Frame & Reference Podcast - 214: "Waltzing with Brando" & "Bad Man" Cinematographer Garrett O'Brien

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

This week we've got the wonderful Garrett O'Brien on the program to talk about his work on Waltzing With Brando and Bad Man!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this episode 214 of Framing Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Garrett O'Brien, D.P. of Badman and Waltzing with Brando. Enjoy. I built my own computers ever since 2006, 2005, and then this past year, because I'm getting way more colorist gigs. I was like, you know what, I'm starting to ingest, like, well, not even just, I mean, the footage has always been fine, but it'll be like, oh, you want to use depth map and grain? No, but, no, have fun. So I had Puget Systems build me a computer. And this is like, it is nice when you have experts like know exactly what to put together

versus going on PC Part Picker and being like, I think that's good. Yeah, no, I'm a hundred percent in the same, but I built my first PC and, well, not that that's really as you, but it was a two, I was during pandemic, I built them because I was wanting to build like a color system and I've been on Max forever and wanted to start playing around with color myself as a cinematographer just to educate myself more. and work on, like, building a digital to film pipeline sort of thing, because I was also tired of budgets not being able to support film and being laughed at. So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to have the last laugh.

Yeah. Yeah, the, that's kind of what it, so I used to, back in the day, I used to play semi-professional counterstrike, you know, before I went to college and shit. So I was building computers to that. But same thing, actually, to your point, the color gigs. I was always doing my own color because, you know, very, indie but

over the pandemic I was like I'm gonna take this seriously especially because I don't know when we're quote unquote coming back and I was like you can color remote for the most part you know yeah and it's a good time to learn too because it didn't have like for me

I didn't have any gigs going so it's like let's all those things I've been putting off now it's the time to try them yeah do what what were some of the bigger things you learned because the one I figured out was oh just I mean once you figure out, obviously, the basics, your color pipeline, the, like, science of it.

I just realized how often I just trust, like, everything needs to be just a little bit darker and just trust, you know, I'll just move stuff around and I'm like, that looks right. And then nine times out of ten, I'm right. Like, you obviously look at your scopes, but like trust, just, it's hard to explain. I've been trying to explain to students, like, how to color stuff. And it's like, it just looks at a certain point, you stop second guessing yourself and you look at it, it looks right. Yeah. Yeah. It's my always, my thing is that I try, like, I've always tried to educate myself and learn as much as possible so that I can get past the technical. Like that's, that's how I've always looked at it. It's like I've, I've, otherwise I feel like I've got imposter syndrome.

And I'm like just guessing at things. I don't really know. But, and through having the technical. knowledge, it's like giving me the authority to go beyond what is considered, you know, normal or get past that. That's always been like the way that I've, and that took me probably half a decade to realize that about myself as a cinematographer, but like, that's something that I've always felt that it's like, yeah, it's important to the technical so that you can just get past it and just like be open to what is happening around you. 100%. When you talk about making a filmed or a digital to film pipeline, or I assume you used all the plug-ins before developing your own thing? Yeah, yeah. So I used all the plug-ins. Um, you know, one of the big part of it

is also, um, you know, just studying film movies in general because one of the things that people don't often think about is how different film can look, just the way digital can look in so many different ways and how you treat it, how you finish it. And for me, it was about one I wanted to educate myself about all the different ways that a film stock can look, because I, you know, didn't have the good fortune of being able to shoot a lot on film. I've shot on film before I even got into filmmaking as a photographer, as, you know, in high school and all those things. So I was used to the film process and development and pushing and pulling and working with an enlarger. And And that tactile experience was very enjoyable for me.

And so, yeah, I miss the chemical smells, to be honest with you. Yeah, but yeah, it's, for me, there's something very physical and enjoyable about that process. And during that, the pandemic, it was like, okay, this is a great opportunity to learn. And so I wanted to start from a place of knowledge again and studying what film looks like or what environments does, you know, film haladen, how high of contrast does it need to be when you're using a 2383 finishing film print? How much contrast does that change? How much different does it look from movies in the 70s, 80s, 2000s, modern film? You know, through all those just those 40 decades, not even including the first 60 decades of when film started, there's been change. Chemical process,

you know, digital intermediate. So there's quite a wide gamut of how film can look. And for me, was where I started off from, was from, you know, kind of acquiring data and seeing like, okay, I liked the way this film looks and that film looks like I could shot that digitally. Why is that? And so it's from a place of curiosity. And then going from there, yes, plugins is the first place that I started with. I think film convert might have been the very first one. Yeah.

And they had, like, released one where you could control the grain based on luminance level. And that sounds like, oh, okay, now we're getting somewhere. because for me it was the uniformity of it just completely I was just like this isn't for me and then you know um yeah and then um you know and just playing with different elements and different plugins um also i can't quite remember his name but um he's in australia he's done some really great stuff and teaching people about film one malaria um that's exactly who it is and he was a a wonderful person to just you know, I would email with him and we have conversations back and forth and I'd give feedback on his stuff. And that was the first time where I was really starting to see that this really convincing myself and others that it looks like film. And particularly the film relation aspect was a big part of that and playing with different like his color. I thought his color and contrast elements were great and how it broke it into like a node structure and his

explanations for it all just really made a lot of sense to me. At the same time when Steve Yedlands articles were coming out, which really, to me, that was, to be honest, that was the moment where I was like, okay, it's time to take charge on my own destiny, if you will, with, you know, color and contrasts because the thing in particular that spoke to me was his, how we were becoming two tribalists, like, are you shooting on the red camera? Are you shooting on the airy camera? It's like, well, it's, at that time, it really was just those are the main two players. And obviously Sony's come into that equation significantly and a bunch of other people as well. There's so many great terrific digital cinema cameras out there now.

But yeah, I thought that we were pigeonholing ourselves. We were putting ourselves too much into a box of like, this camera means you get this look. And I find that to be ridiculous, especially now because of how great all these cameras are in the dynamic range and the codecs. And, you know, they're really, you know, some cameras I do absolutely. have a preference for because of, you know, for example, I love shooting with the Sony Venice, too. Because in my mind, that is the best Goldilocks camera to have ever come out for digital cinema cameras because it does everything exceedingly well. And most importantly, the built-in indie of every single stop saves me a tremendous amount of time when a feature film

or TV show. And time is the most valuable asset when it comes to making a film. And so for me, it was about jumping off from that point of, you know, what does, I want to be camera agnostic. There's some projects where it's like you've got to shoot with this camera or we can't shoot with film. We want this look or whatever it is and taking those ideas from, you know, prep, production and post and all the way through. And I got to experiment a lot with music videos.

