Frame & Reference Podcast - 232: "Hijack" S2 Cinematographer Ed Moore, BSC

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Ed's back! If you've heard his other episodes, you'll know we'll have a fantastic, wide-ranging chat for DP's of all skill levels, so you will NOT want to miss it!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

And welcome to this episode 232 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my friend Ed Moore, BSC, D.SC, D.D.P. of Hijack Season 2. Enjoy it. Is there a reason for your, like, because at this point, your Zoom setup is fancier. Why, is it just to impress people you're applying for jobs for? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. I can do different colors.

Do you want a different color? No, I love blue, but. I can do you, it does kind of an awful pink. That's awful, right? My issue is that it's too bright, but if I bring the level down, uh-oh, flicker, flicker, because it's an awful, what I need is a prax spark here with a better transformer. So that's where I'm at with my life. Hard to invest in light ribbon for your shelf.

Yeah. Yeah, although it's 100% tax-deductible, I guess. So true. Yeah. Honestly, when I first started this show, I was using my C500 as the main cam. And I had like full like my kinos where I did the whole thing. And, uh, and I thought like, oh, that's overkill. But then every, same thing when I'd apply for jobs. They're, you know, oh, we're going to talk on Zoom to the DP.

And it's like, hey. And then I noticed, you know, after a while, I was like, right, there's too much stuff. I got to use this equipment at some point like for honors. And the more and more that I like reduce things, no one's reactions changed. Yeah. Like no, it was still, yeah, now this set up, people like, wow, that looks great. Like I've had consulted on like CEOs like Zoom calls. If you have any sort of shallow depth of failed on your Zoom call, it's a win and it's

not the sort of awful Zoom version. So yeah, like this this wall is like, you know, one meter behind me. So this was hard. I can't go I'm not going like large format for my Zoom camera so I have an XT ball that's working pretty well right as it snaps focus

to the background yeah yeah tell me if it does that I think I'm okay I'm holding on I actually so I have where is it

so over here I have GFX 50R oh hello it's yeah that's good that's a company expense waiting to happen. Yeah, dude.

And I overpaid for it like an idiot too because I didn't realize that I was bidding on a camera in Australia. So the shipping was pretty rad. But the, I had an XT3 for the longest time. I just loaned it to my buddy. But those, like,

even the older Fuji XT4, like, they still rip. Yeah. They're great. They're great. The only reason I use it is I, um,

I had a job a few years back that just suddenly, for reasons, completely not to do with me, extended its prep by like three weeks. And I was like, this is imaginary money that I don't have a... And so I might have bought a like a cue, the monochrome one, but ultimate pretentious DOP points.

And I love it. And so, yeah, if you go on my website, you can see my pretentious behind the scene. I cannot pour a black and white, high contrast grainy behind the scenes candid into my soul like i can't get enough of them um and then i beat myself up because i start every shoot with it on my shoulder and it's ready to go and i'm like yeah this is going to be so good and then the shoot then it's like day 120 and like i don't want to see any cameras i don't want to see um but i usually have great stuff from like the first half of a shoot

yeah the i i probably my x 100 i probably the first year, maybe, two years. I exclusively had it in a very contrasty black and white mode in 16-9 too, not even full. I went for it. Commitment. Yeah, and I think I had a pearl essence.

I had like a half pearl or like a full pearl on it too. Oh, cool. Yeah, nice, a bit of hell. Well, those filters are like, I had to get rid of act. Well, there was two actually. But I was going to say I had to get rid of. rid of it, A, because it's too common.

Like, everyone's, you know, diffuse. I'm starting to get back into just a sharp image. Oh, okay. He's going to full anthill album. Yeah, well, I got ansela albums right there. Oh, we even managed to cross-fugust to it. Nice. Good for me.

Yeah, the post office here came out with a field notes and a stamp collection, so that's all the stamps. Oh, nice. but the I think the diffusion I try not to be you know tell me if you struggle with this things that people like I like I just have to accept it I'm not niche I'm not like you know I like things that are enjoyable that's okay but then you diffusion being the one everyone you know once black prom is to YouTube but everyone's using that on all their photography all their video all this stuff. And so now I have to like consciously be like, you know what? No, I don't like

pretty things. Yeah. I mean, yeah, on the Liker, I've got a yellow, like I'm team no lend cap on sales cameras. Just get rid of the barrier, right? So it's usually a UV filter, but on the monochrome, I've just have a yellow black and white filter. And it's so great. And then I have lightroom set up to just do like plus 80 contrast on everything I import and that that makes me happier it's great fun yeah yeah i hear you with a filter and and also the lighting and the like i mean the some of the guys on youtube the lighting they do in their studios is really good and it's really difficult especially the ones that have got glasses they've got like a like seven-foot octagon with a grid in there and there's no reflection in glasses i'm like that's genuinely hard

to like arranging all of that stuff, keeping an eye line. Like there's plenty of DPs couldn't do that. I still fuck it up on documentaries all the time when they show up and this subject has glasses and I'm just like, because the subject, like all the ones I've done have been classic.

Like you've got an hour to set up and then we're going and then the subject's gone. And then the subject always shows up 30 minutes early. So. Yeah. And then they always have glasses. And I'm like, I had this hole ready to go. And then the director's like, bro, you need to.

And I'm like, I got it. You're going to be mad at me. I was lucky enough in the summer, whilst a shing a bit of a new romance, to what we did, the gaffer Dave Smith, who is Steve Yedlin's gaffer when he's in the UK. And they came up with the, you know, what came up with. They were doing the kind of window-shaped reflector covers. So like any reflection is just a natural window,

which I really need to. to do so yeah maybe that's the answer for the youtubeers yeah i the the youtube lighting now has made it so that documentary lighting it is uh more challenging to not make it look like a youtube video oh yeah because because they're just doing good documentary lighting so now you yeah right something else and i yeah i mean starting out i must have shown like a thousand head got interviews in various ways the way that used to be like really cool with a little kicker and like a nice keener flow or if you're like really there for a while you might put like a

eight by gridcloth out or something now just looks really naff if it looks like you're sort of doing an intentional nostalgic uh you know TV interview so yeah like the proper documentary guys are all like cool natural light interesting locations and like lit interviews it seems to be disappearing apart from the when you sit down with like Obama and like someone from hard copy. Is that a show? Is that a fictional one from the West Wing? Like, and they do that, you know, classic across a room double interviewing news thing.

Yeah. The, when you were saying the nostalgic interview, there's something about the like old DVD special features where they would get them. There was the like mall, you know, like you'd get your. your photo taken at the mall and they had that backdrop. And then they would take that backdrop for the interview of the special features. And then they would either hit it with the cookie cutter, light on the backdrop, or it would be like a blue splash. Definitely blue splash. Team blue splash.

