Frame & Reference Podcast - 236: "The Night Manager" S2 Cinematographer Tim Sidell, BSC

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

This week on the program we have the absolutely effervescent Tim Sidell, BSC talking about his work on season 2 of The Night Manager!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello, and welcome to this episode 236 of Frayman reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny MacKnowan, and my guest Tim Seidel, BSC, DP of the second season of the Night Manager. Enjoy. It's interesting that you use the word verite. I think what's so important for Georgie and I is a sense of authenticity. Now, obviously, we're in a very constructed world, the world of espionage, and we want to sort of balance this sense of espionage and some of the cinematage.

language of espionage with something that's more candid and more choose that word again authentic and as you referred to earlier georgie's process is based on that kind of an approach as well where she'll she won't rehearse to the nth degree she'll rehearsed just before it's completely ready then the point where it's found properly is in the first take and then it evolves from there she never wants to miss that point of discovery which means there's uncertainty certainty, which means we're all being reactive, which is where some of the energy is, and maybe that's a little bit of what you're feeling as verity. So, yeah, our intention was to balance this sort of slightly more edgy approach, where you're very subjectively with a character,

with that more classical espionage, longer lens kind of language. Especially when you've got, you know, Hugh Lorry, Tom, Olivia Coleman, it's hard to not want everything they can give you. Yeah, that's right. I know they're amazing. That's right. They're great. They really are.

Yeah, I was interested on your website. First of all, phenomenal website. But you have this contacts section, just a little thing. What would cause you to that specific camera? Like, why is that a section on your website?

Well, try to think ahead to a few months from now when I actually had a chance to do it properly and I've put up also my Nauta T-C1 and my Memea 7. which is my go-to. The Mimea-7-2 is my absolute go-to. It's my baby. I just love shooting with that.

And it was such an arbitrary way to categorise the shots. I just thought, well, this bunch are from the contacts. I'll start with that. But it was really an experiment. What I've put up so far is about sort of 5% of the stock of stills that I've got. So I'm going to explore that over time. And yes, more camera formats will feature. Yeah.

I've got a Mumia 67 Pro 2, the RZ. And it's phenomenal, but it's the size of a house. So you can't really... Well, exactly. That's why the Mamia 7-2 is so good, because it's a rangefinder. But it looks like a stupid toy. It looks too big, but it's so ergonomic in the hand. You can just walk around and almost forget that you're holding it.

It's not heavy, but it's beautifully balanced. And even though it's a rangefinder, the way the focus works is almost like an SLR. And the framing's very accurate. It's a beautiful thing to use. So, yeah, that's my camera of choice in the repultage world. Yeah. Do you find that your photography closely matches the way that you approach cinematography? Because personally, I got this, you know, X100, and it has like a 16 by 9 mode.

And for years there, I was trying to train my cinematography brain with that, you know, format and out about finding light and stuff like that. And then I found that like the framing of all my photos don't like cinematography doesn't match photography. Lighting can for sure, but the but the approach didn't, at least for me. Yeah. That's good question because I mean as you say that they are so different in context. So there's some elements that are the same and my background before all of this was painting. Right. And what I was obsessed with with painting was color and texture, massively texture, but also the painting as an object, which is feeling and physically what the texture is as much as what it looks like, and trying to balance and have both at the same time, this

pictorial sense of space, which is an illusion, as well as referring to the painting as an object in a sculptural way, and those two things are kind of opposites. Later, later, later, when I come to photographing work, but also printing, colour darken printing, I just find I get so sucked into texture again, colour and texture. And really that's what drives me, because there's so much to cinematography, but a big part of what I feel I do is work, colour and texture. And if there is no texture in the image,

then I sort of feel I've failed. When things feel too clean and too new and fresh, I don't feel quite satisfied. I don't want there to feel like something's happened to the material. I mean, that's easier when you're working with film because it's a physical thing already there. and in my more experimental film work I made a point of that by refilming it

almost like photocopying a photocopy and playing on that texture with drama, it's different obviously it's not quite as abstracts as that but there is always for me a sense of that and nothing is absolute black and nothing is absolute white because in the world nothing is absolute black

and absolute white when you look at it and that goes back to painting you know something black is just slightly elevated so in the grade I never want the blacks to be sat all the way down at like a little bit of air a little bit of float

so that you can see the texture in the shadows. But Stills is, for me, a hobby. It's a personal thing. It doesn't involve anyone else. It's playing with composition, layers, visual depth, color and texture. I'm not lighting it. I'm just recording something I've seen and found.