As a director, I worked with a lot, Nick Peterson. We'd get hired for narrative style music videos. And what I would do is I would also color those projects myself to kind of, learn and play and experiment with, you know, that Kodak sort of film stock, whether it was, you know, 500T or 250D, but then that 2038 finishing lot and that playing with that higher contrast and that's something I wanted to implement. You know, certainly in prep, but more particularly in production because, you know, lighting with that sort of heavier contrast requires a different style of lighting. It's not just something that you can slap on and be like, boom, we've got

codec film film print immersion greatness and um that for me and that and that really that i responded to it in terms of like the way that i like to light um you know the using more hard light um you know because it's also it's while it still has clarity it's with the film you know with grain and inhalation you've got um perceived clarity but you're not really you're just you're dull in contrast with film halation you've got that bleed over so it's making things feel softer without actually being all that much softer. And to me, that was really opening some avenues of style that I had been wanting to go to, but had been restricted to for the longest time,

or never thought that the film emulation tools were up to snuff enough to really pick them seriously. Yeah, I was just, I was looking down because I was like, right, and like, all right, get to that, get to that, get to that. But the big one that I've noticed, all of these plugins, for me, actually, it started, it wasn't, film convert it was uh it was red giant it was called like film magic bullet or that was the coloring yeah yeah that one that was really informative back in the day it was 10 years ago because it forced you to do that it was pseudo node based you know where it had you do everything in a specific order so when i got to resolve i just replicated that and that was actually quite a bit of a jumping point but to your point about halation i think that's the one thing that almost

every plugin gets wrong. Genesis seems to do it really well, and FilmBox does it really well. All the other ones seem to get, it's too much, and it doesn't look real. It just looks like what it is, which is just a glow parameter, you know, and it never really looks. Yeah, so I was, really what I was

using for a while was Juan's is Lut Base and Color, and I had, particularly had made like a, I believe it was like a color matrix. And I was even, been experimenting that with some of my own stuff. And the color matrix I thought was really wonderful because it helped with film saturation at different luminance levels,

which is a big, big aspect to doing film emulation. And using some of his grayed inhalation, and I was always feeling like that it was like 90% there. I know he's continued to make advancements on that. But I will say film boxes, halation is the best I've seen yet. I haven't seen everything. But the best brain I've seen is from Photokim's digital grain. And that's just recently that I've used that.

Yeah, and I will say that is like, oof, that looks. And they're, they're, they're, they're a lot to go for. I assume. I've looked at, yeah, a little bit of live grain. I'm not used it personally, and I haven't done any film outs yet either. But I've, I've been very impressive film box, and I've continued to use them for several features actually now. Because I think that they're the softness that comes with their halation.

And the grain is good too. But they really have nailed halation spot on. Yeah. When Genesis came out, well, I was going to say to your point about like reading Yedlin and stuff, that was one where I felt like I was, you know, charging at 100 miles an hour trying to learn shit. And then I got to like literally one of his articles and it was like hitting every, speed bump possible, like just a rattle strip because I was like, okay, hold on, I need to understand what any of these words mean. You know, it would be like read it. I'd reread them all like four

times. Yeah, I would take like a month off from reading and I'd go back and read it. It's because of the way he, he doesn't fall into any tropes of vernacular that we as filmmakers often fall into. And so you have to like rethink a little bit, which is really smart because we're so, um, It's the word. We're very quick to judge one another by the benacta that we use and how much knowledge you have in the film industry. And we have a lot of connotation with certain words. Yeah. And so I think separating ourselves from that, especially like we're talking about film and like it can very quickly turn into a magical conversation, which, look, I love film. I am, I will never say anyone shouldn't shoot on film. I wish I had more opportunities to shoot on film. I think, it is something special, but I think talking about it as if it's something that can't be achieved with a digital foundation is no longer true. But there's all the reasons to shoot film, you know, and I love seeing film, I love seeing

film projected, and I also like work that shot digitally that's got film emulation. I think it's ultimately, I don't really care about that stuff as long as the movie's interesting and the cinematography's dynamic and, you know, exciting. Like all those things don't really matter. It's fun to talk about it and get into the weeds about them. But ultimately, story and performances that matter first. Well, I think it's one of those things where, like, you, when you're really, I don't mean accomplished, but when you've done a lot of work, if you're a DP, like, you got to find other things that spark interest. You know, I think everyone loves to learn, especially in creative fields.

And if you were just do the same thing over and over and over again, you get very bored. So it's like, ooh, I can, I can, you know, dig, dig my head into a film emulation. That's fun. And then, you know, it's just your little thing over here. Story, yes, acting, production design. That's, yes, we know that one already. But now I've got a little toy I can play. You know, that's very fun.

Yeah. No, totally. And that is fun. And it's, it's enjoyable. And like, you know, that's what I do love about being a cinematographer, though, is to have, like, I'm totally a little nerd when it comes to technical elements and learning more about that. but at the same time, it's fun to play with, you know, the big stuff like story and performance and have fun with that too.

And genre, too, is a fun thing that's what, like, you where you're saying about playing with different stuff. Like, I love stories of just different genre, of different style, different, whatever it is. Like, to me, that's the best part of the job is getting to try something new every time and not repeating. Yeah. I mean, for me, obviously, and I think a lot of us, it was, I think we can't, I believe we're roughly the same age.

like the peak sci-fi era or like neo-noirs and stuff where it's like oh you get to be cool and gritty and then they're like guess what you're shooting Hallmark movies and you're like great no shit on Hallmark movies those people look like they're having the most fun of how much coverage do we need we need 15 angles

here in order to accomplish this scene and we have about 45 minutes to shoot at all oh great that sounds like yeah yeah it's figured out of the cut I wasn't going to say about Yedlin oh it was Genesis When he came out, when they came out with Genesis, I went and tested it and I wrote a big article about it because I knew it was going to be timely. And I think the Yedlin articles is the Genesis, the new one that just came out like a month or two ago?