Yeah, Benedict's Fence and I have spoken a lot about blue splash. Yeah, it's good fun. It's good fun. And I have a T-Roy and a 70-Rold. And when both of them have their, like, photos taken at school, there is still, those great backgrounds are still very much. in circulation. It's good to see. It's honestly like,

I think I'm very much a like, it's in the ether type person. Like, like, it's not, when people go, oh, jinkgo jeans are coming back. I'm like, it's going to, whatever that is, it's that timeline thing,

it's going to apply to everything. And I think we're going to start bringing, people are like, oh, how can movies today look, whatever. I want them to look like the 90s. It's like, you don't. You don't.

You want, it to look like the Matrix, but I don't know if you want it to look like, you know, that, but I do think people will probably start doing that. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Bring back little headlights. Yeah. I'm there for it.

Do you, this is a good question for you. I keep seeing, let's call them prospective cinematographers online, talking about how much, and film viewers. I think this is more the issue. It's like you're on a film forum, a movie forum. And lesser experienced people are all decrying this idea of quote unquote Netflix lighting. And I've talked to other DPs about it. And I don't think it's incumbent upon, or I don't think it's Netflix's fault necessarily.

It's just Netflix was making a lot of stuff. And the quality of low budget has gotten higher. So it's like the weird thing where like, you're, you're, it's like the weird thing where like, back of the day, low budget looked low budget. So your expectations were set accordingly. Now, low budget actually looks quite nice. Same thing with the YouTube lighting. Yeah, I see a lot of that stuff,

and it often makes me angry. I think it's, you know, you can't, yeah, it's an attention economy, right? And like the sort of easiest to grasp ideas get the most attention quickly on all of the various platforms. So, you know, I see a lot of accounts that feel quite cynical to me. I don't necessarily believe they really believe what they're saying, but it'll be some combination of like nostalgia and nerd and like movie sometimes.

And they'll pull all this stuff. And you can prove any point you want by like cherry picking examples. But, you know, I saw one the other day that was comparing. where the lighting on the two devil wears prada movies and saying that like the dp is is is unable to use shadows and the i i didn't watch the entire video but i watched five minutes and it was just like one example like in a lift and i'm like i just fund you just don't know what you you're talking about really here like it all of the basis of your discussion is kind of is crazy like nobody has forgotten how to do anything. Like, I have forgotten the name of the DP on those films, but like they know what they're doing. So I think, you know, a lot of the stuff harkening back to,

you see the same discussion come up constantly with like practical effects. There's, you know, a general sort of assessment that anything that was like, Anything that's real is great. But how you define what real is is sometimes it's like a rubber monster and sometimes it's like lighting that is contrasty. Like it's just it fits the vibe. And I think a lot of the, without, you know, naming any names, a lot of the things that are sort of hearkening back to recreating that vibe,

I think are unsuccessful in that they're sort of, they're trying to ape something that when it was being done, they've sort of misunderstood the lessons about it. Like pure nostalgia is kind of uninteresting, I think, beyond a certain point. And yeah, Netflix lighting, it's like, I've shot things for Netflix. There is no like Netflix, like, lighting police that come to the set. And I'm like, whoa, what the hell are you doing?

So, you know, you're cherry picking examples of stuff on the platform. to support this particular argument to get views, I think. So it feels a bit genuine to me. Well, and I've mentally blocked out that Devil Wears Prada video because, like, the thing that I have a problem with is because I'm not a, let's call it, known expert in my field, my friends still feel the need to send me stuff like that. Oh, right. where they're like, oh, see, check, like, you're interested in this, right?

And I'm like, that shit pissed me off so bad. Because, yeah, and it's always like, they're like 80% correct, right? They're like, not in that example, but they're just correct enough where if you didn't know what they were talking about, you would buy it there. And, you know, they know what they're, it's like the, it's like the chat GPT thing. What's the phrase it's like it's, it's an expert everything I'm not an expert in, but needs work on stuff I am an expert in. Yeah, right. Yeah, I get it. There's just so much more to filmmaking than kind of it's so reductive, the argument that it's all about these particular things that, you know, or the criticism is sort of, the most boring sort of criticism is when someone is like critical of something on the basis that they want it to be something that it just isn't. You have to judge things for, like, what they are and not be like, you know,

I wish the devil's pride would look like the godfather. Well, it's not going to. Like, it's like, it is what it is. And those actors are going to look like a certain way. And that's doing your job as a cinematographer is, like, delivering a look. That look is hard to do. Like, it's freaking hard. Like, that was the other thing.

I was like, that's difficult beauty lighting you're shitting on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, I think at one point he said, like they just didn't either he said they didn't light it or they yeah something along the lines of like they didn't light it and there was just one light off to the side I was like well first of all it's top light fuck you but it's very lit it's overlit intentionally yeah yeah but uh and and you know a lot of time people are comparing everything to like the same 10 films they remember from when they were like 10 years old.

And you go, well, part of this is like survivorship bias. Like, you compare all the films you remember from like 20, 30 years ago are the absolute classics that are the best. So, like, you have to be careful making the argument like, oh, it was better back then because like look at all the other films that, you know, like some of these films are masterpieces. And you're comparing like an average thing now to just like the best film of that decade. I think that's.

You know, a little unfair sometimes. Well, it does, one thing that, not to like, toot my own horn, but, like, one thing that I was really happy that I developed, I remember, what was it? I think Twilight had come out or, like, a third Twilight or something like that. And I was sitting there, like, bitching about it. Like, oh, who care? Like, these movies suck, whatever.

And my friend Sieberin goes, oh, it's just not made for you. Yeah. And I was like, what? and she goes, it's not made for you. And I was like, well, of course, all movies are made. She goes, no, no, no. It's not made for you. Like, yeah.

And just for whatever reason, that stuck with me. And I started, you know, obviously I was going through film school at the time. So I was being calibrated a little better. But the idea of meeting the art where it is makes, kind of makes everything for you. If you go into it with good intentions and an open heart, you, you, you, you, you, suddenly I've liked almost everything I've watched. Now, that's not great for film criticism, but it is great for loving movies.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, it's a nicer way to enjoy art, for sure. Yeah, my letterbox is just all five stars. Everyone gets five stars. You did so good, sweetie. But it's just Deppel Wears Prada. It's the only thing you've watched every, every... All the spin-off content?

Is there like, devil wears pride of Tokyo drift? There should be. Devil wears Gucci. Yeah. Devil wears kind of like a slanket on her day off because it's cold and like no one's not going to know. Devil wears slinket. Yeah, that could be maybe some more contrast. She's in a cabin in the wood.

There's a fire. Yeah. There's a fun movie. Camin of the ones. Oh, yeah. I've been dancing around it because there's only one episode. But hijack looks good. I don't know how much.

Did we not send you all of the press screenings? I could have got you all the episodes? Oh, man. Could you? Let's talk about hijack. Yeah, absolutely. Well, also, I like here right now, the listener knows exactly when this episode airs, but I don't know.

