. oriented and if you look at projects that way and life that way, I think you'll have a lot more success and you'll have a lot more fun and hopefully be proud of what you do. Yeah, and especially if you've got a project on your hands that isn't something you're like inherently excited about. I find that once you actually start ideating it, especially when you get around your crew,

no matter how big they are, that can make even like a middling project more interesting if you are processed. Oh, absolutely. It's saying is like once you actually get to the process, you can kind of forget about the goal of making an Oscar winner and you can just focus on like, well, the thing we're doing today is fun at least. We're not digging ditches. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I also think it's just, I don't know about you, but when I work on projects, it's not, it's not always clear to like what's going to succeed and what. oh no you know you can read a script and say hey this is a great script but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the next big thing there's just so many things out of our control as cinematographers that you you have to relinquish that and say hey i can't control if this gets into this festival i can control if this makes money back but i can you know make this dolly shot happen super smooth tell the story get it in time under budget you know all those things and uh and get a bonus shot today or get a B angle that looks awesome that I didn't even think about or yeah or continue the shot longer and find a magic moment you know in between what the shot was designed for and the next shot that it cuts to yeah well that's the other thing too right like and not even just thinking about stuff

for your real but like it it's always even if it's a great film it's always practice you know and if the stakes are lower that's great time to practice like that's why I like music videos early on for like no budget because it's like if i fuck this up no one's watching this music and then if they do it's like yeah yeah yeah yeah that was actually a huge lesson for me was just absolutely phoning it in on something because my friend had 200 bucks and then and then it was it went to get like become a huge hit in europe and so it got thousands and thousands and thousands of views and i was just like yeah should try it harder you know yeah Like, don't judge it based on what your perception of it is.

You never know if it's going to be a hit in Europe. Totally. No, it's true. You just, and that's, I don't know, that's what's cool about the day and age we live in is that there is usually an audience for everything you make, unless it's really, really, really, really bad, you know? And then, and then even then, there's probably an audience for it because it'll become a meme or something like that.

But, yeah, I have an expression with my wife that it's like when I was early in my career, I felt much more like a street fighter. Like I would just take these jobs, these one day jobs, and I'd just like hustle for cash and like punch some dudes in like a fight club style basement, like shooting, like you're saying, like a random docks thing or music video or whatever. And I would just like keep my head down and just it's my reps at a gym and I'm building my muscle. And then I feel like all of us are trying to get to the like prize fighter status of like a deacons or something where you have one big movie. year and it's a big cahoona with a big director and all eyes are on it and it's a studio and

I've found that that's the trajectory I think for most of us are what we want what we want but it helps you to stay in a street fighter mindset and not to you know you want you want to act like a prize fighter and look like a prize fighter but I think once you're on set for me I've just been like stay in that street fighter mode say indie to do anything you need to do to make the day it doesn't matter if it looks bad or if it's going to go on shitty rigs, if you're going to go on shitty rigs, just like hustle and stay hungry and like think quick and act fast, that sort of thing.

I feel like being on shitty rigs these days is almost a badge of honor. Totally. I've submitted things to shitty rigs they haven't posted on. They weren't shitty enough. Like it feels shitty. But it's, yeah, I always,

I make that joke with Cruz sometimes, especially when you get into like the second half of a shooting day and you're maybe a half hour behind. or an hour behind, you're trying to make up. And it's just like, dude, who cares? If it's safe and it works, I don't care what it looks like, get the shot, put it on a sandbag, put it, you know, whatever. As long as it's not affecting the creative,

as long as it's not like somehow making the shot worse. Like, like a, yeah, I remember an example of that when we were shooting servant, we just had to get like a close-up of a doorknob and someone turning the doorknob, but you wanted the camera to be like basically flushed with the wall and, like, completely profile the door. You know, most cameras with a bigger lens or a large format camera, you put it next to a wall and it's a few inches away or it can't quite get in the spot. I think actually for us it was a door that was like right against a 45 degree wall.

So like you couldn't put the camera there or you would have had to cut the set or some sort of extravagant thing that we were running at the time. So I was like, just get me a one by one mirror off of the electric cart and I'm going to put it on a stand. I'm going to put it right by the doorknop and we'll just shoot into the mirror and anything in the shot can be reversed. There's no, like, writing. There's no hair continuity. It's just a hand. And you can move the ring or whatever if it's supposed to be the other hand. And I remember night scene and Night Shyamon seeing that. I'd be like, wow, look at you. Like,

do you see there? And I was like, yeah, whatever you need to get the shot done, you know, as long as it's not affecting the creative negatively. You know, that reminds, I thought you were going to say you stole the Matrix thing. No, what do you mean? So in the matrix. So in the Matrix, there's a, I guess it's a, so I'm a huge fan. Like, you know, that, that was the movie that kind of made me want to get in the movies for the most part. Totally. And all the behind the scenes featureettes, like I fucking have devoured it. But so there's this one, I don't know how famous it is, is why I preempted that. But basically when Neo and Morpheus are going into the Oracle's apartment, there's a scene where, you know, Morphus is like, I told you,

I can show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it. So then there's a closeup of Neo going for the doorknob, but it's, it's lensed up directly on the doorknob. So there's a reflection of, of the crew in the doorknob. So they just put, because the Matrix is hilariously low budget for how cool it is, they just put like a big piece of duvetine over the camera. And then they took Morpheus's green tie and just draped it over the front. Oh, yeah, I have seen that. It's so, Warren's Fishburts back here, like, completely, you know, looks like he's like a big box man,

but you know the right right right right knob kind of sells it that's genius yeah i've got to look at that image again but i know i've seen it i remember i think it was on like a social media post and being like wow how like is that real that's so clever well and it's fun i think it's fun too because like i i work with directors who are like how can we do that like how can we do the kind of practical how can we trick the audience like i think there's a there's a fun to that Because we now have all the tools at our disposal and we can just green screen or VFX anything. And so there's kind of a fun to being like, what can I get away with? What can I what can I do that's even going to trick myself?

You know, that sounds so stupid or so yeah, high school film project or something, you know? Yeah. Well, and that was the thing too about that film, even as like a 10 year old whenever it came out, that didn't trick me. I was like, is that the camera? You know, because it's like, you see. reflection, you expect to see yourself, right? So you immediately, right. And I just in my head, I was like, that's cool. Like, I didn't even think it was shitty. I was like, this neat. But you got some of that, you shot two things with night, right? I worked on a TV show that he show ran called Servant. And

then I, uh, he produced a movie called Caddo Lake that shot. And then I shot, uh, knock at the cabin with him as well. Oh, so three and then two cabin movies. And to, well, Caddo Lake doesn't have, I don't know if it has a cabin in it. Oh, I thought you said cabin at the lake. Sorry, knock. Knock at the cabin and then Caddo Lake. Caddo Lake. Okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah. Well, in any case, the question I was just going to say was like, obviously he's one of the more legendary filmmakers that we've had in the past 50 years. Totally. I was wondering if there was anything that working on his projects has taught you. I mean, I think in general, like, he's a director that, like, I think a lot of, you know, every director is unique, but a lot of them have certain echoes or have certain characteristics. And I think, you know, he aligns very much in that, like, he's a director who preps, you know, like crazy that kind of thinks devil in the details is, is sort of, oh. And time is the most precious thing on set to him. So I think he's someone who, I don't know.

I think in terms of like teachings or like lessons or something like that, I don't know if I, I don't know if I think of it like that. But I do just think of like moments where, you know, he was very, very, he was very clever. Like, you know, he's just always thinking of, okay, how can we fight off two things at the same time? How can we get like, like a good example was, you know, our knock of the cabin, it's very weather dependent for the exteriors. It all takes place in 24 hours and there's a storm that bruised over the course of the movie. And so, you know, he was clever in that we had two cameras and we were just shooting at this cabin and sort of the surrounding woods.