Yeah, he made it with Bogdanovich. What's his name? Yes, yes. Okay. I'm familiar with this. Mitch, there we go. Yeah, I've been tested myself, but I've been very curious about it. So this is the best way I can.

So I wrote that article. And then people were like, well, you need to compare it to film box. And I was like, well, the whole reason I used the demo version of Genesis was because I'm not about to pay $2,000 for something that I might get paid $150 for. And so, you know, journalism is not paying the bills. I'll tell you what. Well, it's paying a bill. But and then the film box guys are like, no, we'll send you a, you know, we'll send you a full copy for a couple months. And I was like, sick.

So here's my thing. I, in any of these film emulations, there is a level of trust, right? Like, I don't have the capabilities of testing these things, which is I hate. Whenever I'm writing reviews about stuff, I'm like, I need empirical evidence that I bring to the table, not something I'm trusting. Can't do that with film emulation. So you just have to trust to a degree. I trust Mitch and Steve, you know, to put their mouth, or put their money where their mouth is, right? so my comparison of the two they're very similar you have way more control in film box

way more parameters that you can mess with genesis basically turns your sensor and sorry to interrupt is this the new film box that just came out as well yeah okay yeah well and i had quite a quite upgrades yeah and i had tested initially i still haven't written the film box article but i had tested initially i guess the quote unquote older version and then as i was testing it they were like, hey, we just update it, which I assume, you know, it's a small team. I assume they were just like, when Genesis came out, they're like, all can we make better? Got it. And then, you know, pumped all that stuff.

And it seems like they were probably working on it for a while. But in any case, my best description is that Genesis turns your sensor into film. Film box gives you the film look. That's the best. And again, there's elements of testing to it. But like any of the film emulations, that you pick in Genesis are all, this is just an example,

are all, let's say, accurate to what they are. Yeah. Film box, like if you go into like the vision, like the XR emulation, it like fogs out and looks green because the photo, what do you call it? The sensorometry, the testing they did,

the film strip they had was expired. So what you get is expired film look. Whereas Genesis is based on whatever sensor data, they had it Kodak or you know again I'm assuming because none of the thing none of the film stocks and Genesis come out looking expired and just the way that you can't manipulate it makes it so that it's like oh this is just the way to think of it is like your digital camera is now shooting film you can color that whereas film box is a lot bigger play bigger sandbox to work within and create like more interesting looks whereas Genesis just makes your digital

sensor look like film and behave like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. That really makes me want to test out Genesis. It's a pretty lightweight plug-in. I mean, they have a demo, and it's, you know, watermarked to hell, and you can only use a few features, but yeah, I don't know, for the price point, it's, it's tough. Yeah, that's, that is the thing that kind of, I mean, you know, it's also a point, too, for me, I am getting to a certain point in my career where,

coloring is less important for me but for me i do like to have the information and it's something that you know the movies i do do we often like i have a um a MacBook that's souped up you know like an m1 MacBook pro and then we've used um you know in the past like really high speed indm e drives to basically you know we'll have a someone doing data backups on set but then um depending on the level of the budget you know if it's you know under union scale well then we'll do as i have a program basically set up within and resolved, import all the stuff, export out. They can basically do this every night so that when I'm making daily features I'm shooting,

they're getting to cut with the film look. So it's as if they've always had that, you know, and it's a look that we've figured out in prep. And so what, and that does many things that are a huge benefit. But what's really nice is that this, you know, this is the movie, right? But you will tweet this, of course.

And I'm sure there will be seen the scene, shot to shot, you know, tweaking, but this is the look of the movie, and they're sitting with this for months on it. And I mean, more times and not, they're always, I mean, I have not had any situation where everyone's not genuinely ecstatic about what we're doing here. And because, and then I also, over the weekend, I'll pull grabs, bring an iPad to set,

and I'll show, because a lot of times actors, you know, especially the last few films I've done where they're kind of a comedy drama line, right? And so they're like drama with real stakes, but also you might have some funny jokes that are a little bit silly. And so there's always this question of what's this line we're walking? And the director and I, we've had a thousand conversations about this and we know that line.

But an actor doesn't necessarily. And especially if comedy might not be the thing or if drama might not be the thing. And so there's this little ease of uncertainty. And so I find getting to show some grabs and, you know, zooming in to show some of the grain in relation and all that gives them a sense of like, oh, okay, we're making a movie movie. like this isn't I was unsure because it's just a lot of uncertainty because they're not seeing the film that we're putting together behind the monitor and that goes such a long way and also being in the editorial and seeing that when we get to color it's not a matter of what's the look of our film we know our look of our film and so instead of you know because on independent films you don't have a lot of time to color and so we get to spend our time on the minutia and the minutia is what takes an incredible amount of time. And so it's not, you know, we've got 85% of it, 90% of a look.

It's like, okay, maybe a little less saturation, a little bit more, a little bit less contrast, a little bit more. And it's like some of those few basic conversations with a day or two. And then it's like the last four or five days is just going into all the other little things that can help, you know, make the cinematography feel seamless and doing a little match here, a little match there and all that sort of and stuff. Yeah. Obviously on larger films, you're going to pick, like you said, Mattis 2, whatever. But earlier when we were talking about being camera agnostic and stuff, do you find that's a difficult conversation to have with directors or producers who generally don't have the time to get up to speed on that sort of thing where it doesn't matter?

You know, oh, yeah, our job would be easier if we used the whatever, C500 mark two. And they're like, no, I need the Alexa. You know, because there's that that sort of safety net elements that many directors of producers have. They're like, I know that. I don't need you coming in and telling me that we can make anything look like anything. Yeah, I would say five years ago, that conversation was much more common. Now, I don't know how much that's indicative of where I'm in my career versus where producers and directors, how they consider cameras now. I would guess it's probably a bit of both. you know, I especially in commercial jobs where you may not have worked with people before,

like I get a call, like a recommendation, like, oh, I really love Alexa and cook together. Right. That would be happy to shoot with that combination. Chocolate and peanut butter of film. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, more times that I'm like, yeah, I mean, I like that. Or if it's like, we want to shoot with the red, like, okay, what's the reason? Well, we've got three of them sitting around.