Yeah. So like, that's a good point. I don't know. So I don't want to, you know, I mean, let's talk about the show in general.

I can ruin it for you. The first, as of right now, the first two episodes are on the platform. Yeah, it's series two. So, yeah,

we are back with the, I'll get the jokes out of the way, the world's least lucky commuter. Seven else by Burgess Ober. And yeah, so the first series, which we did a couple years ago, now I shot all episodes of this time round and that and I nearly died.

So this time round I'm doing one, two, three, and then I come back for seven and eight, all of those with the showrunner Jim Phil Smith directing. And this time, he's not on a plane. He's on a train. He's in Berlin. And it's, I love this series. I loved series one. And I just feel like Jim and co just would like how can we like triple down on on the character

So visually it was like you know something to really get my teeth into this time around Yeah and also Okay, he's on a train. I did Giggle a little that it's we're just doing hijack on a train But we're not I mean we are but we're not it's different and it's cool and I like the direction we're going yeah listen trust in the writing and the rating is what i'll say those guys have got some game um so yeah like i remember so jim phil smith and i like met up when he was sort of starting to storyline everything and but when we met up in the london transport museum and sat on me there's like a little model of a chief train we didn't go to an actual chief train but we just sat on the

shoe train and he like pitched me the plot and I was like several like there were lots of quadruple takes in that um in my reaction to everything that goes on so there's quite a there's quite a ride pun intended um coming up and uh you know I think he um you know it's a show called hijack with Idris Elba like guess what's going to happen to Idris Elba in series two like that's the fun of it I think and yeah as you've seen like it everything is not quite as it seems with with what's going on. But yeah, as soon as Jim was like, I think it's going to be Berlin and the U-Bahn

and, you know, the character is in a way sort of darker place psychologically because of the events of the first film. I was like, okay, like this can, we can go, we can really crank up the like, look. We're adding contrast. We're adding everything. So as soon as well, was spherical

on the LF and this time around we're Alexa 35 and we're Crystal anamorphics the weirdest possible animorphics we could find we tested a bunch

and they're definitely the weirdest and we have like we had a really like mismatched set they were all different areas of those lenses and crucially lovely Ari Rental here in London

managed to find there's one 50 mill that had been modified I think in the world to have close focus because that was our big thing

you need to get in with the characters it's mostly handheld on certainly on the train or largely operated by the miraculous John O Tyler and so having

a lens that could get us to like you know 30 centimetre or closer on the 50 mils. So I'd say like, like 85% of the show is shot on that one lens. And then, yeah, I mean, through so much color contrast into how I lit it onset, threw away the mat box,

everything's coming into the lens. It's flat. I mean, you know, the listeners may have seen episodes. I think episode eight might have beaten the JJ Abrams flare count. Like, it's wild. Like, we leaned in. to the look. So, yeah, it makes me very, very happy.

Is it, it's, was it, how do I phrase this? Were you intentionally trying to go bonkers or was that just the look and you were excited about it? I wouldn't say bonkers. I would say, you know, we want, I always want stuff to look how it feels the characters. Like I'm not interested in, you know, naturalism per se or, you know, it's. to feel so very documentary and I like the objectivity.

Yeah, well, I like the, or the subjectivity in his case. Like I want the, yeah, so like, like I want the brain to just be really engaging and have an opinion and be, you know, I love the sources

all being a shot. I mean, also just for in a practical sense, like with the practicalities of of making this show, like, We obviously shot in Berlin a bit, but also the amazing art department led by Don Roberts, a production designer. We built these millimeter accurate trains,

you know, different sizes for different types of shot. But our sort of hero one was, you know, two full carriages long. It was on this SFX rig that could shake it and wiggle it. So it pivots in the middle. So when you're looking down,

you get all that. It was a giant undertaking. But you're looking in all directions at all times as two cameras for almost every shot. So, you know, all those sources being in the frame. And then, you know, you're trying to sell the illusion of movement. And, you know, we had that there was LED volume outside the windows, because it was such a huge train.

Like we just couldn't, it would have been impractical to have like really high resolution volume. had quite a low resolution pixel pitch out there. So we shot plates in the real U-Bahn tunnels with like a big array. That was great fun. But when you put that stuff onto the side volume walls, like it wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. So then it's just all about like bringing like layers of just like crud on the windows. We want on the train to feel filthy.

You've got stuff going past. You've got endless kind of estra, you know, extras and stuff on the train in the way. the handheld really helped. So like it did feel sometimes like in pre-production, like it was fun to have to be really have my hands on a lot of that stuff as well and be sort of part of that team. But it felt a bit like coming up with like a theme part ride when you see the sort of developing like a huge new,

you know, premium theme park thing. You're like, you know, it's so when you finally, when we finally loaded up that train with like cast and essays and press the like, we called it jiggle and sway. Once we activate a jiggle and sway. And you see everyone's kind of, you know, moving together, having that just annoying subway vibe. And the camera is moving with it. And like, Jono and the other operators are kind of like, can we just turn it back because

can't hold a frame and we're like, good. That's great. So, yeah, I think the look came, you know, not trying to just be like intentionally out there, but to be to just make people feel the drama in what is on the surface of it quite a prosaic, you know, dull location. So I've seen a couple of times being like, that's not what the U-Bahn lighting looks like. And I'm like, well, but we're seeing it through the eyes of a guy who's in a pretty dark place. Yeah. You know, that was actually one of two things I was about to ask, which is when you have a situation,

where you're able to design the lighting for what should be a real place. And all of the sources are in the shot. What are you doing to give it that stylistic look? Because obviously if you were to just put tubes in the ceiling, it would kind of look like it does in reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so Chris Stone's brilliant Gaffer and Dom Lenoir, the head practical electricians

are sort of making all those fixtures up both absolutely crucial to that but the real trains have sort of you know on the three-quarter sides they have these long strips and I couldn't go too far from what the real train looked like because we knew we were going to have to film

some of the real trains in Berlin they could modify it a bit but like at a glance like it had to be roughly similar So, you know, the first thing, you know, you add a grid on all of those over headlights. So at least, you know, you're controlling the spread of it. So those are all, you know, beautifully helped by the arts department. Those are all light boxes that were built and set back in a bit. So and then divided up into a whole bunch of sections.

So Calvin Chris or our lighting program I was able to just have, you know, we wanted it to feel like that, you know, as the train was bumping around, you'd have kind of, you know, fluorescent ballasts that were kind of ticking in and out. So there's endless little flickers that happen. So it was important to separate the train up into sections like that. So we did the overhead and then I added sort of lower vertical strips just built into the set so that there would be a source lower down because I didn't want it to feel entirely toplet. you want to get up and into the eyes with people. And then in testing, it just felt really right to do just a collar contrast split between

that. So the top light we ended up doing in a really, like, filthy cyan. And then the lower strips became, you know, pretty warm. So you're building that straight in. I added kind of little foot level, more practical. all the way through. There's various points in the show where like, you know,

the power to the train isn't always as it should be. So stuff is flicking out and I need to make sure that even when you're in a tunnel that there's some sort of light source even kind of like in an emergency state, stuff like that.