So that in itself is a very different world from cinematography in most of the context that I work in. Yeah. How do you approach texture in a cinematography, in an image when so much of that can just be on the production design, right? Like I, you know, costuming especially

can make something really seem vibrant and the personalitude, I guess, of the images is raised just with those departments. But how are you doing besides just like adding some grain in post or using a vintage lens maybe? Yeah, well, those are things that I certainly do. more so normally than in Night Manager actually

normally I'll go for slightly older lenses I like to feel the presence of the lens rather than again it being too sort of crystal clean and hard I enjoy some characteristics but equally it shouldn't be too strong that is distracting

unless it's part of the effect like for example when we when Pine becomes inebriated in the latter part of episode two playing with the glassy prisms and a way of getting his psychological state into the camera. So I'll also under-expose a little bit,

knowing that I'll bring it back up a bit in the grade. Use more ND, shoot at higher ISO, so sort of baking in a little bit of texture that way. And what we did with Night Manager, we really thought very carefully about the amount of grain. And one of the things I wanted to do with lensing was reflect pines, different personalities. So, I mean, I'll come back to that,

but we also articulated that a little bit with texture. So in the Matthew Ellis world, it's like we're shooting on 50D. It's slow, it's finer grain, it's stronger colour. In the Max Robinson world, it's the opposite. It's more like 500T. It's more textured. So we used a stronger grain in that. Very subtle.

So we did add grain to everything. But didn't want it to be the subject. We just didn't want it to feel clean and just to feel that there's a bit of a texture there. But also, going back to what you mentioned earlier, it's a collaboration. I lean hugely on what the production designer puts in front of the camera. And Victor Malero, our designer, was astounding

in his ability to create textures and play with colour and give me something. He'd be congratulating me on the way of lit something and I'll just throw it straight back at him because of what he's given me to light, which often is just so, so lovely. And then if there, as you said earlier, if there is texture in what we're shooting, I'd feel less of a need to push texture into the image itself.

If there's very little texture in what we're shooting, I'll probably put a little bit more texture into the image. So the results still has a bit of a flavour. But equally, Oliver, with the costume design, not only was he playing with shapes and colours that articulates the characters, there's texture there as well. You know, the sheen in Kami's dress, this beautiful blue dress when she walks into the the Baccaro trade office at night. It shimmers against the yellow of the set

and the yellow and green in the lighting. So that was a real pleasure to work with. So for me, there's this color and texture going on on so many levels, and it is very much part of what we do, and we're able to really push in Night Manager. Yeah, well, and with, you know, I know you guys shot Venice, but especially like Diolexa, that under-exposing and bring it up is possible.

There's so few cameras where you do that, and it looks organic. Although there's plenty more nowadays. Yeah, I mean, I've been using the Venice since it first came out. I've, like everyone, I was using the Alexa for years because it was the best thing available if you couldn't shoot film. When the Venice came out, I just became aware of how much more human the images are. It's not completely and evenly balanced.