Great. What lenses do you have? And they might be like, well, we got this than that. I'm like, well, I don't really like any of those lenses. And I'll give reasons. I don't always give a reason to why I might turn something down or to not be the team player or whatever it is because there is usually a reason behind it. And it's not just some magical reason. It's a real reason.

And, you know, that's all really important. It goes back to that technical thing. It's important to know the reasons why so that when you are having those conversations with the producer, you can support yourself with knowledge and real answers. And then when I give them those answers to go, oh, yeah, that's a good reason. Let's do that. So, yeah, it's, but at the same time, you know, I, it's more actually me a lot of times now. It's the opposite way around where, like, yes, I will have a Venice 2 as my main camera. But I also in a pocket 4K camera.

And I love that thing because it's, I've had it for a while. But you can slap that thing on to just about anywhere. You can put a PL lens on it. You can put an EF mount on it with a speed booster. You know, I've got shots where I, you know, we did a, you know, a. AK-47 firing, and it was with blinks, but, you know, it's really important to get the right angle with your camera's perspective. And, you know, we had a steady camp pushing shot that made sense from profile. But we're like, oh, let's put the pocket 4K in and put that really close

to the line of fire for the gunfire and not man the camera, just locked, just locked off. Right? You know, we got this expensive, you know, it's not cheap having an armorer come in and firing all that, and it takes a lot of time. And you have to, and you want to take to take time. because you want to be safe and you want to be careful. And that shot that we got with the Pocket 4K because it was locked off on a tripod, just leave it unmanned. It's in the trailer because it's fucking awesome. And it's rad.

And it's like you, yes, like if you study the shot, you can see that the muzzle flashes don't perfectly. They don't have as fast as a shot or readout as the Venice 2 does. And, you know, when he's like kind of spraying it a little bit, some of the flashes don't line up perfectly. and yes, if we had our budget was five times that size that would have been a Vetus 2 camera

or even double that size but that camera costs next to nothing for the production and it was our or if we were rigging to the car we wanted some like we have an opening scene in that movie where it's basically ripped off Miami Fice's pilot where they're like driving, you know, Don Johnson

driving around and like literally similar exact shots and we got to put the camera on a highway like four inches off the ground yes we had scouted the highway make sure there's no bumps or anything like that but like I'm not putting a Venice too that close at the ground

you know and those shots are fantastic and that's where there's sort of you know like a Sony A7 or any sort of you know FX3 this cameras are fantastic for that you know I was this was years ago this might have been season two of this podcast but

I was talking with Dan Stoloff who had shot a handful of episodes of the boys and they were on Venice and he was saying that he has his own personal Fujifilm XT3 and whenever they like were they needed to they had like some overhead shots and random stuff and some

crash cam type stuff and he was like I'm putting words in his mouth but essentially he was like I would just shortcut everyone and just strap the XT3 in there and go like all right let's roll it like get it done and I was like that's crazy XT3 is not what I would expect on like a high budget TV show. Because like obviously the the black magic cameras make a little more sense because

they can shoot raw, you know, they're a little more nicer for post. But yeah, Fuji film. Yeah. I think he did have a raw recorder on that though. Okay. Like the Komodo is a great camera for that too because it's got that fast, that fast. It's basically a global shutter on it. So it can, like that's always my little bit of problem with the pocket 4K is they can have some slowness with the shutter. But with it being smaller, it's fast. than a lot of the other ones. But, yeah, it costs nothing. You put a C of card in there, and you're getting, like, you know,

like the main unit can be working, you can have your grips rigging, and you get a shot that's, you know, or if we got a shot, get another movie, we had a shot inside of a toilet. We didn't have, our department didn't have money to get a half-broken toilet or like a tank and to put a real camera through there. And it's like, we don't have time. Like, let's just use the pocket fork and literally just put it inside, like drain the water out and put it in the tank.

Yeah, it'll be fine. And it end up's great. Great. Yeah, the, I actually just got a Sony F-55 for this docuseries I'm shooting because I was shooting FX3, but I was renting it from a buddy, or FX6, but I was renting it from a buddy and I was like, I want that money. And they preferred an F-55. I don't know why, probably because it's a precursor to the Venice, main unit shooting Venice, but also global shutter, but too big to mount. But I, but I've never had a global shutter camera, I don't think. And it is, it is nice. Does it, there's a little bit of it. even on static shots, there's just a little bit of a difference that it might be placebo, but I'm like, I do like the cadence of the image. Like the motion blur of it just feels a little bit more natural. Or not even natural, but just film like, I suppose. But I could be, again, I could be just pretending.

I got it for really inexpensive. It's not even like I'm in a honeymoon period where it's like, well, I spent a lot of money on it. It's just. Yeah, I mean, I will say that like having a faster sense of readout, even whether it's global shutter or just fast is a thing. And that's something that really, another thing that I think they got right with the Venice 2, especially in Super 35,

that sensor is nearly a global shutter. 3.2, right? It's absurd. Yeah, it's, and, you know, I've done, I do action scenes and that's noticeable. And I've done full frame to do with the Venice 1. And I get hired a lot too for like stylistic comedy where it's like, you know, you're doing whip pans

and you're like landing on someone. And that is, when I did that full frame, like the entire sense of the Venice one and did that pant, like for the person, I was like, oh, this is like 5D bar two stuff. Yeah. Not quite that bad, but it is interesting. And they've improved that significant with the Venice too. Yeah. I just remembered someone I wanted to go back to because you were talking about bad man for a little bit like the AK-47 and all this stuff like that. But you colored it as well, right? Yeah. Yeah, I did. So I wanted to know kind of how you set yourself up for that Because I assume that's the first feature you've colored

That is the first feature of colored And I So did you have a follow up question with that? Yeah, yeah So it was basically like how do you set yourself up To know that that's what it's supposed to be You know that that Because I've always like at some point

I have Jill Bogdanovich's email And she's supposed to do the podcast at some point But obviously she does every major film You know It's like trying to get a hold of Stephen Sonafeld It's like me But I've always wanted to know, like, what, how do you know that's what is feature film caliber? Because they all, you know, features look different than just if you were to do it yourself.

And then also, I know you used digital, I assume, scatter, or did you make your own digital diffusion for it? Yep, scatter. Exactly right. Yeah. So it's, look, I'm not a colorist. I can color, but that doesn't make me a colorist. You know, I'm not doing it. First of all, I'm only coloring my own work.