And, you know, it was one of these Pennsylvania days where you're getting, you know, rain half of it, sun, the other half of it. and nothing sort of super consistent. So we'd set up a camera for a cloudy scene and we'd set up a camera for a sunny scene because the movie takes place in 24 hours. So wardrobe never really changes. You're using the same like four actors for the most part. Like he's someone who really knows how to like use his resources

to his advantage. And he doesn't like wasting resources, if anything, he wants to keep milking them. Because he's very, very smart, very smart filmmakers. is obviously made a tremendous amount of films. So he's very experienced. He's like one of the more experienced people on a film set, I think.

And a lot of different kind of sort of, oh, totally. But he's very, he's very sharp. He knows not how he knows how to not waste time. He knows how to like move quick. So he was very good at being like, well, let's set up a cloudy camera and let's set up a sunny camera, basically. And whichever one we get, we'll just jump to that set. Or, you know, shooting with two picture cars and shooting them side by side and

kind of bouncing back and forth from one or the other. So, you know, I feel like I'm already a very efficient D.P. And I think we got along really well because of that. But he kind of helped mine more of that out of me, I think, and be like, think even more three-dimensional or four-dimensional. How can you be always shooting something? How can you always be using every second of that clock, you know, preciously? Yeah.

I mean, that's so smart. That's one of those things. that like I feel like I ask a lot of DPs like how do you maintain efficiency? Because especially at my level like there's never a budget for sometimes even two setups like you're talking about but that is smart

just like having not even not even having a contingency plan but having a contingency set up. Yeah, oh totally like literally it's like you can't not be shooting you can not be shooting because that's the other thing like when you are on that sort of prize fighter level

you know money really or time really is money and it is like tens of thousands of dollars slipping by every you know 10 15 minutes that goes by so you do not want to waste a second of it and you want to make sure that the tool that you're using and maybe you're excited because you can afford more expensive tools like a techno crane but you want to make sure that techno crane works it gets around time the people who are operating it are experienced and that like you're not spending more time that you have to figuring out the shot or you know figuring out halfway through the setup that it's the wrong tool then you're then you're colossally screwed you know or you're you're you're wasting a tremendous amount of money

um but yeah well you remind me of something else um what was it it was uh efficiency crap no yeah i i i've uh lost a thought but yeah just just that that i think was a that's a That's a priority, gosh, I really lost the thought. But anyway, it was a good anecdote. Sure. Well, when it comes back, it just interrupt me. But the, I was going to say what, when you're in a situation like that where you can pit it, how often are you in a sort of hospitality role where you're just standing there going like, tell me when and I'll pull the trigger and we'll go? Or how often do you have to make that call?

Like, how often is the, the swings of budgets on your shoulders, so to speak? I think to a certain extent and hold on I'm going to answer a question the anecdote just came back to me which is that like night is if I think he was one of the first filmmakers I worked with who was like very like all this being said

that it's like time is money user resources wisely all that he was one of the first people who I also met and worked with who was like very much about the idea of iteration and that like look you have to get it perfect on the day of set but like you're never going to get it perfect and things are going to change and like it's okay

to do reshoots and it's okay to take your movie and edit it and then learn something from it or it's okay to go home with the dailies watch them and then go oh you know what we missed something um i didn't think of it i i know i storyboarded the storyboarded the whole movie but i didn't think we would need that close up so why don't we go back tomorrow and get the close up and yeah he was one of the first filmmakers that i worked it who was very like we need to find an extra half hour tomorrow to pick up the thing from a week ago or we need to find an extra half hour next week to when we get the actor back to do this and we would do that on serving a lot we'd watch the daily every day at lunch from the day before and we did the same thing on knock

but like that it's a fluid process and it's okay to like you're supposed to learn as you go hopefully you're doing everything right than you plan in advance like you're not learning how to do the shots you wanted to do in advance, but once you get those shots, it's okay to learn and iterate and say, oh, yeah, we're going to do another round of pickups. And at that level, when you are getting studio feedback, you're getting audience screening feedback, you know, you will get things that you say, oh, okay, we have to redo that because the audience isn't getting it. Like we, we were smarter than we thought or we didn't lay it out clear enough or, or we, that thing we cut because of budget, we actually need it back or whatever, you know.

So, um, iteration was a big, yeah, that, that was sort of a little bit of a lesson. I hadn't had the luxury of having prior on like indies and stuff like that. Because a lot of the indies I've worked on it was like, you get 20 days and that's it. And that, then the movie disappears forever, you know, um, the AD is, whereas the train tracks and you're not getting off of. Yeah, totally, totally. Um, or just the reality, reality, you know, um, but yeah, you asked, um, when was your question? Oh, you were saying how much of that rides on my shoulders, like the idea of like budgetary, like, how did you frame it? It was like, so because the idea being that like for people listening who like aspire to shoot something like this saying like, oh, you know, we've got two setups and one of them might be a techno crane and it's, you know, you got to make the call, you know, to use that and maybe it's the wrong thing and you're kind of you fucked it.

But how often does that actually fall on your shoulders to be like, let's do that versus, you know, my framing was being an agent of hospitality waiting for someone like the director to be like, we're actually going to do the second setup right now. And you just go, great. And you go set it up. Because that in my, that feels less terrifying than that having to make the call, you know. I think it's like it depends on the relationship and the director, right? a lot of some directors um are like night very experienced can kind of tell you a million ways to do the shot and this is the way they want to do it or this is the way they want their production around or or like other directors might from the gecko say i want to make this entire movie handheld and

like that's how it is and then you go cool i don't have to think about any of that unless something very obviously apparent comes up like a shot where they want the camera to go 50 feet in the air and you go well is that okay are we handheld on a crane am i should we just do that as a crane and then make you a handheld feel you know there's i think there will be times when you have to ask yourself how do we do that shot what what does that look like you know i think if you have you know all of us need to have an imagination going into a shoot and we have to pre-visualize and maybe that's storyboarding maybe that's just kind of saying okay this is the shot i scouted it It starts here, ends there.

Okay, that's 50 feet. Oh, am I, how am I going to, how am I going to shade 50 feet? Is the camera going to move 50 feet? How am I going to shade that? Because this scene takes place during a storm. Okay, can I get a balloon? Oh, balloon's only 20 by 20. And I think you just, you just have to tackle every single shot.

That's at least been in my experience. And that can be tough because there can be, you know, 1,200 shots in a movie, and you have two weeks to prep. And in those scenarios, I feel like I just go to the, the biggest cahoas. I go, okay, I'm not going to address every single shot. There's a close-up of someone clicking on a mouse. That's probably just going to be a tripod and this lens and blah, blah, blah.

But, you know, there's a shot that's like insert on someone's tooth. And the camera goes from one tooth to another tooth to another. Then you're like, oh, that's that macro? Okay, do we need like a tiny motorized slider? Okay, what's the path of that slider? Does that the wrap around their mouth? Can it get bad if we gain an inch every tooth we go by? you know like and and then maybe you do a test and maybe you you know i i think at the end of the day

the dp is like it's an important role and it's on the slate for a reason and directors in the title because you are given a lot of authority and a lot of power and a lot of jurisdiction and and yeah the fuck stops with you a little bit you know and i think it's also like um i kind of think of being a dp like how much extra credit are you trying to get on your test you know are like you it's up to you do you want to like put in the extra work and say you know what i've thought about this and i did some research and i went to cindic year i saw this thing or i watch this bt s thing on you know how they made children of men and they used a special sparrow head in the car that's smaller you know and

you know what's scary sometimes is when people do say okay that sounds good go for it and you go wait oh wait oh you're trusting me i was just sort of i don't know how to you yet yeah i was a spitball and as far as i know no one's done this like i'm trying i i have so many examples of that but none of them are coming in mind but there've been oh yeah like yeah there's a scene and servant that took place in uh uh the backyard and it was a kid's birthday party and like i just remember thinking oh my gosh there's going to be like a playpen of animals 14 a adults and eight kids and that I've been on the backyard so it's not that big and I was just like how are we going to do like we can't just be setting up dolly track okay move all the animals out

bring in the track lay the track I was just like that's going to be a nightmare we're never going to make any day and I remember having an idea of like okay well I think I used children and men I was like okay well they had a camera from above if I could just like always keep the camera mounted from above then I never have to worry about track below all the track will be above me And then no one will have to move anything. Both things can coexist at the same time. Just dress. And I was like, okay, well, some posts.