And then, you know, the other whole part of that was like how do you get, you know, what does the inside of a subway tunnel look like? The real subway tunnels actually do you have have quite a lot of lighting and stuff in them,

but it's usually off, right? So, but I was like, the trouble with that is you get no sense of motion. And you're on this, for a lot, you know, it's an eight-hour show. You're on there for eight-episode show. You're on there for a long time. So when we shot the plates and the real tunnels, we had, you know, great access. The teams were really helpful out there.

And we were able to just activate all of the kind of maintenance lighting down the tunnel. So we captured all of that stuff. That was all on the volume. And then we were able to pixel map off where the lights were showing up on that content into sort of LED batons that I had on either side. So as we passed a light on the volume, I'd have something that would be throwing, projecting light in, which really helps because it wasn't quite enough off the volume

to sort of do it just off that. So yeah, it was a mixture. I mean, it did feel like mission control. I would look to my left and there would be like 12 carts full of like other nerds like me doing their little bit of the puzzle. I had endless little displays where stuff was animating, you know, what direction, what speed, keeping track of all that. And then around the front of the drivers cab, we did have a more traditional higher resolution volume. So that was seeing our straight ahead plates. So yeah, all of that is so proud.

just as all in camera. Like we'd never had to replace any of those backdrops really other than to add stuff in that wasn't there for real on the plates. Yeah. Do you, when you're, for this, but also just kind of more broadly,

when you're trying to introduce color contrast into a scene, how do you keep it from looking muddy? You know, like especially just using like white light, like trying to, I find myself struggling with that a lot recently, honestly, it looks pretty.

you start looking at it in a row, you're like, it's not really contrast, it's just mixed. Yeah, I know you mean, well, I think sometimes, like, you know, depending on the colors you pick and the color science that you're working all the way through, there can be where the colors meet in the middle. You can get just sort of a gray nothingness that can be quite unpleasant. I had the brilliant DIT Mark Glanister on Saturn, all his team, he was able to set up like,

you know, we had like HDR 4K live grade off the cameras. So we always, we always have the HDR and SDR to compare. That was something that was really important to Jim. And then we had the color of Sandra Daniel, who's a genius. And he did the look in London. They did our show last.

And we, because, you know, we had the virtue, the show goes to a lot of different places. But obviously a lot of it is on the train. We were able to shoot test material early on. including with Idris on the train and use that to make a show lot. So we knew exactly sort of what those color mixes are going to be. So we could kind of look out for that.

But Andrew refined it beautifully in the grade. I thought we're really pleased as where it came to. Yeah. When you're building that lot, did you kind of do a similar sort of, I don't know, maximalism? Like did you have a little, was it a little more straight? forward or were you like we're going full like film you know was there a target or were you just building the look around what you had i think i think working with jim if it feels very yes andy

like in the sense that um it we never go back we never feels like we go backwards it's rarely do we go we've gone too far with this um it's always where can we take it not for the point of taking it further but just it's interesting as you go through a creative process and the material becomes more refined. You're seeing later and later edit. So when we're in the, you know, when we're first in the grade and you're looking at the showlut stuff, which felt, you know, we were, it was like a hundred and,

three, hundred and forty or days shooting. So we were seeing lots of assemblies with the, the stuff that Mark and his team had sort of like live graded. But that was more matching the crazy, lenses to each other and bits and pieces. We didn't do too much in the way of, like, hugely changing it creatively. But I was really happy with how those Davies looked. And then you see it with the, you know, in the grading suite with a bit of time between

you and the set and you're like, could it go further? And the answer is almost always that it can, or at least it is with, you know, with me, Jim and Andrew. So, yeah, it did go further. we I think we increased the colour contrast we took the levels down a bit more in the train but like held on to

I don't like neither to those guys sort of stygian gloom where the whole frame is set down sort of nothingness so there's always something for the eye to hold on to as brighter parts of the frame but you know we're sitting down

the sort of gamma and amidst and then yeah we I shot all pretty high ISO anyway so there's a bit of texture although the Alexa 35 doesn't you know isn't particularly noisy at high ISOs but I'd also added the I think it was soft nostalgic one of the

arid textures was built in grains yeah yeah so that that helped and then yeah we we added way more like you know because you also you can see it you know you can do tests you can do on platform tests and you see how much like the Apple TV compression takes out So sometimes what feels like too strong in the suite when you're seeing it like absolutely perfect off the server there by the time it's on platform, even on Apple, which shows, you know, like industry leading video compression, like it can take the edge of. So that's really interesting to see. But I think just because of the nature of the show, because it's so heightened, it's so kind of dramatic that you need the image to look at a certain. way for the audience to kind of like to help it's one of the fact of helping the audience go oh okay

i see what we're doing like we're talking earlier about like judging a thing for what it is like hijack is um you know a thriller it's psychological drama um yeah it's sort of seaty-pant stuff the score is saying that the writing and the performances and everything are saying that so i can't be the one person being like i'm going to shoot this all like speed photography like it you're You have to lean in and join that, getting that a voice. Yeah, the compression thing is interesting because the more grain you give it, obviously, the more work it has to do. Yeah, yeah. It's like, dude, come on.

But then also wouldn't it, like I'm wondering, what's the math on this? Like, if it's doing more work, it's giving it a higher bit rate. right it has to or does it just eat eat it i think i would be talking out of my area of expectees if i i would be guessing i would be guessing i mean yes i mean you know back when i would be like exporting things to DVD studio pro and if it was like it yeah like a menu that changed it yeah exactly those are the days then yeah i felt like i had a sense of how compression worked i mean now with like content delivery networks and like everything is like in a thousand different formats and the systems are like, you know, seamlessly jumping them between like levels and stuff.

I mean, there's a thing with Netflix and grain, I don't know if this is still the case, but Netflix were talking about adding grain as a like player end process that would be defined by data, which, you know, makes, have like 30 questions about how that would work. but yeah, it's interesting. For sure, whatever compression they're doing, it holds up. You see the grain for sure.