If you look at a Macbeth fresh out of camera, the red pops a bit more than anything else, which is technically incorrect. It's an aberration. But the flip side is the detail it sees in skin is second to nut. I've not seen another camera handle skin and creates such an evocative image

based on skin tone as the venice does, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. Also, it's shadow detail, which is where I like to play, is, I think, superior, even if it can't quite handle the extremes of highlights that the ARI can. So horses for courses

They're both incredible Rememberers But I think the Venice sits with my sensibilities more Well while shooting in like Columbia You know I did notice there was a few like Slightly more overcast Asia had But like do you have do you find that you have to Do something extra protect those highlights with that sensor

Is it not a factor? No no I mean Because it can handle the shadow detail so well I'd under expose a little bit I was viciously and extremely careful perfectly protecting the highlights. I always do because the problem is digital is once the highlights clipped, it's like a gaping hole in the image. It's very hard to make that look elegant in the way that film would. Now, there were some, as you say, overcast days, very

flat. I mean, the sun is a hard thing to work with in Colombia because unlike in well into the northern hemisphere, which is what I'm more used to, where the sun sort of just arcs elegantly around. In Colombia, it sort of takes five minutes to go from here to here, and it seems to spend 12 hours up here, like right up here, and then it just suddenly goes, and it's gone again. And I was very worried about, particularly in La Stancia, which is maybe materially not seen yet, which is where Europa resides in Colombia, which is in the middle of a jungle, really. And the grounds are very sandy. And I was very, very worried about the top light, because I did my best to arrange scenes in an order

that would be forgiving in terms of where the sun was. But of course, at points you end up being outside in midday, in 40 degrees. I don't know what that is in Varanite, but it's hot. It's like 100 and, yeah, like 100, something like that. Yeah, it's hot. You know, getting through three or four t-shirts a day, goodness knows how many bottles of water. It's just constant.

And just worrying, particularly about, I've got to have some breakup, I've got to have some diffusion or some leaves or something to break up the light as Hughes walking. through. And I remember staring at him thinking, he just looks great without anything. And I realized it, and it felt like a Western. And it's the way Westerns must have worked, because the sun is so high, it's beating down, but this gorgeous sand is bouncing it back up beautifully, which fills all those holes. So somehow, it just took care of itself. And, I mean, Hugh looked amazing. He's got such a fascinatingly shaped head and expressive way. He's amazing to film.

So it sort of took care of itself there. The bigger issue rather than sun was colour. And in our lap-lop design, based on the recies I'd been on during prep, I was worried that the greens would be too much. Yeah, really reflective. Morra and fauna, it's so green, and in some cases it's a very yellowy green. Not only that, some of the leaves are quite glossy and shiny. So they really pop.

So we had these luts that had different amounts of green reduction. And so in some locations, I'd use one of those. So on the monitors, it was just a bit more forgiving. And then in the grade, we balanced it a little bit, just a little. But that was all. So it was handling highlights perfectly well. Yeah. Are you kind of a, aside from like a technical change like that, are you kind of a one-lut person when you're doing a project?

Are you developing different looks for, like, individual scenes or maybe episodes? I don't know. I would say variations on a theme. I think we had five or six luts for, Night Manager 2. And as I said, three of those were variations on what I've just described, different levels of green reduction. And I won't do much with a luts because I find if you go too far, you start lighting to compensate for what the luts are doing. And then you're just straining the camera unnecessarily. So for me, it'll be a slightly steep, steeper gamma curve,

lifted bottom end, and then whatever you can protect at the top end. Occasionally with a very slight color shift. So I'd have two or three variations and then settle on usually one at the beginning of a location and stick with that. So I think in the end we probably used three different luts throughout the whole series and that's all. But as I say,

they're not big. The other thing was this was my first outing with the Aces color space, which was really interesting. I was quite surprised how different that is to REC-709 and the Wreck World. Yeah, I'm hoping you can expand Actually, this is a fun side thought.

I know the guy who invented it. Not what Aces? Yeah, he drinks at my local. No. So there's you, Dick Pope, and Mr. Aces all sound having a thing together. Yeah, yeah. No, it's funny because I was sitting there yapping about cameras real loud and he walks by me. This is going to make him sound.

He's a cool guy like to us, but he's just like a normal dude. But this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I was like yapping about cameras and he walks, he's leaving and he walks by. And he goes, hey, shoot me a call sometime. And he puts his business card on the table, but it's just the Academy logo facing me. Wow. And I thought I was in trouble. Oh, no.