Yeah, yeah, like that idea. And luckily the backyard had a wall. And above the wall is just like blue screen. Anyway, it was on a stage. And so I think I, and this is the caveat to all this, is like you don't have to think of it all yourself because hopefully you have a crew that is also experienced and you can run ideas off from him.

And this is the best thing. I love to do is I go hey I have an idea I might have even sold the director and producer on it but I it's a little half fate hey key grip hey Gaffer hey operator hey AC like is this does this make sense am I crazy could you actually operate this thing

or like the movie I'm working to finish that story like we basically ended up putting a techno crane on deck like outside the wall of the set so the technogram basically base was raised high up and then you could arm down into the set and kind of live in this 360 world and never see the base of the crane because we just put a little blue screen wall and it was already kind of higher up and so it worked like a freaking charm and it was awesome but like it was something I had to think of in advance and prep everyone and make sure that expense could

be approved because that wasn't like what the producers had thought of in advance. thought, okay, just film it. Like, we always film it just now as animals or whatever. Which is never expensive. But I think in those scenarios, like, your benefit is being logical and honest and transparent with everyone. So, you know, I think in that scenario, I was like, hey, producers, like, think about it. We're about to take over this whole space.

We want to make this these days. We want to keep it to these many days. I think I can do that if I have this piece of gear that will allow us to literally move from setup to set up to set up like instantaneously you know as long as the lighting can also be pretty consistent which it was because we just did kind of like a cloudy gray day thing I was like we can get through the setup yeah we can get through this like manageably and I think all of them are like yeah actually that does make a lot of sense like it would really suck to put a dolly in there how are we going to fit a dolly in there you know and yeah I think that

behooves any DEP to just be like logical transparent and get people on their side And I think also you want to have a plan B, you know, because the reality is sometimes producers or live producers like really want that. They say, yeah, that does make so much sense. We should do that. But the reality is we can't. Like, we don't have the budget or we can't afford to bring in the tech and all the stuff. If you could get a jib, you know, that doesn't need a tech, then maybe. But like, you know, and so I think it behooves a DP to say, okay, what's the ideal?

What's like if I had all the money in the world, what could I, what would I, what would I get? And then saying, okay, if I couldn't get that, what's like the Home Depot version that I could build myself or what's the poor man's equivalent, you know? The big one in college for us was definitely building our own sliders out of, uh, elbow bracket or L bracket or whatever. Yeah, PVC pipe and stuff. Yeah, and skateboard. Yeah. And we took apart of skate or two skateboards and put, uh, yeah, angle iron. There you go.

Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, totally, totally. Then they, the 90 degree metal things. And like, that's awesome. And like I did the same thing. Like my first feature ever was like a $20,000 or $40,000 micro budget thing.

And I just made covered wagons. I like went to Home Depot. I learned I never like wired. you know electrical outlets together and sockets and like definitely shocked myself once or twice but like figured it out and then you go cool now I have a light that I made and like it costs less than a hundred bucks to make this thing and I can have much for life if I want did you do so go full upgrade and attach the pigeon plate to it yeah yeah I that was the most expensive part is like film tools and being like I'm going to buy this one piece of metal that's for some reason

caused like $80. Yeah. But everything else here cost me less than $80, you know. Yeah. Yeah, totally. The exact same thing. But I was in Arizona at the time and we couldn't get the little pigeon plate. So we just had to like, you know, fucking whatever.

But then one summer, someone came back and had one. And we're like, oh, now we can make it a fancy piece of equipment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, now we're going to back too. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know.

I, again, I feel like that's like that street fighter mentality that. hopefully no one loses sight of because I've found even on the biggest productions like there's always a time and a place for that and it will help you because it will also buy you I think a little bit of cred with the producers because then you can say hey look I asked for the technocrine when I needed it and then I just made like a Home Depot light and we we lit the whole scene with this one Home Depot light and and you know I think being a good DP is learning what hills to die on, you know, again, hopefully for the right reasons, hopefully because they're genuinely helpful tools and will make the scene better and all that. And then knowing how to turn that off

or say, oh, this scene, like I remember the last movie I worked on, it took place, there's a scene that took place in a concert hall and it's supposed to take place like at off hours when someone's like using the concert hall to their own devices. And it's a long scene and it's sort of of like a mute a neat cute scene and you could have easily fit a balloon or two or something in that space and made it look really slick and I remember thinking okay I'm not going to do that I may use the there's a million lights in this space I'm just going to use those and it might look a little harsh and garish at times but like that's how it would look and that will get us through this and like I can save the balloon light for when I really really need it and I remember

I think somewhat on set to me said that at some point they were like you're really brave as a DP, which maybe is a bad thing. I don't know. That feels like a backhanded compliment. They were like, you're really brave because a lot of other DPs would have like really like blown all the stops to get this thing to get a bigger tool or something. And you're just like going balls to the wall like living on the edge.

And I was like, yeah, I don't know that there's a time and a place to like know when to yeah, cash in and get something. I don't know. It just feels like you have to know where the line is. You know, and that's part of your, that's also part of what you're saying, what you're getting at. It's like, where does that fall? And I think it does fall on your shoulders. And you can be your own boss, your own leader, take your own chances, you know,

and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And like, you just learn. It's all a little bit of a learning experience. But hopefully the losses are small and not noticed by many, you know, Yeah, I don't think I've been in a situation where it was like a colossal failure. I think that that would be hard to recover from. Well, and I was going to say with the idea of you being real brave, because the way I would do it would not be brave. And it would be to use the movers like you're saying, but then just put the fusion between like real close between the person.

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Build like a 20 by 20 or, or yeah, you're saying like little four by four flags or something. It's something you can get on fucking Amazon. you know shower totally cares um totally yeah oh absolutely like there and that's what's fun about this career is like it is as creative as you want and like i remember a director telling me once a friend of mine saying like prep is free like no one's going to stop you from doing prep work like you you can do as much prep and as much thought and as much care into every single shot or you can

to the opposite and say, hey, I'm just going to go in and go with my gut and like not overthink it and just figure it out on the day as it comes. And like both methods are right and both have their own rewards and their and their own caveats, you know, and asterisks to them. That's something that, uh, I mentioned it a bunch, but that measure Schmidt said to me that like has really stuck with me because I love obviously like doing it, right? I like to you show up and film the thing. I, you know, and he was he I'm I'm paraphrasing and kind of like making it sound more extreme but basically he was like I fucking hate filming because that's just where compromises start prep you get to dream everything's cool it works exactly the way I want and then you get on it's just like and no and no and no and I was totally that's actually a really interesting way to think of it which made prep more exciting for me because I used to kind of get a little bored with prep well I think prep is where like obviously the movie is made on set, but I do think prep is where, like, he's right. It's where you dream,

but I think it's also, like, you can get ahead of certain things. You can understand, like, once you have all the information in front of who is on your crew, where you're shooting, what are the hours you're shooting there. Once you have everything in front of you, you hopefully still have time to react and continue to prep. And like prep has iteration and layers to it, especially when you get on a really long job with, weeks and weeks or months of shoot days where okay you do a broad prep at the beginning and you cover your basis then you start prepping once you learn okay how does the set work and how many shots are we getting a day and how many you know who's who's the weak link or who's the best link and