I would love to see the Blu-ray of it. Yeah, the full fat, like, I recently went back and took some sort of full resolution stills of the final show at the color suite, and that's really satisfying

to get the just like, absolutely as best as it ever is, You find the frame with no motion blur. Yeah, it looks great like that. I've definitely, I don't know what I'll put this, padded my results when sharing stills with, you know, directors or producers by finding that one frame that, you know, is perfectly in sharp. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I wish, I understand why we have this history with separate publicity photographers. and, you know, that work is often like, you know, artwork in its own right,

and there's a whole different also set that goes into that. Do I wish occasionally that the shows were marketed with as much of the real show as possible? Yes, I do. But I think that, like, it's hard to, for that any DP will tell you that, like, seeing what is a camera angle that you've really thought about, but it's just slightly uncanny valley because it was taken like two feet to the left on a different sensor

and it hasn't been graded quite the same way it's just is like so jarring it's just like just imagining like a musician having like someone in the control room sing their own song back to them in the headphones and like one like semi-tone sharp like so yeah it really throws it really throws me but then

you know the publicity guys need all this material like month before we finish but yeah but also like and it's the timeline that's really at fault here but like uh for the PR people you know we're going back to the idea of like commentary um you know public commentary i've seen a bunch of times where people go oh you know in service of these cherry-picked you know things they're doing oh look at this still versus this still and it's a lot of times it or like early on the Odyssey when stills are coming out

from the Odyssey people were like why does this look like shit and it's like because it's a set still it's not the show and why are you comparing it to a screenshot from a movie that's different and the PR people unfortunately

it's not their fault but they are starting those arguments unintentionally yes yes well there's a lot of yeah people I wouldn't far from an expert and the opposite of an expert

in how to market and publicize that's why I'm giving them so much leeway it's not that they're doing it yeah yeah yeah it's tough I think it's you know I the set stuff is a lot of photographers have made it do that work like

they also are doing the these separate shoots that they're like lighting themselves because the kind of key out stuff and that's all really really challenging I do really appreciate it not just on my stuff, but when I see online, the on-set photographers crediting the DPs on those photos. Because I do think it is right that, you know,

when you are stepping onto, you know, someone else's set that they've lit and has been lit from a particular point of view, and you're just sort of, I think that is a, you know, a courtesy. And very occasionally I see people who seem to have just slightly, It's like that, you know, internet meme that ironically, I can't remember who made it. But the guy's like, you made this? I made this.

Like, you know. Yeah, that is an absolutely beautiful image of that person in some costume, then makeup that experts have done in lighting the experts have done. So, yeah, I hope please don't send me hate mail for this. But you guys know who you are. Give the credit and I love you for it. Yes. and also, and this is for the younger listeners at home,

if you're hired to shoot BTS video and you put it in your reel and it doesn't look like BTS, that's sketchy. Yeah, I've never seen that. Is that a thing, I suppose. I have seen it on people I know is real. Okay, yeah, that's not cool.

Not like exclusive, like it gets piped in, you know, around, but because of the way that a reel is, it's very, you know. it's just enough plausible deniability if they ask you be like oh yeah no that's all bt yes but if you're just showing if the reel's just public sure yeah yeah like oh when did you shoot like the you know the apple f1 movie that was good yeah well yeah so this is why i'd say it's for the younger people who are just working on

maybe like smaller music videos or productions that probably aren't known you know yeah be careful i i appreciate the hustle to get going at that stage it's hard but yeah that is a temptation to be avoided you're absolutely right yeah the uh there's some else i was gonna bring out oh um going back a little bit the you know we were talking about uh you know the fun of we're doing all the ones stories doing stuff but something you said uh earlier about having most of the show shot on like what did you say a 50 animorphic the crystal. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, such a great lens. And do you know what? Like we, like that lens was not designed to do what we did to it. Like, a long time genius collaborator,

Jason Cudley, the focus pillar was, was on that lens most of the time. And like, you know, we are like slamming into close ups and like, you know, feeling those,

those moments. So like, that lens was getting such a workout. And, and the way, that modification would be done I think in the 80s to add like a close focus thing

to it. It just, we were you know, we got to a point about towards the end of our UK bit of our shoots who had been shooting for, you know, six seven months and you could see the anamorphic element like you'd rack focus

and you could see that just like anamorphic just go sort of slightly diagonal and like what you started saying it you couldn't see it. And yeah, I mean, I'll contact Simon 30s and Matt Bounsel at Ari were, they got it. You know, they did amazing work with their lens text. I think they had to completely remachine the entire thing. And then Simon flew out to Berlin with like 700 bits of Karnay paperwork to

bring us this lens back. Because I arrived in Berlin for like our final. month of doing all the stuff there and was like in tears that I didn't have my hero 50 mo is it coming is it left yet can they fix it like waiting at it's like flatlining and a little tiny ER room for lenses like come on come back to me and yeah it's it survived to the end and I hope that it will live to help other people in the future because it's a very special bit of glass yeah well the the they got two questions about it one You said you're running two cameras, so what was on B cam that seemed to work for you guys, but also going back to talking about all this kind of maximalism, that's a very restrained way to, you know, one focal length.

Were there other places of restraint that felt appropriate? Well, I mean, one focal length, but just, you know, especially with the ability to be close, like a gigantic use of, you know, where that, that lens has placed. We, the other lenses, there was the 35 that I liked very much that was a T14, though it got kind of wild at that end. We had the 25 mill crystal, which is, you know, so distorted at the edges. I felt like I had to also carry, I had a few of the Orion's,

which is funny because I've used the Orion's before and I'm like, oh, the wacky animorphics, but the Orion's were like my safe lenses because, like, you know, I had the, occasionally I'd put that 25-mill crystal on and just be like, it's too much. Like, you know, if, because my egg cage did the fear with all this is my feeling with animal,

in general is the sides of where it's interesting of course and I'm slightly suspicious when it gets cropped in and end of that I can understand I could imagine myself being persuaded into that on some shows and but if you can't you know what's your compositional style because if you can't actually put someone over there on the side then you need to just be careful so we didn't we did lots of sort of centre framing and things but occasionally you'd have to and I put the 25 mil of the Iran on and it literally would look like a master prime to me. I was like, what is that? Get it off the camera.

Like it's so suddenly there's like contrast. I mean, there's like, and like edges. And when you just, we were so used to those crystals. And the VFX team did an incredible job mapping all of those crystals. And they applied every characteristic of those lenses to all of them. the other stuff we used. So we did a huge amount of a drone on, and we did a huge amount of 4D,

and both of those are the, there it is. Yeah, it is. Stephen wanted to know when you'd bring it up, so I'll mark that down. Yeah, I left it. I said it at this one. But yeah, so, you know, both of those were,

the drone was usually the, the DJI slash Hapelblad lenses. And then on the 4D, which we would use sort of rigged on the outside of the train. You know, even when we could have used another camera, Jim and I's rule was always like, no, let's do it as if it was,

you know, the train was really moving. It was just the same rule that we used on hijack. One, where we were like, the camera can never be like outside the plane. Like once the doors closed, like there's no convenient popping a porthole

and having 24-290 out there on like. so you know when the camera's out the front of the driver's cab it's rigged like it's and you know we're locked to the movement of the train so you see the world around move but we're locked in and so anyway those had the blazer remus animal and they are a little bit wilds but they're not as wild as the crystal So all of that stuff was remapped to the crystals. And it just, I've seen like the A&B on those VFX shots.