That's the first part of that. And I'm not even coloring all of my, like I've worked with colorists. I've done multiple movies now with other colorists. I've done my first movie, my first four or five movies with the colorists. This one, you know, and I had done the music videos. And this was all, it was, you know, was probably three or four years of developing and playing with all these different lots, film plugins, emulsions. And just it was a culmination of all that time and process.

And that was like, okay, this is an opportunity where this makes sense. You know, we've got, I have more control over the look of the film with lighting, the consistency of the color palette. You know, we're really just shooting Venice 2 and occasionally a pocket 4K. So the cameras, you know, we're shooting Cook S4s, so we're not shooting on vintage lenses where the 25 is one color and the 50s another color, they're all consistent. They're all perfect. And this was the first time that I did do digital diffusion.

Now, I tested all of this before, you know, anything happens. I shot test footage with the Pocket 4K, talked it over with the director a lot, you know, and this was his first time, Mike D'Leberti, his first time directing, but he's been in the business for a long time as a writer. Ages ago, I used to work as a camera assistant. So he knows, you know, a fair bit, but doesn't, you know, have any sort of the technical knowledge

that, like, you and I would have, for example. And so we went back and forth a lot. And, of course, I shot my test in my backyard in L.A., but we were shooting in Alabama in the wintertime. So very different, you know, the saturation alone is just staggering the difference. And shooting in the wintertime in Alabama for a movie was perfect for our story. And I'm very, very pleased with that and the palette that we made for that film. But yeah, and so he was like, oh, we got to judging by this test shoot you did, you know,

and your grass is so green, like this too saturated, like we're going to need to go desaturated. And I'm like, I don't know if we need to go that high, but we're also playing with digital diffusions and how heavy. And he's like, I really wanted this, he wanted this nostalgia factor with the film that felt like something that maybe you'd see in the early 2000s, but also maybe you'd see in the 70s and sort of this sort of like combination of look between them. And so, you know, I knew that black pro mist, which happens to be my favorite diffusion, would really lend itself to this. and certainly doing film emulation would lend itself to this. And I was feeling that 16 mil might be interesting, but I sometimes, you know, sometimes the 250, really the 500 T stock can be a little too much for me, unless you're, you know, you're rating the camera a little bit lower or rating the stock lower.

And so I played with, I pushed the idea of doing 16 mil with 50D stock. And so we've got the 16 mil halation and that film grain, but, you know, not quite as tight as 35. and then playing with that and he wanted to go even really heavy with diffusion. I'm like, let's go with a little in between and the beauty is that we can control this later. And my thing is we had an incredibly short timeline. So I knew I needed to save

every minute possible. As much as I do love using diffusion that I knew going to a digital diffusion, as long as I was happy with the results, that it would be worth the time saved. Yeah. And of course, then the other side of that is that we can always go back in and change that. Or if it's a particular shot when you're in front of a window, it's like, oh, wow, this is just too much.

Or if we wanted half the shot to be diffused. And the biggest one for me is when you're panning over something, like a window, you don't get those reflections hitting the lens and coming, reflecting back in the glass and then back into your sensor and making, you know, or artifacts that aren't that are just distracting. Yeah. And to me, that was the biggest thing to not have to. worry about that. You know, me five years ago would be smacking me upside the back of the head, listening to me talk about digital diffusions and not going optically. But the reality is, is that I was perfectly happy with it, you know, and it looked fantastic.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. It was, I've mentioned this before, but it was Measure Schmidt who turned me on to scatter because he used it on the killer. And so then I went and got a review copy and loved it. exactly like you're saying, being able to art direct, especially like the backlit shots and stuff, just being able to art direct how

much diffusion instantly and not like, oh, I used the wrong one, the shots ruined. You know, picking what part of the frame actually has diffusion. But then my buddy Jake came out with this plugin called DigiDiff. I'll get you a copy of it. I'll get heard of this, yeah. He went to

I don't know, Panavision or somewhere, wooden camera, I don't know. Or wooden nickel, rather. And shot tests of everything. And they say that scatter was not actually accurate to what they were emulated. Still looks great, but not accurate to what it says, whereas there's, again, they say back to not being able to touch things objectively for the moment. But they spent a good deal of work trying to make it make it so that when you clicked

Black Pro Mist or Glimber Glass or Hollywood Black Magic or whatever, that it was more accurate to what the physical diffusion was, but he was saying that kind of like emulating film where there's a million looks. He was like, there's no, you can't really emulate it scientifically, diffusion scientifically in a way that makes sense without blowing up a computer, which I found was interesting. But his is, uh, the one nice thing is perpetual license. So it's like 200 you get it forever. Yeah, that is nice. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing that I, I kind of go around in circles because I like, I like these conversations about emulation and getting nerdy and talking about them and I think it that is really fun but at the

same time how much the viewing audience really knows any different right you know like um we used film box brain and telation as well as um our color science for the other movie I've shot that just come out watson with Brando I was going to get to that because you use physical diffusion on that right we use physical diffusion for that one yep but we screened at the TCL a Drummond's theater, you know, which is the IMAX doesn't get much bigger than that. And one of the actors and somebody else mentioned to me that they have heard multiple people talking like, oh, for sure, they shot that on 8 mil, 60 mil, and 35 mil stock, like, guaranteed, like, it looked great, da, da, da, da, da.

And that made me laugh and chuckle because it's like, you know, that's the hardiest kind of audience to get the proof lot over. And, you know, so if 98% of the viewing public can't tell any difference, it's, you know, again, there's all kinds of reasons to shoot film. I'm not saying these things to not shoot them film, but just from the aspect of focus on set, you have a different mindset when you're shooting film on, you know? And that in of itself is a reason to do it

because there's so many things in our waking life that distract us, our phones are just, you know, there's so many people that can get in touch with. And phones are a wonderful tool. I'll use mine all the time on set. Best few finder ever because it's really fast. except for when you're trying to change lenses then you're like no it's a different set

oh you've unselected all this you son of a picture I also need to get a pistol grip for it as well to kind of treat it like a proper viewfinder but yeah I mean again these are all I'm not saying it goes back to the headline I'm not saying it should be this or that it's just having the options and yes you wanted to get it looking good

and feeling right but like let's not be too precious about it. You know what I mean? Like it's it's a balance. I don't know. Again, I will get just as nerdy with anybody about this stuff if you'll let me. But at the same time it's like, I don't know.