who am I leaning on and um and how does this actor work do we shoot their coverage shirts like once you start learning more about the movie you can continue to iterate your shot list your shooting clan your shooting style um and i think that's the best version of it is you it's always reactive it's always alive and hopefully you don't just think of it as like well we made the greatest shot list ever and then the movie turned up on it's like hopefully it's like no we made a great shot list then we you know started shooting and hopefully there maybe there's a speed bumper too but we reacted and we made a great bunch shots you know and it's all um it's all it's all it really is all iterative. I really do think it's just about you being willing to say, how much am I going to

listen to the project? How much am I going to listen to what the director is giving, their actors giving? My crew is giving. And, you know, hopefully you, yeah, you just learn and become a better DP and realize, like, what are your own strengths and weaknesses and how do you put that into the movie? And hopefully you feel like you're not compromising. Like, because I hear that and I, I Here, I understand what he's saying, but I also think, like, that's with a very hard view of what a process can be, you know, and you can make your process organic, you know, it doesn't have to be so like, it was perfect and then it got shit. Well, like, like I said, I was, I was making it, uh, maybe no, totally intense. No, and I'm not not making, not knocking on him either because he's amazing and he's a tough, super talented DP. And like, that sounds like, Fincher too. You know, it sounds like a director. I feel like that's where he probably

You know, he works with and and it's funny because like the doll that I talked to Eric about this at one of these already dinners I was mentioning, but like it worked on serving. We worked with his dolly grip from make and from killer. This guy's amazing dolly grip. Yeah. Truly this guy, Dwayne Barr, if you ever get a chance to meet or work with Dwayne Barr, like do not hesitate. He is the best dolly grip I've ever worked with like hands down full. stop period and like yeah we'd be on sound on servant and like his first take of something of like a nine part complex dolly move was like incredible and he'd be like that was the worst thing i've ever talked and i was like what are you talking about i was like that's the best thing i've ever seen

and and then we'd roll and and he was so hard on himself so so hard on itself and it broke my heart because i was like dwayne you don't get how good you are and then like during the shoot Eric Messerschmitt won the Oscar for Mink and like the next day we all show and he thanked Wayne in his speech and the next day we all went to sit we're like Wayne dude you just won an Oscar like you and Eric just won an Oscar last night

he was like yeah it's fine I don't know I don't watch my own work it's all bad it's all and I was like dude shut up I was like your product isn't so good you just need to like get on board with it you know well it goes back to what you're saying earlier about like everyone seems to be hard on

their own work that there's always an audience for something. You know, and we're talking about films as a whole, but even just our own specific work, like, you work on Mank and then you're like, that's, but,

you know, it's not Star Wars. It's just always going to be it's not Star Wars. Totally. And then you watch Star Wars. It wasn't the original. Yeah. No,

or I was going to say you watch Star Wars and you're like, wait, then Dolly has a bunch of bumps in it. Right. You're like, well, I wasn't the smoothest panel. And then you go, yeah, maybe it isn't about that.

Maybe it isn't about the pursuit of perfection. It's about like a pursuit of a tone and a cohesion of elements coming together that you don't have full control. Like you don't make the music that goes to your dolly. If you don't make the edit that suddenly makes all your shots go together smoothly or whatever, like you just control the shot at hand and you do it as best you can and you move on. And you have to sort of, I think as a D.P, you have to have a little bit of like, a little bit of the memory of a goldfish of like what you did yesterday. Like, hopefully you take the good parts with you, but you have to kind of, I think you have to forget like, oh, well, that didn't work as well. They hoped. Oh, well, won't do that again or try again next time, you know. Well, one thing you said that reminded me speaking of shitty rigs was when you're talking about like, you know, planning and then getting there and then starting to iterate from there was I remember on the shitty rigs podcast they were talking about.

how wouldn't it be great if you do all the prep and everything you shoot for a week and then you take a week off and then rehire or change whoever you need to and then shoot the actual movie I mean that does happen like that is essentially filmmaking whether because it's true it would be nice if it was more structured like that but like that is like most of the firings that happen on a movie set or within the first week you know and like I like what David Mullen said in a podcast once he said you know know the first five days in the movie like the back of your hand

every shot you're going to do every setup every lighting setup blah blah blah and then like forget the rest because then it will be ingrained in you and you'll sort of you won't need references anymore you'll have the first five days and those will be the references and you'll just kind of keep iterating off of that and I

guess maybe it doesn't apply to hiring but I think it's true that like I do like there's a thing that happens like the movie I'm on now and a TV show is on and it happens a lot. There are like pre-shoot days that are sometimes built in. And like it's kind of a funny concept because they pre-shoot day might have like a connotation to it to like there's a skeleton crew or you're shooting like what's precious material or like it's a trial. There is a little bit of that like this movie we did two pre-shoot days. But what's funny is like they end up being

just pull on big day. And we shot the first shot in the movie and the last shot of the movie. And you're like, those are important shots. Those are like, those are and they were really complicated shots with like set wall that pulls out and dolly try and like like like light the lighting cues and like uh i think people i think the best version of it i've experienced was on thunder road we did that we called it day zero but like me jim the director and actor and like a producer just went and shot kind of mini montage moments that were just jim and no other cast And, like, I was pulling my own focus and doing my own slide on the slider and, you know, like the one camera person, right, essentially. And that felt nice because what that allowed us to do on that movie was like, explore the tone and sort of be like, okay, is this concept working? Is the idea of all these long zooms or the idea of these oneers, is this working? And so, yeah, I think there's a version of it. you could achieve like you the shitty rigs guys like it's just like we're talking about with extra credit as a DP it's like it's up to you if that's what you want to do do it like no one's necessarily stopping you from doing it the only things that are stopping you are maybe like cast availability or like location availability or something but if you're making a an indie film that all takes place in one location and the actors never change their wardrobe then like there's a lot you can do or get away with that you know

can be building up to the big thing happening. Did you shoot the short Thunder Road? I didn't shoot the short. No, I shot just the feature. But I know the DP. Yeah, it's true. Daniel shot the short. Yeah, I mean, I remember when that came out,

that was very inspiring for a lot of us, I feel, because it was like, I think it didn't it like premiere on Vimeo or something? It was just one of those ones where it like just showed up. And we were like, hold on, that looks good, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're cheating, you know. Yeah, and it was made for $10,000 and they, you know, did it in a day. And I think it was just a lot of like rehearsing and saying, okay, this is going to be a winner.

And we're kind of keeping it simple. But obviously, it's not simple to do a 13 minute long winner that literally has a song and dance in it and all that. You know, like it's, yeah, they did a great job. and I was lucky to be a part of the feature. And Jim is one of those filmmakers who is very like, just make it happen. Whatever you want it to be, let it be.

Don't let anybody kind of tell you how to make a movie or stop you from making a movie you want to make. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. Like, sometimes easier said than done, depending on what the script calls for. But like, I don't know, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of ways to make movies. It's just a shortage of ideas, you know?

Yeah. Well, we should probably talk about, I don't understand you, before a PR, like, laser beam shows. Sure. I do. I feel bad because I saw the trailer in the, I can't remember what it was before, but it was like in theaters. I was like, I looks great. I don't want to see it. Oh, cool.