And it's just like, it makes me so happy. I need to go and like kiss all the VFX people that did that. Because they, in a consensual and friendly way. Like, it just makes so much. The show is the show is also set in the snow. So we had every conceivable type of fake snow onset. But like, you know, the drone stuff, the big wide stuff, there's a lot of digital snow. And the difference that makes and the drone shots, which are just kind of like the perfect, like rectilinear representation.

And then you go like whoop and you're into just like crazy, wang, and that all the snow is kind of like you're seeing it on the edges of the frame. It really, really makes it. It gives it that, you know, it's Berlin. it's Cold War vibes like it's all of that stuff it lends itself so well to the subject matter and where we were

so yeah you're asking about what other would be on the B camera it would often be so we had I think we had three different 75 nils that we just colour coded and they would be like good at different things like I remember there being one I always hated

but you know we had like I can't remember how that happened we know we doubled some lens between cameras and then sometimes there'd just be like an extra one that was good at some stuff. We had a hundred mill so either be camera would either be doing like the 35

you know we'll be squeezing like a low wide angle whilst John I was on that 50 or it would be the 75 of 100 kind of like stacking up people and that sort of thing so you know we rarely cross shot it did happen sometimes

and we could facilitate that with I mean I was I operated some shots, but for the most part, it was such a technical show in terms of, I had Jim, director on one side of me, and I was with sitting in front of Mark DIT's monitors,

and then next to me I had Callum on the lighting desk with Chris Gaffer on his side. They had monitors. And then on the other side, we had Django and Spencer, the virtual production team, with all of that playback and all of that stuff. So it was like a real,

brain trust of like getting all that stuff working together so yeah you it was it was incredibly satisfying did you say that guy's name was chris gaffer chris gaffer yeah that's his name that's that's what i go chris staph yeah there's nollative determinism i was about to be like that's crazy yeah yeah and he and he's not on this show but i do know a i do know a lighting programmer called Shane Buttons, which always makes me laugh. That's good. So yeah. Have you heard of the program,

or I guess it's a plug-in lens node? Possibly. That's a similar tool, right, for mapping on distortions onto. They let me, I guess, borrow the program, you know, limited. I was going to write an article. I have like a bunch of articles stacked up and I feel real bad, but on that flight to Paris I'm about to take

I'm just going to knock them all out because I got 13 hours but I so I I'm mentioning them A because it's an interesting thing but B because they do deserve some form of public shoutout well you know giving me their expensive but it does I have the fastest computer you can buy

basically then thank God I did it before now oh yeah it's still now the price of a car yeah bro storage even Like the Sandus guy came out and said The era of the $100 per terabyte SSD is dead Wow

So we're looking at probably 200 I think it's $200 per terabyte now On SSDs Oh wow So if you can find a deal Get it now But yeah The lens node thing is cool

It does oh so the whole point being My computer is really good and it's still chugs And I asked him about it and he was like I mean, yeah, it's doing a lot of computational shit in there. Like, it's just what it is. But it's like, I think it's an incredibly small team. I think it might be one guy. But, you know, I'm sure there's efficiency and see you'll find as he goes.

But the thing that I found was some of those lenses were just way too wild for me. And you can tone it down. You can do, you know, there's a lot of granularity in the plugin. But I did find, like, if I just sat on like a cook 40, not only the image, it basically, just went, you know, kind of gave you some dimensionality and it pulls a depth map so it does blur and fall off appropriately, the fall off modeling.

But the thing that I, it, there was like a color grade to it as well that I, I wasn't, I was really surprised and I asked my, he did all his tests, like all, shooting all the footage. Yeah. Or what do you want to call it? The comparisons with a sigma, which I have.

So, yeah. So I was like, all right, cool. I'll know this is one to one what it's supposed to look like. And you know how like in music you'll put a compressor on something or like a Poltech EQ just as glue? That's kind of what it felt like.

And so to your point about getting excited about the lens modeling, it's like that is kind of a fun area that I feel like technology can go into to give it the image of that kind of glue. It's once it feels like, and Jim is a master at this, Like he has such incredible attention to detail

through the whole, you know, process. So that, you know, there's no stone unturned for like making sure, like, wait, hang on, that, you know, even stuff like, you know, there's a lot of CCTV and sort of stuff like that where characters are seeing, you know, each other through different eyes. Like all of that, we, you know,

Jim insists that we have all those cameras are real, they're prack, there, there's someone, so the station set we built, which is remarkable piece of work. I had another full-size train on it. I had these like computerized winches that could pull the train through the platform. And then obviously we redress the station, spoiler alert, into different stations. And that was plastered in cameras, which play a huge part in the plot in lots of episodes. And all of the that stuff. There was an actual CCCC operator and then all of that stuff gets fed back and when we're filming other scenes in the episode, episode two, which is waiting for you.

There's sequences with Idris looking at the footage on that and he's looking at it on CRTs because you know, Jim's like that's what they would have in the ancient little, you know, cupboard that he finds himself in. So we get real. CRTs. And these days you have to like, it's like a special, it's like trying to find like an old like tube camera or something, you know, for broker. The vintage gamers have fucked up the market. Oh, okay. Because they're trying to be built. CRTs are expensive. Yeah. It was tough. And then, and then, you know, getting all of the

sync issues worked out on, on stuff like that is a pain. And then you're playing, you know, so that we're playing in real live footage onto those. And then we're refotographing and you're getting the like, oh, nothing makes Jim and I happier than seeing like the individual pixels and some like ancient CRT and then like, see what happens when you pull the power for real. Like it's, it's, it's, you can fake that stuff, but like why? Like, you know, have it and have the characters reacting to it. So, yeah, that sort of attention all the way through, I think is why the show is so successful. You know, he, he just, he holds it all in the palm of his hand. And, And, you know, whilst individual details, you're like, oh, really?

Are we ever going to see that? It's not about that. It's about, like, having that dedication to just, like, everything needs to be serving the same goal. The bit that always excites me is when the sound guys, the post sound guys get involved and that stuff goes on. I finally got to visit the sound mix. And obviously, like, the bit of the sound mix you always want to go to is, like, Spielberg putting, like, John Williams. journey to the island like drop that bad boy on the thing that's what you want and i actually turned up when they were like very they're spending like an hour making the like the voicemail on this

guy's phone sounds like exactly right okay like you know i'm just going to zoom out but yeah when you see the it always makes a photography seem like 10 times better because you know you're it's so much information it's like the sort of base sense is like sound um upon not intended. So to have, you know, we're talking earlier about it, the sort of theatricality of the photography supporting the stuff. The sound is like, you know, candidate one for that. Like every, you know, those guys miss no opportunity to add texture and flavor to stuff.