But it's just crazy to think that that person exists. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean you invented aces? And he's like, well, there was a problem. I needed to fix it. I was like, that's nuts. Good for you. Good for you.

Well, initially, when I first looked at it, I don't like the, The colour I struggle with the most is kind of pinky magentas. And I think, funnily enough, it goes back to shooting in the naughties with late 90s camera and also looking at so much that was shot in the 90s. Even like sitcoms shot on 35 mil in the States, if they had this kind of pinky, vomiting pinky colour. And some of the, actually, Sony cameras from back then in the early noughties, they had this same weird pinkiness.

And I remember back then I'd be shooting on the Panasonic's because they were more cyan in their bias, which felt a bit more cinematic to me. So where was I going with that? Pink magenta. Ace's, when I first looked at it, everything looked more magenta, which I resisted. I thought, I'm not doing that, and more contrasty. And what I said about the blacks, it really pushes things deep into the blacks, or it feels like it does. So our luts slightly eased those tendencies.

It pulled back out some of that magenta bias I was feeling, eased off that shadowy bottom end. but when we started really working it I was astounded at the way that you can get hold of colors in ACEs so much more effectively and accurately than you can in Rec. It was quite a big difference. So I'm a convert now.

That's interesting because I color a lot of my own work and I tried ACEs when it was first introduced into Resolve and it's probably just a lack of familiarity but all the tools felt different. Like I'd move something one way and it didn't behave the way I was used to, so I kind of resisted it.

Yeah. Well, it's handling a slightly bigger color gamut, as I understand. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's the biggest one. Yeah. It's all colors. So in theory, you're not missing anything. And maybe it's a result of that,

that you can get hold of things more accurately. So what the Venice does so well, as I referred to earlier, which is the organic but rather glorious shadow detail with all the colors, you can then shape that more with Aces, in the Aces color space. So, yeah, that was a good, I think if I'd have, if someone had given me that prospect before, I would say, not interested, but it was proposed in the night manager, and we went through some tests.

It was a great opportunity to really explore it. Yeah, well, and it's interesting to think that, like, color space transforms and work, you know, shouldn't necessarily, theoretically, like, imposal look, but I find they can. And it's like, I don't know. I don't have a good like analogy for it. But it is interesting that, you know,

I guess it's the way that the tool presents itself affects the way that you use it regarding your camera, light, whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Did you, in regards to lighting the show, like I said, a lot of it, from what I've seen,

you know, was less affected. But I did, as I was skipping through, see certain scenes where we're like, we're getting a little more, you know, of a poppy back light colored. You know, there's, it always feels like around the screens. It felt like there was, you know,

some cool sions and some, like, nice oranges and we're kind of doing a little more of that espionage thing that you were talking about. Do you find that it's your tastes lend more to, like, using variation, of white light or did you go full RGB and try to like really heighten that?

Yeah, I probably a mix. I find when you go into LGBT mode on LEDs, it can get a bit wild. Yeah. And, you know, for example, if you put a flame red gel or primary red on a tungsten lamp, you've just got the most

gorgeous, deep red. you try and get the same out of an LED and you've really got to massage it to find the same. So what I sometimes do is go in RGB or what's the other one, CS something, HSI, one of those two modes and go like full on red and then a little bit of blue and a little bit of green

and then eke down the red. Or once you found that point, pop it back into normal mode and then just eke out some saturation. So you're mixing white light back in. and diluting it somehow gets a better rendering off that colour on camera. I think LED lights can go too far.