And then I was sent the screener, and I was like, cool. And what I normally do is I will wait until, like, the night before or the day of, if possible. And then I'll watch movies, so it's fresh. Because a lot of times I'll be sent, like, to a screener. screening, like a physical screening, and the interview doesn't happen for like three weeks. And then my notes don't make any sense of what I could get because I'm in a dark theater, you know, I don't. Sure, sure, sure. And so I was going to watch it last night and the screener expired on the 16th. Oh, no. So I haven't seen it. I've only seen the trailer,

but it's fine for people who haven't seen it. Here, I'll just take you through a beep by B. Yeah, yeah. Just one. No, that's fine. From what I've seen, though, it does look like gorgeous and my initial thought it was like initially oh this is like a fun low budget thing but it doesn't if it was low budget at least in the trailer certainly doesn't look like it like you shot the shit out of that like all the like everything just has this wonderful uh gradation to it and tonality to it like all the outside stuff match the inside stuff in terms of like light quality and I'm like that's hard to do you know and yeah it's it looks very impressive

Thanks, man. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I mean, you know, the trying to think the big challenges on that movie were just like, you know, it was a, it was an independent film, like a slightly bigger budget than maybe Indies had done in the past. But yeah, it was one of those movies where it's like, once these actors leave this country, once you leave this country, you're not filming another frame again. So get it all in the can, when you can, as soon as you can. And yeah, it's like a deceivingly, it's a, yeah, it was simple on, it's simple and not simple because there's a lot of stunt work to it. There's gags, there's prosthetics, there's floodwork, and there's scenes where, yeah, they're, you're in the woods, in the rain, in, you know, a thunderstorm that you're making of your own devices. And that just complicates things and leads to remote filmmaking, large nightwear setups. and then going to like an interior

that feels warm and cozy and then someone's like falling on a flight of stairs okay how are we going to film that safely in this like location that's from like almost almost pre-BC you know like AD or sorry BC pre-A D BC like time period and how do we not destroy this location

how do we do this safely and so there's a lot of like fun practical stunt work to it and it was just a fun time Like, I hadn't made a comedy in a while, and I forgot, like, how much fun making a comedy actually is. Because, like, the tone of the movie usually does trickle down in the tone of the set experience. And, like, this was a genuinely fun movie to be a part of their directors who were, like, dear friends of mine. My wife produced the movie, which is also just, like, a bonus fun thing. So it was a big family affair.

And it was in Italy. So, like, everybody brought their familyism. It was just very, like, a tight-knit, like, shooting. experience where like the actors were close with the crew and the crew were all close even though none of us sometimes there were real language barriers between me and the crew like all of us got along very well is a very like positive working experience and just yeah a lot of fun so I was like very grateful to be a part of something that's just genuinely fun you know yeah that I mean it looks fun but I did see in an interview that you had mentioned the scheduling differences or like the day you know

day yeah yeah yeah yeah the the line sort of that that will just completely baffle me a little bit is like okay they they shoot you know 10 hour days with a hour lunch um so it's nine hours of actual filming and it's great it's like such a great healthy work life balance and like it kind of really did make like i went to rome with my wife and our six month old kid and so it made like having a six month old kid on a film set like viable and great and um a really rewarding experience but like what the only thing that frustrated me is that the italian crews will only agree to eat their meals in like a two hour window when you're supposed to eat a meal so you know in the states we might have a call time at 4 p.m and it's like a splitter night shoot and we eat

lunch at 10 p.m. right right they would never do that they would be like what do you mean you eat lunch from 11 to 1 and you eat dinner from 7 to 9 and like that's it and so you can the movie basically involved a lot of nightwork obviously and we had a lot of interior night work so you know you can fake night a lot of the time and so there were whole days where it could have just been a normal daytime shoot with tented out windows right but instead everybody like if you if you had any sort of like version of night in that week like there was basically no split there wasn't really a split if it was a split it had to be from 2 p.m. on or 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. on even if you could have started the day at 11 and gotten like two hours a night because

you would have had a break for two meals and the producers were like well you're never going to have a 10 a.m. call time because then you're breaking an hour into the day or two hours into the day and then you're going to break again six hours after that so it was that's the only frustration i've had it's like your call time was even like either like 7 a.m and you have lunch when you're supposed to have lunch or it was like 4 p.m and you have dinner when you're supposed to have dinner but there was nothing really in between and i was like guys you're killing me with asleep like i hate night shoots i hate working till 2 in the morning why can't we all agree it would be better to start at 10 a.m and they're all right it's impossible it's impossible no no no

it's not possible but other than that everybody everything about the hours the set experience like it was great there wasn't really like OT isn't a thing like they would almost last they'd be like what do you mean you want me to work

longer I'm gonna go home yeah I'm gonna go eat dinner I'm not gonna eat I don't need the money or something or they have socialized health care so they don't need the money you know that helps And what I'll say to the way it works, too, is like in Italy, like nationally speaking,

you can only have up to three hours of like overtime within a week's amount of work, something like that. So there were certain allowances we were given, like on one of these days where we had a ton of blood on set, prosthetics, like, you know, stunt sequence, we could tell, like, okay, a reset. Like, we're doing our job. We're planned everything to a T. We're getting the shots we need, but we have to get, like, another take.

Right. They need to get, like, two takes. And the reset is going to take 20 or 30 minutes to clean the set, to get the new prostate or whatever, clean the blood. And there were one or two times like that where the crew was like, it's okay, do a half hour O.T. You know, but it's something you can't plan in advance. It would have to be, like, requested the day of. Right.

Like, you know, within a few hours of you rapping. And the crew kind of gets together and goes, like, are we going to allow these. brony's another half hour but that's it it would be like a half hour and that's it it's not like estates where you could end up being in like two hours of overtime it would be like most an hour but really more like a half hour and it's almost like the equivalent of like grace it'd be like okay get get the set up you're in we'll go a half hour but we're not we're not sticking around for more than that well and to their credit aside from like fucking you on night shoots like shout out to them for enforcing work-life balance totally oh man I loved it I was there was a part of me like the

filmmaker I mean were like man ah it'd be great to get one more shop the the human in me was like this is how you do it like this is awesome and what's sort of been a little sad is like after that shoot I would come back to the states and tell folks like man this is how they do it and everyone in the states unanimously all the crew are like that's what we should do that yeah That's what we should do. And I was like, we should, but we don't. Because most people go, I'll take the OT. I'll take the money.

So need the money. That was something I was going to, exactly what I was going to bring up, which is like, especially like, you know, crustier, older crew members. And this is not a positive, but it's become what they're used to, which is like, I want OT. I want to work a 16 hour a day because then I can make extra money. And again, I think it's. it's one of if depending i don't care what your politics are i think we can all get on board

with socialized health care if the answer is you can just work normal hours and not have to think about that yeah yeah it's a 12 hour day is a long day it's a long fucking day it's a long long day everyone else is working eights yeah i remember we had so we've worked in italy for the movie and then we had a weekend shoot in new york at the end where we had to do the see there's a sequence with a like Amanda side friend is in the film and she has like a reoccurring kind of yeah basically from a phone where she's this person who's going to uh give the husband's her child she's going to be the surrogate mother and like uh or the adoptive mother and um we had a shoot like yeah nine pages in one day five pages in another day like a lot of work so it helps having the

12 hour days but i remember by hour like 10 and a half or 11 because we went to from 10 hours in Italy to 12 in New York, I remember by 10 and a half hour, 11, I was like, whoa, what is going on? We're still shooting. Like, we should go, oh, I'm tired. This is tiring work. And everyone was like, what are you talking about? Let's keep going.

And I, I've gotten lucky. I did made a movie in Toronto. It was 11 hour days. And now I'm in Dublin doing 10 hour days. And like, it is more responsible because everybody gets a set early. Everybody leaves a little bit later. you never like it's not like taillight it's there it's not like camera wrap and it's tail lights it's a camera wrap and then you're okay you're doing the paperwork you're getting the cart something you're having your meeting for tomorrow like it ends up being 12 hours even on a 10 hour day so you know the the concept that we all work 12 hours and then an hour commute and an hour meetings and an email it's like that's a 15 hour day by the time you're ready to like shut off and that's it's just I don't know it's it's very difficult. gold. So I feel like it improves us all to try our best to not be an OT world. And like,

I don't know if it means like putting, maybe it means putting your foot down saying absolutely not, but I think it means like having that discussion with production and, you know, being honest and saying like, hey, I don't want my career to work OT. What can we do? Or saying like, this is another responsibility as a DP like you were asking you before, like making sure you are the right tools. It's like also making sure you're going into the day with a makeable day. You know, I think that's a conversation that the DP, the AD, and the director all need to have like in prep and say, hey, we have 50 shots in the shot list. That doesn't seem super makeable. And all of them are like, you know, dolly shots with trap. Like that doesn't seem super makeable.