Like I've watched episode two, and I've watched episode two a million times. But like I watched it again last night at home. and there's like a wide, slow drifting shot. That is a shot I like framing a lot. I always like this frame where like you're sort of just skimming underneath some sort of suspended lights. Oh, yes. I noticed last night that just as we go beneath it,

they've just added this the faintest like electrical, like just as a sort of POV we go underneath it. And it's just so beautifully done it. I mean, there's any number of things like that. The score as well by Anne Nickin is fantastic. Like when the moment where in episode one, you know, the doors close, Idris is on. Otto in the driver's cab,

like chunks all his levers across satisfyingly and the train pulls off and then Anne just drops this like propulsive. It's just, you know, that's what, this is why it's not work right. Like it's, it's, those are the flavors that give me nostalgia for stuff. that I watched when I was a kid, not because we're like aping a style, but because like, filmmaking transports you. And like for a moment, you're like in this like heightened sense of like, what's happening?

This is so cool. So yeah, that's what gets. It makes the 4 a.m. alarms worth it, I think. Yeah. Well, and it's like because like I'm a drummer, but I don't, you know, I'm vaguely musical, you know. but I'm sorry

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you have a very sophisticated sense of meter oh yeah that may be a good bartender actually because I can free pour and have the exact right I got tested by the like spot tested by the liquor board

they just showed up to my bar and were like because in Arizona there was like kind of a weird thing about free pouring you were supposed to measure so they set up these like little vials in front of me and there was like a screen in front of it so I couldn't see them and they're like all right two ounces one ounce half an ounce quarter ounce and I was like whop-wap whack-whop and it was perfect oh yeah like yeah I'm like yeah I'm gonna Jim's the drummer as well

so occasionally to suck up to him I use drum references and he's like they're just better don't talk about drumming um well all that is to say that uh not being musical uh I imagine that from my perspective you're working on a project forever me and Stephen were just talking about this like even if you know exactly what you're doing as a DP you can still get on the day a little bit like do I know what I'm doing is just good you know

but then what it's set to the music yeah yes the music helps suddenly it's not even you didn't even do it you're just like oh no I know but do you think the composers you think the composers feel the same way they're like sitting writing stuff and then they see the picture and like, oh no, it seems like I hope they do. Maybe they're just like, we're saving their buds so hard with this score. I guess for the composers it's harder because they're kind of at the

end of the, you know, when you're somewhere in the middle of the production workflow, the next thing adds on to it. So you're like, you get to see things added and it churches you up. You know, whereas I think when you're at the end, it's like the best thing you get is seeing it on a big screen. Nice sound system. Otherwise, it's. Yeah. I still,

I mean, you just want to do it. But like at some point, you know, on the bucket list is to attend like a full air studios session with the, you know, the movie up on the projector and the,

I did see, I saw Interstellar live in the Royal Albert Hall, which was the closest I think I'll ever come to that with the full orchestra. The cast were there. Stephen Hawking was there. It was wild. Yeah.

We were in like row four and like watching this orchestra just like can dig into like no time for caution with the Gavin Greenway. He's sort of if you look at Gavin, he's in like the conductor and arranger and composer in his own right of like everything. And he was conducting and like I could see like I'm a bit musical and remedially musical and seeing the score like hurtle across his screen with the like, Signatures changing like every other bar into just wild stuff and he's trying to hit all this stuff and everyone's on click track. Yeah, it is good fun. Like, you know, when else do you get to do stuff like that apart from in the movies? Yeah. Well, and I imagine for the Royal Albert Hall and the Interstellar soundtrack, everyone's just crying half the time.

Oh, my God. I mean, the real organ was there and they got, you know, interseller, the guy on the soundtrack played the organ was there. was there and he's like you know he's not old old but like he he's an organist and they like found him and like a lot of organists they're just they're unbelievable musicians

they're often very humble and they're just they're dedicated to this like bizarre thing bizarre instrument that you have to it like weighs a hundred tons and only exists in churches and concert halls and how do you practice

so and he and he you know that classic no time for the you know it's necessary and it starts spinning like it was electrifying and like that cue finishes with those just epic cause hands him was on stage by the way playing like his jupiter eight or whatever he's got he's doing some dank pads in the background but but you can see like even the car just the fucking strings are like soaring away doing something that's probably really boring technically to play but they're just in it

and that last organ chord just like echoed out in that whole and then there's like a whole of the scene after that where Anne Hathaway's talking about something that nobody heard because like the just room was on fire with people just like everyone was on their thing the orchestra were like ah it was like tearing their shirts off like It's the coolest thing has ever happened.

Like, I've been to a few of those, like, who doesn't like those concerts? I've been to the Jurassic Park one was great, back to the future. Like, all those scores are really fun to see played live. But like that one, particularly just with the organ, so wild diversion. But yeah, the best thing I've ever seen, like a live musical event, that's going to be hard to talk. Yeah, I mean, we've got the Hollywood Bowl here that does a lot of stuff like that. But, you know, obviously it's outdoors. So that I think something about being in the hall probably is, you know,

just far more reverberant and just moved you a little more. They knew what they were doing when they built that place. Yeah. Have you seen the video about like what the roof is, like the ceiling? Oh yeah. It's like a grid. You can, it's like a wide grid. Walk on scarily.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's like all to your point, I don't think it's a wild diversion necessarily because I think stuff like that is proof that, you know, obviously we've had slowdowns and stuff. I don't think theater will ever die. And I don't just mean movie theaters. I mean, any form of visual expression like this, there might be different forms. Like maybe, because like even what you're describing used to be the only way to do it with movies.

Right? They had to do that. And now it's a novelty that moves you to tears. and I don't mean novelty flippantly. I just mean it's novel. Yeah, sure. And I think that's cool. Like that maybe that's something,

I'm not suggesting this, but maybe that is something that just starts having people go like, hey, you know, IMAX is one thing, but for three weeks, we're doing live orchestra for, God, all right,

the orchestra couldn't do it. You know, three shows a day. Yeah, the musicians, yeah, now, I mean, listen, I hope that my wife works in the world of professional theatre and, you know, theatre theatre. And that is still very much, that is very much thriving. And I, you know, the looming threat of genitive AI, etc.

on us all, it is a sort of beacon of hope that people, the audiences are still there for that. And, you know, people were like, this new moving picture. thing will kill the theatre and it hasn't. I think there is, you know, it does make me nervous that the economy of the industry we work in is based on vast numbers of people watching the very expensive things that we do and hopefully we can continue to do that. But I'm optimistic that after that people are sniffing out the human, the humanity and stuff that people have slaved over.

And, you know, the tech billionaires aside, I think that most people realize that eventually there's, you replace everyone's job and there's no consumers for anything anyway. So, yeah, I mean, here's hoping, but you're right. There's like a magic in performance, however we capture it, that is sort of at the heart of all of it. Well, I a million percent agree. that's almost verbatim what I've been when people talk about either AI or consolidation of, you know, whatever the opposite of the paramount, you know, legal vertical integration thing was.