And I don't know if it's technically outside the colour space, but something just falls apart. So, you know, one of the reasons we used colour quite strongly in My Manager was partly, I think it was our reaction, particularly my reaction to Colombia, which is so incredibly colourful. Also, we didn't want London to feel

grey as it's so I was going to say grey yeah yeah and so I'd use mixed light a bit of for cool and a bit of worn where possible but I thought the muse

was an opportunity with something a little bit stronger but each time we come back to London I just didn't want it to get oh it's back to boring grey cold London so to have some colour there knowing that when we go to Colombia it's going to be much more intense colour

because Colombia is just so colourful So there was a point there to bring some of that colour as London, if you like. But also we would shoot very much out of order. We had six weeks shooting in Colombia. We really needed a lot longer. And then we shot for three, three and a half months in Spain. And most of the things we shot in Spain were playing for Colombia. So we'd shoot the exterior of a building, like in Barcelona.

There's a sequence when he goes into the Barkerra trade at night in episode three. We shot the exterior in August, in Colombia. We shot the interior in Barcelona in October, in a set. Now, having baked those colours into the exterior, I could then take those same colours and put them in the interior, which helped unify what was otherwise quite a disparate filming experience. So that was a bit of a technique throughout to help pull things together, to help kind of Cahir, if you like.

Yeah, the, you got a great script supervisor then. Yes, she had a work cut out. Oh, absolutely. The, I did see that the conformist was sort of a, I suppose, touchstone for the series. And that was one of the films that I remember having to really go out and find on Blu-ray,

It wasn't really streaming anywhere And just thinking This would have been I don't know Six or seven years ago And just thinking how Modern it felt For being from 69

Or whatever it was And the use of color And movement too Like way more camera movement That I expected Yeah What parts of that film Were

Sort of illustrative Or You know Why was that the touchstone Beyond just the themes Of espionage Yeah Well I've always thought

there's something extremely brave about the conversation. It's very artful and it explores filmmaking to put across its message. So a key reference point was the opening of the conversation where the subject of the whole film is this conversation that was had between these two people and what is the truth or the truth lies in this conversation, which Gene Hackman's character is trying to piece together from disparate, elements, disparate recorded elements, some of which are visual, some of which are sonic. And no individual element has the whole picture. And if you add up all the individual elements, you're still just shy of the whole picture. And that is his struggle. Now, the visual manifestation

of that was long, long, long, long lenses, compromised angles, obscured by people, obscured by architecture, too high, to whatever it was. combined with broken sound recorded from other places. So it was that tension between hearing something from here and seeing something from there. And then only the audience can try and put it together in their head because it's just not there altogether on stream. Television is a very different scenario, episodic TV.

But there's a language there we knew we could make use of. And there was a sequence in Alpahara Square in Medellin where I really kind of went for that, which took a lot of orchestration because we had to get into these huge buildings, figure out where to shoot from. At that point I had three cameras running, all on long lenses, long zooms,

zooms with doublers, and trying to convince the operators to basically make sure the shot doesn't quite work. You know, I don't, they shouldn't be getting the perfect shot, that is the whole point. And once they were on board with that,

they nailed it, and it was fascinating. And they were all playing these kind of mechanical zooms And so there was this feeling of surveillance, but this feeling of compromised information as well. So that was a big part of the kind of 70s espionage that's such a huge part of cinema. But also things like Bakula's Parallax View and Clute, some of the huge frames that are very architectural and people are tiny and insignificant, like ants almost, playing on a bit of that language. one of the reasons we wanted to try and cement that also was to have a contrast between that

and what Georgie saw as one of the main themes which I'm so embraced as well which was identity and subjectivity and I've always been fascinated by objectivity on the one hand subjectivity on the other hand and how they might combine and so we wanted a camera that shared an experience which is no new theme lots of people have done it. But to, as I say, counter that with the espionage language and to hang with Pine and try to reflect who Pine is pretending to be at that point, if not Pine himself. So that meant we were on a medium-wide lens moving with them, either handout or SteadyCam.