Can we revisit this or can we think about this? Is there a different tool? And maybe that is the DP saying, Hey, I saw this cool camera called the Renan 4D. Like maybe if we use that, we don't have to even everywhere. Yeah, I think it's like you could say, hey, we don't need to level the trap. We use track, but you just throw it down. And like the 4D will take care of the rest because it's got an arm and it's got a remote head and like, you know, and then maybe you've never done that before, but you do tests and you figure it out. And maybe that does save you like two hours that day of not having a level track constantly.

And if you use a 4D, you don't even really have to have a nice track. You can go back to the old skateboard angle iron joint because it can be bumpy as fuck. Who cares? It'll fix that. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Or you're rolling over like you don't even put track down. You're just rolling over like bumpy floorboards.

Yeah. And the fourth axis stabilizes it. So, you know, it's it truly just comes down to like, yeah, no, where can you be of service? where it can be helpful like because hospitality isn't just saying yes the hospitality is also thinking of something they didn't even know they wanted and thinking of the thing they didn't even know would help them and and kind of giving it to them in this nice catered friendly way that that is you know of service yeah you know in in the um cabin i guess uh actually i suppose in both cabin movies I don't think of it

with a, I don't understand you and also knock the chavit. Yeah, I don't understand you. It almost is like a cabin movie. Yeah, it's always. It's like a cabin in the woods. It's just an old lady, you know, home slash pizza shop in the woods.

Yeah. But the both films, I think, the interiors are lit gorgeously. And I was wondering if you could tell me, I guess specifically with this one, like, what, how are you approaching, especially because it's a night scene, those interior, like,

because I think if I remember correctly, like they're either lanterns or candles everywhere. And so how are you augmenting that in a way that doesn't look lit? Yeah, no, it's a great question because this was something that gave me a little bit of algebra. Like, I think every time you see a set for the first time, you have that moment of like, oh, crap, did I plan this all wrong?

Or is this going to work? And I think in general, you want to just light the space, right? That's like the main thing is what looks right, what's going to feel right, what gives me options. And I think with that, yeah, a lot of that movie takes place in this kind of living slash dining room area. And it, the benefit of it is excited. I sort of had a lot of light sources built in. Like there are a bunch of windows, so you could have moonlight when you needed it. And the script calls for lightning and thunderstorm.

So you can have sources of lightning coming through. And the script is very like light tells the story. Like the power goes out in the room at one point. So you really do have to light through the windows for that moment. And you have to know, okay, where can I position these characters in the camera in relation to them to get them in silhouette or to get that to tell the story? And headlights passing through the window telling you, oh, someone's coming from outside. We have to hurry and trouble things around.

And then there's also a fireplace. And then we ended up putting lights all around the room to kind of make, Like I like to make like a ring of fire. I like to call it like as a DP is you always have like a backlight option and you can always turn a light off behind camera. Like that's like an easy sort of, I don't know, safe formula for me. It's like I'm like if I always have a light in every corner or in every just like preplanted.

Free planted. Like it could be a lamp. It could be whatever. But like if there's always light kind of surrounding the set, I feel like that's my rule of thumb. It's like I either have a light source in the center. room or I have a bunch of lights on the surrounding part or it's both and in this movie it was actually both it was like lights surrounding the set with these little lamps that I could dim down per shot or turn off for shot or diffuse per shot the window sources which are always there

and then the guys are sitting at this table and they're having a romantic dinner and I kind of like the idea that the movie is a love story and it's like a horror story all in one right and a love that is taking disastrous turns, a horror story that finds beauty and romance and these bloody acts. And like, to me, when you're lighting people at a table, you're usually like,

okay, I'll put a big soft source for the table and everybody has this, like, key light. But there was something about having, like, you know, you go to a romantic dinner, there's like a candle in the center of the table and it's underlighting you. And I felt, okay, that has an inherent romance to it, but it also has like a spooky,

like underlighting is spooky right it can be kind of almost simultaneously spooky and romantic and so I thought okay I should make the source like a lantern or candle or something but it had to be a lantern because the power goes out and then there you know they're like I'm basically what I'm trying to say is there was like a versatility and everything there was like you always had the fireplace to rely on the windows of the moonlight and then this lantern was sort of this underglow and and I knew it wasn't going to be enough for three people at a table. So what I did was, I was like trying to figure out, okay, how do I amplify this lantern? Like I could always put other sources around the table and augment it, but there will eventually be like a wide shot or something that will kind of call out what I'm doing and they'll look super under exposed if I'm trying to make sure the lantern doesn't get blown out.

So I took a page out of like Bob Richardson's book. I don't remember why, but I was like, okay, well, If I hit the table, if I put a white tablecloth, then I'd hit it with lights from above, it might just all blend together and look like the same source. And then I can make the bulb of the lantern like a little bit dimmer. And so I hid, there was like a column in the ceiling, like an exposed beam kind of thing.

And at each side of the column, I hid an AX3, one of these little pixel brick. There's a pixel brick and a sterile brick. Because I was like, cool, I won't have to run cable. it wasn't even that it's like this little you know four by four by four three LED a super spotty kind of fixture thing and I didn't didn't need power it's very lightweight and I just shot two of them down into the table like one on each side of the lantern then it did just sort of blend and it just looked like a kind of bigger warmer glow from the lantern and I could kind of modulate

it based on the shot and then also supplement it with like little tubes and things and again like you have enough sources of light in a frame and I think you can kind of you can direct the audience as to like what is lighting them what's the dominant source here and then kind of tweak the actual point sources and make them a little bit less like punchy or a little less like sourcey you know and again like there were there's times where I chose to use the fireplace as like the dominant source because I wanted it to feel like menacing there's a scene where a kind of scary guy enters the restaurant and that was more fire lit even though it's the same room and the same thing and you know just sort of modulating

the scene based on a light source and how dominant it is that's smart because it's like the audience isn't going to go like wait the fire wasn't that strong in the last shot they because they know it's there yeah they know it's there and they're seeing it and like it just depends on the angle too because sometimes like your camera is with the fire behind it and maybe you want to feel that intensity and other times you go, no, I want them more in silhouette.

So I'm going to like take the fire down. And I think you just have to think of it a little bit. You have to simultaneously think of it like holistically and shop per shop. Yeah. Because if you treat everything like holistically and not shopper shot, then you're going to get moments where you could have had a silhouette and you chose not to because you're like, well, it's not real.

and then you're like yeah well sometimes real doesn't matter you've told in the next shot you'll see the fireplace and you can amp that up but in this shot you're not seeing the fireplace don't worry about it like turn that down a little bit and get the silhouette and people will go along with you because there will be like a crackling fireplace sound in the background then right you know

it's not like they forgot it was there or suddenly turned off or something and it's all within degrees of modulation you know You have to know where that line is of how far you can push creative license. But I feel like the more sources you have, the more modulation you can have, you know. Yeah. I mean, I've said it 400 million times and I need to figure out a fun way to put it on a t-shirt. But emotionally correct will always be technically correct.

Totally. Yeah, 100%. That's a great one is what I think that's really spot on. And like it's when you get both, it's awesome. Like that's what makes like Blade Runner 2024 astounding. You go, yeah, Deacons made both work. And like, that is high, high cinematic art. But yeah, I think more often than not, you have to just go with like, what's, what makes this shot that gives you the most impact and give you the most impact of the emotion you want and the experience you want in this shot, you know.