I find the conversation interesting. Well, I think it's more interesting when there's an end goal. I think too much there's people's totally that the sort of presupposed end of the conversation is that everyone's going to agree that film

is better. And when that's the end of the conversation. It's, I don't even really want to talk about this because I don't necessarily agree with the, with the solution here. Because, you know, like F1, that wouldn't look better on film. That looked perfect on digital. That was exactly what that thing needed to look like, you know? So it, yeah, but I think there is the fun part I think we, sounds like we both agree on is just the idea of, it's, it's almost a thing of like, can you? Can't, can I make a little like that? That'd be interesting, you know, less so. Because obviously there's an emotional element to it. You know, with, with Walton, with Brando, obviously you're replicating

the 70s. Um, with Batman, you're, you're evoking the idea of that time period or even the early 2000. So there's a reason to emulate film versus just like, oh, the film. I have this theory. I mentioned it before, but I have this theory that back in the, like you were saying, the 5D era, um, or even before that, the DVX era, we were saying we wanted to emulate film because film was the real thing. There was no. sliding scale. It was you shot film or it looked like shit. And then I think all the younger kids got online and saw all the forums and everything of us talking about emulating film and thought we meant photochemically, which we do now. But at the time, I think, like, we were all like,

we don't have the budget to shoot film. How do we get the film look? And that was more like the cinema look, production design, obviously any depth of field at all. You know, 24P, we didn't have 24P. And so I think we've done the internet the group of people who have come up on the internet a disservice by not being louder about no, no, no, we just meant

everything that went into film production, not photochemical replication. But that's just a theory I have. Because everyone talked to, oh, the film look, it's like there's no, there isn't one. There's grain. That's true. Yeah, that is I think

a good point that, because even And earlier, like, you know, a good decade ago, I was probably saying that sentence, the film look, you know, it's like now it's, I describe the particular precise kind of film look that I'm trying to achieve. And a lot of times it's, huh? What? You know, and so it's interesting. And yeah, no, we used to go through all kinds of, I mean, I remember when we had mini DV cams and the, what, the ground glass spinning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The lettuce 35 one, yeah. And Red Rock made one. It didn't have the spinner, so it looked real like... But you're just getting 24P, what a, what a transcendental moment for digital cinema. Dude, it was 24P and shooting on, on not P2 cards. Yeah. 24P and SD cards were like, holy shit, we've made it.

And I guess the, what I suppose technically would be a mirrorless mount, what we would call a mirrorless mount today. But, you know, like the old AF100 having like a micro four thirds mount, that was a big deal. that always makes me laugh like it's kind of just come full cert like we we nailed it and then it's just making better sensors that's pretty much it um i did want to ask about uh the we kind of touched on bad man but did you make these like back to back with brando no actually i shot um brando before um yeah they shot that like a good like six to eight months before that okay um yeah they had walton brando had a little bit long of a post process the bad man was at the the the the bad bans was just a little bit they kind of that was just like the writing the whole thing was just a much tighter thing brando was a little bit more of like a loose process i don't wouldn't say malick or anything like that but it was certainly a lighter idea of things compared to the approach that bad man had which was more

of a precise like this is how we're going to do it and you know some storyboards of action sequences versus Brando, which is you were all trying to kind of emulate the man himself, Brando, and, you know, incorporated that into the process of filmmaking. I mean, obviously, logistically, you can't do that. Logistically, everything's got to be twice as more buttoned up in order to even consider that possibility. But yeah, I was really trying to be loose and nimble. And that was also kind of imposed its way into, and imposed or invited its way into the cinematography. as well, where we wanted our LA style to be much more locked down and more rigid, and it's, you know, it's when we're replicating famous scenes or famous environments and

interactions that Marlon had versus Tahiti, which is, we're going to be wide lenses, loose, you know, handheld but controlled and purposeful, but, you know, longer shots and trying to find moments and letting the lighting be a little bit more, I don't want to say natural, but just more letting the actors feel a part of their environment and not trying to manipulate and control things too heavily. Yeah, you were using the CRLS on. Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of them in general. I really, they kind of go on every single job with me now.

And it's a big part. I kind of find the conversation about film emulation, CRLS kind of going hand in hand for me because of, you know, we talked about it, you know, having a higher, I like having a higher contrast look, you know, I think the tonality that you can get in the face is a wonderful thing. I'm also someone that I like to play with contrast in the face, depending on the story.

And, you know, whether it's, you know, you're kind of going half-lit and a higher contrast or even if you're wrapping the key more and it falling off more in the shadow, I love the way film looks. And I love that sort of style of lighting. And it's a different look and it's off entirely. And I think audiences, to back to you point about your theory a little bit, I think audiences are getting a little tired of our clean and clinical from the streaming, no offense to the streaming world, there's wonderful things that are made there.

But by and large, it's pretty paid by numbers unless there's some real authorship behind the cinematography, which also needs to come from the director as well, because the cinematography can't fight that fight alone. It's got to come from both sides of that equation. And producers, too. Yeah, and so having that higher film print sort of contrast look, and, you know, mixed with grain and filmulation, I feel has given me a little bit more comfortability

and introducing more hard light into my lighting. And the Sine reflect lighting system, what's really great about is that, one, you have, they're very efficient, so they transmit light incredibly well. If you're limited on space, you get your light is traveling sort of a more appropriate distance to kind of move in the way that's natural. So, you know, for me, I really like to light spaces. first and then it's like lighting 85% of the space

and then just shot the shot just doing small small tweaks one it makes your turnarounds really fast two I think it looks way more natural and and three I think the actors really appreciate the speed of which you get to move once you're in a scene and I find that having the different sizes really allows me to I don't have to spend a lot of time flagging light you know it's like that

with the issue a lot of time with the hard light, it's coming in here and you've got to flag this and do that with the CRLS and like the feather point is the big one, because I've worked I'm fortunate to do some bigger commercials and you get to work with more experienced gappers and key grips. And especially here

in L.A., key grips have their way of doing things. And it works. And they like that. And they're really reluctant to deviate from that. And I've seen bring up the CRLS and get a lot of confused looks and faces.