But as I say, just trying to discover the world they're in with them. Did I did I Earlier I said the conformist Did I misread it was it was the conversation Did I get my C's confused Well I think you said the conversation You might have said the conformist And I thought you meant the conversation

But we did play on both We did play on both and I have referenced both So in a way you're right both ways That sequence I talked about Was definitely the conversation The conformist Is a slightly different language And that's more about these big wides

Sometimes the camera will be very high in a top corner as if it's a surveillance camera. And again, people are small, but there's a since, an austere coldness to the visual language in the conformist, which is stunning, really wonderful. Yeah. You know, you mentioned the sort of like not getting information and stuff.

In, I think it was the first episode, someone's like getting spied on. They have a little microphone in the newspaper that they're. Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed in the, again, I just came off a documentary. you saw I'm like primed for audio problems because I'm also doing the audio. And it sounded like there was handling noise on the microphone.

And I was like, I don't know if that was in post or that was the audio or what, but I was like, that's actually brilliant. I love that that's part of it. Whether it was there or not, I mean, that's very Georgie. If that wasn't there, she would have loved it if it was. But if it wasn't, she would have added it in post. That's very much the language she likes to play with. Yeah, it's a very fun little.

note but um oh do you i did i did see you brought do you own your uh what is it a yashika the 45 yeah i do um i own some cannon k 35s um i didn't use one on this show but i've used them loads i love them um didn't have them rehoused um because i want well i wanted to i love them because they're so small and so light um and so I was chatting to the guys at TLS. I was right at the top of the queue to get them rehoused. And I thought, I'm just going to compare them. And I compared a rehouse set with mine.

And they do flare quite differently because they're more built around the front element. So there's more protection. So they don't flare in quite the same way. So I just thought, nope, I'm not going to. I only use them myself. I don't rent them out. So the fact that they're more fragile is less of a concern. There's a bit of a jump between the 35 and the 55 in the K-35s.

And TLS said, well, you could look at a Yushika to fill the gap. I thought, okay, had a play, and I really enjoyed it. So managed to grab one of those, had it rehoused by them. It's not really a K-35 in vibe. It's a bit more blue magenta. It's got a much stronger vignette. But it's an incredible little lens. You know, it's a 45-millimeter.

The close focus is like 10 or 11 inches, so you can really get stuck in. And there were some shots. So some of the really subjective material were shot in Night Manager I would just pop that on it's small and light I'd be handheld and getting right up in Hughes' face

and he's leaning right in but we're nailing it because of that close focus and the vignette really kind of makes it much more intense and then we used so I peppered that in with our main set of lenses

which were the lights Hugo's which were a little bit snappier than I would normally go with, but it was a compromise that Georgie and I figured together. There were some other lenses that we absolutely loved, because there was so much handheld

and so much steady, and also I just prefer a physically small lens when you're really shoving it in an actor's face and you're getting close. It's easier to maintain that intimacy with a great big lump of glass. It's just a bit, it's a different thing, a different proposition.

So it needs to be small, light, fast. But the Hugo's have got a great set of focal lengths as well

which like the K-35s do not. So those were our work-course sets. We had two

sets of those. One set had a standard 50 mill 1.4. The other set was

a nottelux one or 1. which was great fun for the Focus brothers. Yeah.

With no marks too. So. No, who needs marts. So, yeah,

it was great to have those. And then as I say, I bounce onto the shika every now and again. And then for the, I talked earlier about the, trying to reflect subtly, Pines different personalities. We wanted to elevate his character as

Matthew Ellis in some way. He's this city banker. He's full of swagger. And we thought, well, let's use some sort of sexier, more ostentatious camera moves, get the techno crane out, bigger, steady cam a while sweeping shots lower looking up at him elevating him

and I thought well it'd be good to go with something a little bit more flavoursome in the glass and a few years ago I got some Mamiya 645s and had them converted rehoused by TLS and at that point

their rehousing process included fitting a speed booster which makes them bit wider and two-thirds of a stop faster. The flip side is the outside edges are a little bit vignetti in terms of focus and contrast.

And the geography is slightly goes, it's almost like a baby step towards anamorphic but without being full animorphic. But we thought that is a really nice little flavour that's quite subtle, but just something to elevate Matthew Erler. So they were the Matthew Editha set. So whenever we shot something of him, in his world.