Yeah. You know, I've been asking a lot of people this recently, but how do you, how do you make moonlight? I Because every DP does it different I mean I guess my I've kind of found myself always putting

whatever I want as Moonlight to be like 400 degrees Kelvin cooler than where I set my camera at I don't I don't know maybe that's like a quarter CTB or less it's probably less but like I

yeah, I don't know I just don't like I don't like super cool moonlight but I also recognize that like if you had a warm moonlight it would look strange or you really have to justify it or not have it against too many cold

sources like I actually had that a little bit on this movie I remember experiencing that where we had a moonlight scene and the guys are in the forest with their car and the car is one of these modern, their rental car was like a modern car, but like super blue like LED headlights. And it was the first time I was like, whoa, that source is colder than my moonlight.

And that looks strange because now my moonlight kind of looks like street lighty or it's, it has a connotation to it that like moonlight is cool. And that is based in science and based in like the rods in your eyes and the wavelengths. I mean, light that is coming, bouncing off the moon. But, yeah, I don't think there's a hard or fast rule to it. And everybody, I think you're right, there are differences. Like, another thing I've been experimenting with is like moonlight being more frontal. Like, there's a lot of moonlight that is backlit and looks very cool.

But I don't know, I think there's something to, yeah, something about it being like a, kind of softer front high things I don't know sometimes reads it's like truer I don't know what to describe it but basically I do try to keep it a little bit cooler and like maybe a little bit softer but I also don't always like moonlight I think there's also I'm about to go into a week of nights

and try not to use a single bit of moonlight the entire time and like that's actually I remember I was just like looking through references. I was looking through prisoners and like prisoners in some movie I look at a lot to shop at Roger Teacons and like there's no moonlight in that movie. There's no yeah, he's a big influence

but there's no moonlight in prisoners and like prisoners has a lot of night exteriors and it's astoundingly beautiful and there are times where you see great distances and it's just all streetlights or the obvious movie light that's supplementing.

Yeah, yeah. The fractals off the asphalt. yeah like all that stuff is just based to the color is like like tungsten color temperature is matching the tungsten porch lights and so i don't know i see something like that and i go you don't need learn light it's not like a guarantee that a movie has to have it um i think the most like bold amazing like moonlight that's knocked me off my feet in recent years so we're going to say the same movie three two, one.

Nosirot. No. Shit. Oh, no. Well, nope. Nope almost doesn't count because that was like having to have like a 3D rig with. Yeah. That's what I mean.

It looks incredible. It was astound. Like just being in the movie, knowing nothing about the movie or how they made it and just watching that and going, holy shit. Like my jaw is on the floor. I can see everything in this field. I can see just few miles. Like feels in.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, I remember the first time I, like, experienced it. It was when I moved to California. I was making a short film in Palm Springs. And I was like, wait, what is that light on the horizon? What is that? It's midnight. And I was like, oh, that's the moon. And like, look at how it's now illuminating mountains. And I was like, because I'm from New York City. And I was like, I've never seen that of my life. And then I watch Nope. And I go, oh my God, that that just gave me that feeling all over again. And like, Waita just. blew me away and then you learn okay this is how they did it and it was day for night and holy crap like that's a whole another level and you didn't have to light it you know I mean obviously it's to like plan the shots with the time of day and there's still

a process to it but like yeah that blew me away and obviously no svarato that moonlight was cool but I remember hearing yeah reading an interview with Jaron where he was saying that like even in that movie he chose like okay a scene either has moonlight or as firelight

But this is not both. Yeah. And that struck a chord with me too, where it's like, yeah, part of what makes Moonlight kind of hokey is what it is mixed with other sources. And you go, wait, but I don't think I recognize Moonlight when like the lights are on in my house. You only really notice it when the lights are off or, yeah, you're out in the middle of the field and there's no other light sources.

That reminds me of two things. One of them, I don't know what city it was. It might have been New York. It might have been L.A. or something. but I guess like the power went out like citywide and the cops got a bunch of phone calls obviously this is back of the day when everyone had a landline got a bunch of phone calls because they were like

there's there's lights in the sky and it was just stars like they had never seen stores it was like dozens of calls to people like oh no they're invading it was just but the other one was that I remember to your point about like being in desert and seeing like that natural moonlight of like night time isn't actually that dark it's quite bright yeah and that was i was driving through new me me and my buddy trent we were just in this u-hall and i like looked up and i was like bro pull over and i had never seen the milky way

with my eyeballs and i just had to stop and i was just staring i'm not kidding like 45 minutes of me just staring yeah totally i did and i set my camera and i like took like a 30-s second exposure of it because I was like this is the craziest I didn't know you could see it with your eyeballs I thought you needed Hubble yeah yeah totally James Webb yeah yeah no it's it's pretty yeah it's pretty like miraculous that that feeling and so I don't know I guess I guess yeah it's a helpful tool and it's one of those things again that it's like up to a D.P's discretion of like what does this scene call for? What does it need?

Like, I think in Hoyt's case, he was like, yeah, he wants, we're in the middle of nowhere. There's no way I can realistically like this scene. And give the feeling that the director wants of being able to see all the clouds in the sky,

clouds moving, like, it was like just this mixture of like perfect tool, perfect case, perfect, you know, execution. Well,

and also it reminded me, seeing that film that oh right because I had the same kind of thought with Moonlight of like oh it should be soft and cool but the moon is technically and I mean technically in the strictest sense of like

even though it's closer to us it's almost the same exact size and we know this due to you know fucking eclipses as the sun so theoretically it's just dimmer but it's the same amount of hardness totally totally it's just a reflective source

That's the exact. So by shooting that all in the middle of the day, that is a more true to life example of what the moon would look like in reality. Absolutely. Absolutely. And like that to me is a case of a DP being really putting his like career and like, you know, word on the line of being like, dude, I am going to pitch you the wildest thing. We're going to shoot 65 millimeter film, put a 65 millimeter black one.

white infrared Alexa we're going to put it all on one rig and it's going to be fucking huge but we're going to get a tool that can carry it a dolly or train that can use it and like we're going to shoot them both at the same time and VFX is going to be able to mux them together and like that's just one of those cases where I'm like that's a huge swing and like it took the coordination of everyone being on board and being willing to like risk it you know and risk losing days of production if it doesn't work you know so i i don't know i love that i love stories like that where you're like someone really like just thought hard enough about this and found the like search through toolboxes and and invented a new tool you know i know i i interviewed him

a few months ago and like his his approach like when he was because he was for oppenheimer and he was like one of the reasons they wanted to shoot iMacs and everything was just so that it was the least amount of artifice between the audience and what they were filming you know so like lighting rigs were kept very simple everything was just trying to be like as paired down as possible so it felt the most real and i and i was like yeah totally totally and then he makes stuff like that for nope and you're like wait you're a nerd what do you mean like you have all this tech you have all this cool science in your brain and i guess when you it's i guess going back to what you're talking about with like prep is like if you have enough of that in your brain, you can just shoot it simply because

you know when you need to go crazy instead of being like a complete nerd like myself and everything looks like a problem that should be fixed with multiple tools. Yeah. Well, and I think it's it's also like, again, different horses for different courses where like Christopher Nolan's approach and Jordan Appeals approach are probably very different or their goals as filmmakers are probably very different and the movies they're trying to make are very different. And so it behooves any cinematographer, I think, to be a bit of a Swiss Army knife. And I think this is the case for me, but I know I'm always like, you get a certain idea and you go, okay, I hope I get a

project that can allow me to use this idea. And you maybe keep something in the back of your head and eventually you meet the right filmmaker with the right script at the right time. You go, oh, I got just the thing. I've been wanting to do this shot. I didn't want to do this like Zolli on a crane or whatever it is. And they go, yeah, that's great. Or sometimes they go, I think so. And you go, okay, I'll save that for the next one. But like, there are, you know, yeah, I just think it's also like every, you know, there's something with parenting where they say like every sibling gets a different parent because that parent is like, has learned from the first kid and from the second kid. And I think it's the same with filmmakers and with DPs where it's like, hopefully you're a different D.P. on every movie.