is like, that's just a reflector, isn't it? It's like, yes, it is, but it does a lot more than that. And it's usually when I put it up, and then when you put a hard like that with like, for example, the div two, I bet, you know, a hard light into an actor's face, not even like an edge light or a three quarter. Because this one, we were, this particular commercial,

we were trying to emulate Spielberg sort of style, you know, so it's not being, you know, not being afraid of hard light. And it gets playing Pokemon to VHs when they get younger to get older. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, you know, push a hard light and the person's face and just at that feather point,

just a little bit, and then I see the key grip, but he's like sitting right next to me in the camera and he goes, now I understand. It's the quality of the light in the face and it's like, and it's combined with your film contrast that it's like the face is like eating that light. And this is just on the monitor. So we agree we don't have grain

or even film relation at this point for any softening. It's just, you know, on camera. and it's like oh that just looks dynamic so when you're talking about higher contrast what do you have like a number where you're like I want this to be like an eight to one or whatever three stops under no I I don't like math I I failed algebra so let's you know that's it's I leave math to camera assistants and gaffers and that's I'll let them if they want to work out equations they can. I will, I will, I will, I, I start from a place of just visual examples. I'm a visual person. So every project, I'll, I'll, all other show work that I did that maybe is

similar or I'll pull photo references or frame grabs like shot decks are really great example with their keyword search. Yeah. It's, it's been really valuable, especially, um, yes, the narrative, it's great. You have, you know, on features, you have a little bit more time to go over that stuff, but on commercials, you typically don't. So I find that shot decks are really great useful tool to pull up examples like I had to shoot this one thing for a prom I was like a rehearsal and I rehearsal

was a high school anniversary thing that had a stage of other and I found like an actual example from a movie that had done that and just pull those examples in agency directors everyone's like yep yep yep yep and because there wasn't trying to figure things out we knew what the look was I got to spend more time

freaking that light as opposed to like no that's not good like they everybody was on the same page of what we wanted and that spot like won a bunch of awards and like they every time I work with that that agency they're like oh that spot it just we did nothing in color like you had it all like we literally just put a vignette on the shots and that was it we just used your life and it's like yeah because it all we're all in the same page and we get to spin that that last 10% can take a lot of time if you're not dialed in right and I think that all goes such a long way for doing that and um You know, and I think I love soft light. I think soft light is wonderful. But sometimes the cinematographer, especially in the Middle Age, I think we've gotten a little, I don't know, a little pedestrian.

Well, I think, so I agree. I've recently, I've really been trying to force myself into not taking more risks because that obviously scares everyone, but just being a little, because obviously a big 12 buy right next to the subject. It's going to look nice. It's Satan. You know, we're going to, especially, I mostly do a documentary right now. And so, what, I don't

need to get, I'm not doing, and none of them are murder docs, right? These are all weird. The person just needs to look nice. You know, so we, but on the other hand, you know, my buddies who are directors who I work with are like, they want, they want it to be a little more dynamic because they're like, what else? You know, fuck it.

It's just they're sitting there, make it look cool. And so I've, I've really been trying to like because I don't want to fuck it up right so I'm trying it's that weird push and pull between like oh maybe I give him a hard slash over it but is that too much you know yeah I mean like so between that it's a hard it's a hard mental game and here's just I can't help myself because it's a very you give me a very particular example like what a way would I would play to spice that up is that you make let's say you have two sources let's just say the average 1200 d's for sake of these are 1200 X's you put I would you could bring the one source that that's more wrapping around the face. You double break that. And then the one that you put, that you can make more of like your edge light that's from behind here,

have that one just go direct. And so you get more spice hitting this side. And so potentially, when it's up by the right angle, you get some reflective highlights towards your camera. Or I guess if you was going this way, you can reflect that way. And that just gives you a little bit more of that sort of like heat

and that kind of goes a bit softer and falls off more as it comes around and wraps around the face. And yeah, so that's just an example. Like you can still use that 12 buy, but you can give that 12 buy a little bit of spice. There's all kinds of fun, interesting, dynamic ways to play with all that stuff. And I think what's, while the camera stuff technology is fun, I think the advancements in lighting over the past three to four years are really exciting and really allows, you know, we just did wrap the feature in Los Angeles here.

And man, it's so nice working with L.A. Cruz, they're so good. they're so fast it's just it's like they just it's hard to beat them like they're really superior and like we had a really short shooting schedule and the quality that we achieved it is remarkable and especially like worked with a very very good Gaffron key grip and they took such good care of me and we really push each other in it and that was a lovely experience but like you know we were also an older building and you know cameras all gone wireless lighting's gone wireless grips grips aren't wireless they're still hardwired um or or hard planted. But yeah, there's certainly, you know, I do think there's a, um, there needs to be somewhat

on set now that there's control of all these frequencies because sounds also wireless, you know, everyone's stepping on each other now. And, but that technology, when it's working perfectly, it's a wonderful thing because the speed and like, oh, I drop that up, you know, half stop, down to stop. Like, it's just, it's a really, really great thing. And, um, it's a really great speed to work at. And, um, I love it. Yeah, I'm not in board off territory yet. Or we'll, We'll get there eventually. The iPads, guy pad's still effective as well. It just depends on how many, you know, how big your spaces are

and how much, how many units you're working. Yeah. And actually, I know we got to let you go here soon, but I did want to ask about the Tahiti crew because I heard that you hired locally for that, right? Yeah. So we brought out, the only people that came out with me from Los Angeles were my B-Cam operator as I operated myself as well for ACM. And then our first ACs, Lauren Peel and Michael, I can I pronounce,

last name, but he's a lover guy. I'm sorry, Michael. And, well, but our second AC and data manager, they were local. And then all of Grip Electric were local. And, like, for example, like our production designer, his entire art department was all local. I mean, he had some people making some graphics here that they would, you know, sent digitally, but anyone that was doing, like, physical labor pretty much were all local.

And so, yeah, it was certainly a really love. It's a language barrier. Not everyone speaks English there. French is the main language. And, you know, there's just not anywhere near the sort of resources that you might have. Obviously on any small island, but like the DG, for example, has more infrastructure than Tehidi does when it comes to the film ministry. And the story I love to tell is that Mike Gaffer the day before production starts, he was building out the camera van, no trucks, all vans, with two by four. and planks.