But even like, I run these college ski trips everyone or so, you know, I'm around young people often. And they're simile, it's kind of weird. they simultaneously use Chad GBT for everything. Yeah. Everything, which that's a problem. But that and then also don't like technology. Like so many of them are like,

you know, they're all buying point and shoot cameras. Yes, to share on Instagram. Like so many of them are like keeping the phone in the bag. Like they're not trying to, they know they're missing out on life now, which is not their fault.

It's just the arc of technology hit them in one specific. place. But I don't, yeah, I think that the AI, also the problem with it, would have been Afflex, they like saying, I don't like AI's like saying I don't like electricity. Like, there's a lot of different, you know, the cleanup thing that Adobe makes that makes this podcast sound good when I've got a guy with AirPods. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I am also, not even cautiously optimistic, but it is there is kind of a we have to get over this part to get to the next part kind of thing going on I think there's just the creative drive in in humanity is very very strong you know going back to shadows on the cave wall and paintings on the cave wall and I think we're always going to want to do that

and that the format of what that takes might those kids or their kids might find creatively may not be appealing to us, but that's just, that, that's always happened throughout history. Like, you know, what is considered art is, is like, you know, what's fine art, what's high culture versus low culture. That is a debate as, as old as culture itself. And there will always be people saying, like, well, this doesn't count because it's, it's this. And Ben Affleck is right. And it's like, it makes me think about Tim Minchin quite a bit. He didn't quite mean the same thing, but when, you know, he's like, do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work, medicine?

And like with AI, everything's AI until it just becomes like the tool in Logic Pro that lets you automatically make stems from your track in like one click. And like, you know, then it just becomes that tool that does the thing. So, yeah, let's see, let's see. I like messy people stuff. And in terms of all the, you know, I was just lucky enough to host the Q at the BSC Q and A for train dreams with Adolfo Veloso has just been

I interviewed Adolfo He's the loveliest guy He's the best and like all power to him For a beautiful bit of work Which like also cinematographically he could His taste could not be further from mine in terms of all about

the start he's all about a beautiful natural You know he's amazing He came through documentary And I can't say enough good things about Adolfo, but like, Netflix plays a lot. It's great. Netflix, you know,

when after that, they put all those people together, they made that thing. It's like, I thought Netflix bought it. Well, I think Netflix, I think Netflix suggested it was,

it was made, or maybe Black Bag did it. In any case, it's something that Netflix is usually proud of, and is on their platform. And like, so I'm like,

Come on, Guy took complaining about Devil Wears Prada. Like, show me some frames from that and tell me that the dream of Terrence Malik is not alive and well. Like, you know, I think there's plenty of beautiful work being done across the board. Yeah, but of course that guy's then going to complain about the shutter speed stuff. I thought the shutter was great. Adolfo said in my interview with him, he was like, I never went to that class in film. school that said you couldn't you know use it as a tool and I'm like that's a really good point

um no he said the same thing to me I'm like I get annoyed when we're not at like 172 point like 6 instead of 8 depending on whether we're like 23 9 8 or 24 um and I'm like and if it was like why you know this is just another tool he's absolutely right and like why you use all of the stuff um well and also it it's like I I don't I don't love the fast shuttered thing look necessarily, but just as a stylistic choice. But he's so right that it is a tool. Like, why not? And where he really sold.

What's that? It's on the camera. It's a button on the camera. Yeah, it's not locked. Yeah. But the thing that he really sold me on, talk about meeting art where it is. was the idea that this whole thing is supposed to be a box of photographs

and the use of the shutter being like depending on the photograph the memory things are sharp things are sharp things are blurry things and that was the artistic tool for that and I was like that actually unless you made that up on the spot just to locate me that is brilliant thinking

because no one else would do that no one else would think that deep about it you said the same to me Yeah, I watched it several times because I knew I was in the Q&A and because I cried the first time I watched it, so I had to pay attention to it. And the last time I watched it, I was like, it also works as an incredibly powerful metaphor

for our lives in the film industry, like, you know, heading out away from family, meeting a bunch of, I mean, I've definitely, I've definitely met that guy who's like, is there nowhere on this earth? A man who gets a piece. He's on third. and just the world changing constantly around you

you know you think you know your way around a handsaw and suddenly a chainsaw tones up and you're like wait you know that's you know and I think the film you know the film itself has like the boots that are nailed to the tree like we're all making this stuff and ultimately like what will survive of us is all these various boots now to various trees that are gradually being eaten by nature.

Who knows, I mean, I'm desperately proud of hijack now. Will you still be able to watch hijack in 50 years, 100 years? Like, you know, when those AI robot, alien, whatever they are from Spielberg's AI movie turn up and they're like picking out human civilization and finding Haley Joel Osmond and that there? Are they going to be like, cool, what's this a new show on Apple TV? is, you know, so I, you know, I think there's interesting, and that's, you know, I got all of that out of a film that's on Netflix, like that's humans do that. ChatGBTGT doesn't make a film

that can make you think about stuff like that. It's just like, here's some ideas that look like some blog posts that I ripped off the internet. So. Yeah. Well, and like I said, those same, those same kids using Chat GBT for everything are also, I think, clamoring for, again, human connection, the ones that, you know, in their young formative years, were locked inside for the pandemic, right? Those kids don't even... The number of times, like, it's so weird to me. Like, I went to a very big party school.

They've cleaned up their act a little bit, a little. But, you know, my colleges were... Yeah. Yeah. It was a super spread of college. Say, wait, say again. It was a super spread of college. That was where COVID really got teeth.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, telling kids, oh, I went to Arizona State, whatever. And on these ski trips I'm talking about, they go, oh, what was it like to do those, like, millennial house parties? You're right. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, yeah, we don't do that anymore. Yeah, yeah.

They want to experience that. They want to experience, like, and I think it does have to do with the documentation. You know, everyone's got a phone. Everyone's really afraid of evidence. which is fair but yeah I think people are the reason I'm harping on like

young kids is because that's who's going to obviously carry whatever this new flavor of anything is and they are seemingly desperate for human connection human stories messiness and so on and I think the messiness that they will do

will be you know in parts inspiring and terrifying to the generations that came before them as has always happens it's like i don't like this new new music um right uh and that's you know that's how he goes but like you know it's it's fun when it's you're in your you when you're in the flow of it yeah yeah it reminds me i want to come back i want to come back in 200 years don't you think that i'm

just like i want to see where i want to see how it turns out i mean that's why i love like star trek and stuff you know it's versus silo which is the opposite yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I said, we'll give you the after three you get a free. Oh, yeah. We didn't do my magic trick.

I burned that by being late, so it's fine. I'll do it for you. I'll text it to you. Okay. Open it. Look forward to that. Yeah, great chat. And I'll let you know when I get through the show when it's out.

It's always a pleasure, and enjoy the rest of Hydrake. if you get a chance to watch. Oh, I will. I mean, I will get a chance and I will enjoy it. All right. Bye-bye. It's good time. Take it easy, Kerry.

Frame and Reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny MacBellan. 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.