you're like you're not a novice you're obviously getting more experience but you're open to new ideas or maybe you've had experiences or filmmakers that have like shaken you up and taught you something and you know uncorked certain valves or whatever you know um so yeah i think i think it's cool that he can go between those like yeah there was another podcast where um matthew libitique was saying he was like i like doing big movies even if I'm on a big movie like Cowboys versus Aliens he's like I'm like he was like I'm the bench runner in the movie I'm not the NBA star he's like the VFX soup is on the bench woman he's like but then I go do a movie like native son and I'm the person shooting every

single bucket and getting every single pass handed to him and I'm the all-star because like it's a smaller movie and I get and I get to swing my weight and experience around more and so I think I think DPs will naturally find themselves in those going back and forth, you know, between the person with the most experience on set and the person with like, you know, okay, this director knows a lot about what they want or comes from a certain background. I'm going to listen and I'm going to follow, you know. Yeah. There's people like Maddie, like that first Iron Man, I still think looks incredible, even though

it's like so ostensibly one of the, you know, earliest iterations of that type of the effects. and like, obviously that comes down to shot selection and tension and stuff like that. But you just remind me because there's like people like him, people like Larry Fong, people like Hoytah, and I believe yourself who have all shot on, you shot a handful of things on film, right? A couple, yeah, like, knock to the cabin, it's 35, and then I actually shot a short film on 65, but never came out. What?

Oh, fuck. Yeah, I know, I know. But I've shot 65 millimeter film, and I've shot 16. Yeah, I basically and Super 8 so I basically shot all the formats. Yeah. Well,

you know. Well, the question was just going to be, what, uh, how do you approach shooting film differently than, than digital, if at all?

Um, I mean, I, I think, I think you, I think you go into it with a lot more nerves. At least certain me, like I go into a lot more nerves and sweating every single

shot in a way that you obviously don't with digital. But I think at a certain point you get comfortable with just the idea of like, oh yeah, the dailies are coming out fine. Everything I'm doing is working. Don't sweat it anymore. Just keep doing the same process. You know, like keep that sort of

process-oriented mentality. But, yeah, I think I think you just have to know what your limits are. And I think you, I think I treat the limits of film a little bit on the under exposure side

a little bit more conservatively and I think I worry a bit more about the under exposure film than the overexposure in maybe a way that's a little bit flipped with digital and then

I think it's just like anything I think it's like when you're working I think everybody on set feels this way with film where like it becomes like a much more precious thing and the using of the camera becomes a much more of a precious thing or recording of images becomes much more precious and you just become a lot more detail oriented I think and that yeah it's not a bad thing it's a it's a good thing in that like I think it really really really

beats out the prep in me of like okay exactly what stop am I going to be shooting the scene exactly what lamps am I using exactly what photometrics am I trying to get out of them you know the thing that I think I yeah there's just a lot more to consider and there's a lot more to get boxed in by like a good example is there's a shot at knock in a cabin that like there's an overhead shot

in a tree house so the tree house is like 15 feet above the ground and then the roof of that is 20 feet and then we need a camera that can go like 25 feet or something so we build a huge crane and we have to remove the roof of the tree out or like cut a certain size hole of the tree house and then dovetine the camera

like get a remote head, line up the shot, then do the team the camera so there's no light leaks and then have rain rings coming down because there's also raining and you can see the rain through the windows and below through the hatch that entered

so it's like a complex build and set up just to get a static overhead shot and and obviously light get all the lights up 20 feet up in the air to come through the windows and and I remember we took all this time to build it and get it right and then I was like oh my

God the head I had to use the camera I'm using I could only put a 400 foot mag which means I'm only going to get like four minutes of recording yeah five minutes five maybe five minutes of recording time and I went holy fuck like I'm an

or maybe not an idiot but like these are the limitations and I sort of forgot I was like oh yeah I can't just reload like or I can't just rely on a digital camera to like roll and roll and roll and I remember going up tonight and be like hey man I just want you to know before we start rolling like that's a 400 for a mag like this is a four and a half like that's a huge tear down yeah we have to swap that and he was like oh yeah yeah no words we'll get it we're going to say a simple shot like no worries and I was like thank God that he didn't want to like roll a 20 minute take or explore or something. So, you know, it's one of those things where... Shoot the rehearsal. Yeah, yeah.

It's one of those things where you just... I think because I don't personally do it a lot, I have to check myself and take... Check my, like, things I take for granted. It's shooting digital. Because I do think that shooting digital is a huge benefit and allows other processes, but when you're shooting on film,

there are certain processes that are, like, dictated to you, you know, of, like, mag life. And the amount of cases you have to... And how many mags you have to be thinking of in advance because your loader has to preload them and you can't just be like switch the film stock. Never mind. I'm under expose. I need a 500 T and you're like, well, there isn't any 500 T loaded. We have to load that now. Thanks for the heads up D.P. You know, it's so it just requires you to just think a little bit, I think, harder and

in advance. Which normally is a good thing. Normally is a good thing. Yeah. Well, because there's always discussions about like, oh, should we shoot digital more like film in that sense of like be more intentional with it but it is hard to be like that's one thing I remember in in side by side that documentary that Keanu made about yeah yeah where Fincher's sitting there and he's like I think he was talking about the original viper maybe it was the sunny but either way it was he was like they had this massive hard drive on top of it and he was like can I get playback and they were like no you would never do that that's the negative and he was like excuse me like you what you know so I think it would be very hard to like tell people like oh no we're going

to be way more you know what on this shoot we're only going to carry two uh codex cards so let's be more intense right right like how about go fuck yourself go rent some more codex cards right right there was one thing I found interesting like there was a shoot I was on where the camera team would check the would check the gate of a digital camera so before moving on from a shot everybody would say check the gate and they would literally just hit the playback button on the camera and make sure like a clip played back for like 10 seconds and then they go okay moving on and at first I was like this is so what like I was like come on are you guys I thought someone was pulling a fast one around me it was like because it was a TV show and so I was inheriting a crew

and I was like this isn't guys come on let's move on right and then after a while I was like no there's something to this because there are these film processes that bought us more time to think and like when you do change a mag on a on a camera you have these like two minutes then when you're shooting digital like there can just be a mania on set and there can just be this like manic frenzy of go to shot go to shot because you have the speed people forget that like no maybe the most important thing we can do right now is take two minutes and like just talk and not just rush into the next thing and so I think that's that's the other thing I really like about film is that it kind of paces me and paces directors

to just be thoughtful and and have these like like no one the like when you think of like famous Hollywood expressions you think of like take five everybody take five take 10 like that just doesn't happen on digital sets or on indie sets that's just like there's no what do you mean take five we're never going to make our day move as fast as you possibly can and so I do like that idea of like exploit digital but then don't forget like where you came from a film

and certain practices and certain like yeah just ways of doing things and meditations and processes. So again it's all process and there's some processes with film that are really like unknowingly helpful

and then of course there are all the ones where you're like what we have to go again because there's a hair in the game how did that hair get in there? What do you mean? We didn't get the best performance in the movie because there's a hair like that's when it's not fun but uh yeah it's good to remember i guess where you came from i mean well and i was going to say the uh the whole i guess

you'd say check the take uh of it isn't the worst process in the world because like especially on a lower budget if you're the camera operator as well like what if you didn't hit record wouldn't it be nice to know or like it it just Almost never, I don't think it's ever happened to me. But some cameras can corrupt a take for some reason. Maybe it's too much or whatever, you know, so it's not a terrible idea. No, it's not. It's not at all.

It was one of those things I came to love. I'm like, hey, you know, check the game. Yeah, let's check it. All right. Take care. I want to take care. Yeah, yeah. Stay in touch.

Stay a dude. Take care. Bye. Frame and Reference is an Albot production produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frame and refpod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.