So that's an example of how the Taoisean spirit just get it done, but get it done well. You know, like, and they're all troopers and, you know, they work with all different crews. They worked with French, German, American, so they get the whole gamut of all different types. And, yeah, they just, they couldn't be rattled. They were, there were strong and steadfast. And also when we were saying in Maraya shooting, which is just a 40-minute ferry ride from Tahiti, we all had to because most of everybody lives on the island of Tahiti

and so we all got to stay in a house together and we got to do like family dinners and they were teaching us about like Tahitian history and all that so that was it was just so lovely and I really cherish those memories and it's certainly a good place to have a weekend off as well

yeah I'm sure yeah because I it just kind of I don't know why I guess that's a very ethnocentric thought of mine but when I had seen that you guys used Tahitian crews. I was like, how many film crew? Because obviously film shoots everywhere, especially with, you know, you're James Bond's and whatnot. But like, I guess in

my head, I was like, I would have assumed you would have just brought people in because, you know, finding any island just has a dedicated film crew felt at the time when I first heard that, like, crazy. But yeah, I guess, especially when you bring up like, there are other countries that are closer, you know, they probably shoot there a lot more often when they need an island location. Yeah, and they're building, they're continuing to build that. I know the Tahitian government was interested and, you know, educating more of their people, like others filming Tahiti, which is basically the production company that we use that's there,

and they have like a big resource that they pull on, like our data manager, Hero. He lived in California for like seven years and he, we didn't have to teach him anything. Like, you know all the practices and procedures. And if someone didn't have this sort of like, because a lot of everyone there is like it's a little more like jack of all trade sort of thing while some people might have specialized in like lighting our camera and it's like our second AC

you know like Lauren peel by first she you know taught them everything and it was just like you know it can be I've I've been there before as a second AC who's not a train like a traditionally trained second on a set and it's very very overwhelming that position because there's just I mean just slating in front of huge actors you know you got to slate be still enough to catch that slate, pause it, but also get out of there as fast as you possibly can, but do it as quietly as possible. Don't trip over anything and then get ready for the next setup while you're doing that, but also be quiet at the same time. So it's very daunting, but, you know, we all gave and pushed in different ways and, you know, I tried to like teach, you know, I love the

gap for a week guy. He's very, very, very little English, but by the end, we had a really great like almost nonverbal kind of communication that he really enjoyed like the way that I liked the light and there was less like forest style and more natural and so he we really bonded by the end of it and yeah it's a really wonderful experience yeah well hopefully as much as I love the Tahitians get gigs uh hopefully there will be more LA productions and we can utilize those people who have so many decades of experience more effectively yes yeah yeah absolutely Um, well, I'll let you go. It was great talking to you. I'm, I'm sure, uh, likewise, have to stay in touch because it sounds like the same brain. But, uh, I did want to say it is cool to see, um, Billy Zane getting a, uh, another film. Because I, one of my favorite movies of all time is the Phantom. And I literally just showed my girlfriend and her best friend, the Phantom two weeks ago. So many people don't even know about that movie. I remember going to the theater as a kid and being like, this movie is awesome. Yeah. Like the horse, like at the time, I'd love the purple outfit. I don't really know what I was thinking about that. But, but. that being said he pulled off the purple spandex really well yeah um no billy was yeah billy was

he was interesting like guy to work with he is really um he was he had really embraced the island nature of being there and he really kind of channeled i think um the sort of energy that brando had when he was that the very reason brando was there was to do that and i think that's what billy kind of pulled into his sort of mana and his energy um working there and um it was great working with him with that stuff and working out angles and profiles and like I like playing with the um because i have a lot of um package of like brando being the godfather because i've studied that film so much and i had to separate brando and godfather but i wanted i brought that idea of playing with that with the first time we meet him lighting him almost in a similar way whether

it was like silhouette or semi silhouette like trying to take as much light away from the eyes as possible to play up this myth of this person and then as you come to be friends with him as an audience member as the way protagonist does and you know have that intimacy that we you know bring more humanity bring more light into the eyes less silhouette just being like a dude that you're chatting with yeah and that was really fun to play with that that actually brings up something I do have to ask about now sorry then I'll let you go the uh editing people into existing footage. How do you pull that off? Like, in what method were you able to do that effectively? Yeah. So it's a multiple, multiple layers here. But the production design is a big aspect

of that because we're not, you know, we're not shooting at the stage where they shot, you know, Johnny Carson. We're also not shooting in Paris for Las Tango, you know. And so having to recreate all those different spaces, you know, in one location is the real challenge. but then it's just having examples that we know that we're pulling the still example from that we're matching to is the first part. And I'm trying to match that as best possible. And then going

and post and trying to play a little bit with it's like the Dick Cabot show. Like you cut from one shot to another and even the Dick Kevin himself looks differently. You know, so it's just the nature of the instruments at the time. And so just trying to like use different filtration elements to add noise or tell, you know, take away clarity or all those things and just playing with it. And that was part of where we needed a lot of time as well in post is to try to match everything

and try to get all those different mediums looking. Right. For films, were you going to like American cinematographer and trying to be like, what were they doing? Or did you just kind of shoot it knowing you were going to do it in post? We didn't go in the AC. It's really just pulling grabs from the movies themselves, you know. But it's also what grab do you pull from? right like you know which version of the godfather which you know is it the older one is it the newest one the DVD the blue ray and like the color the contrasts and things are all different between them and you know and how you're viewing them now plays a big guess because of OLEDs versus LCDs and

all that so there's there's a lot of gray there and again i'll go back to production design and wardrobe those are the things that people can tell if something's off lighting wise that go you know obviously you don't want it to be a complete opposite color or anything absurd like that, but that wasn't that, you know, that's not that difficult in comparison to what our production designer Michael Collison pulled off. Yeah. Production design is a, I'd said it a bunch of times, but production design, a lot of times DPs will get an award for what the production designer did. Yep.

Yeah. All right. I will officially let you go. Thanks so much for spending the time, dude, and definitely stay in touch. You're very welcome. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Yeah. Take care, brother.

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