We were on those instead of the Hugos. So yeah, that was our LN set. Yeah, it's similar to that. I recently was trying the new Eterna 55. Okay, great. And a lot of fun. There's like a few things that I was like, maybe a marked, you know,

for at my level, like not having internal XLRs is kind of a... Right. Whereas when you have a sound person, who cares, you have, you get a camera hop, you're done. But because that thing is so, tall. I have these 1.5x anamorphics from Lawa. And shooting on the full GF sensor pops it out to 179, almost exactly. And that anamorphic look, but in a 185 sort of frame was really interesting.

I like to your point about just anamorphic and I found it very compelling. Yeah. Yeah. It was just enough going on that, you know, but it wasn't so. Yeah. You'd be looking at it normal and then a flare would go through and you go, oh, hey, I don't we're doing this. You know. No, it's fascinating. I remember on a series a couple of years ago, Chemistry of Death,

we needed a fairly wide format because there was so much about landscape, particularly of the Scotland and the islands, but also Norfolk. But equally, we needed intimacy. It's a very internal and psychological journey. And we toyed with different approaches, and I thought, well, there's going to be an element here

that should be handheld. So that was the K-35s in the Shika. But the main world, we decided to go anamorphic, And we went with Cook two times anamorphics, but Super 35, but shooting full frame on the Venice. And knowing that we would need to just crop in a little bit. So we didn't want to see any mechanical vignetting, but we did want to see some luminance vignetting,

which is a result of using a lens that's for a smaller format than we're shooting on. And it created a really interesting look. So, yeah, I think it's fascinating. And I'm very keen to see what the Mamias do. I'm having the, I've now got them in a mode where you don't have the speed boosters, which they feel a bit too clean in full frame, but I'm keen to see them on either the Eternor 55 or the Alexa 65 to really get a sense of what I think that's going to be their sweet spot

because that's what they were made for originally as well. Yeah, I find the, now that we're able to get these massive sensors, how much more fun choosing lenses is. Yeah. It's exactly like you're saying, like especially in the Super 35 world, everything was relatively clean. Because you get, you know, like I have these NICOR primes that I love. Yeah. But, and now I'll just use this as permission to not get them rehoused.

Although I did drop one and it bent the filter. My 85, I had this really nice 85 and it bent the filter thread in and now you can't focus it. Oh, no. And I'll just get bored. I'll be like watching a new movie or something. And I've got this like spreader and I'm trying to like, but I think I'm just ruining it. I used to love when we were in Super 35 world pre full frame. I just loved so high standard speeds.

They were so tight. There was such a great set of focal lengths, fast enough. And they just looked delicious. I prefer those to super speeds, really. So yeah, but you're right. Now that we've got so many sensor sizes to play with. And where it's fun is when you don't do it correctly, when you kind of have a bit of play.

And in fact, I've been having discussions with TLS regarding the Mamias saying, how much can we detune them? So I'm exploring that with them at the moment, how to give them a little bit more range from clarity in the centre to loss of contrast and focus towards the edges. So we'll see. We'll see. But there's so many lenses coming out at the moment. Oh, my God. I mean, I think it's, I have a concern. conspiracy theory that once, you know, these Chinese factories started really pumping out lenses.

They clearly, you know, they're not hand ground like lenses used to be. And so they're just able to iterate like crazy. And a lot of them come out quite clean. Like those nanomorph from Lawa, they're relatively clean, which I kind of like. I've grown to like it. But yeah, being able to have people who are now experts in, you know, obviously there's like the Dan Sasakis of the world. But now that we're getting so many more lenses, I think there's going to be a lot more industry around making them your own kind of.

And then, you know, every DP is going to have their own little set of fun things that maybe you can use to get hired. Yeah, completely. And I think that's so interesting. I remember thinking when the Canon's Samira, Samira lenses came out. Zuma ray. Those are great. Right. Well, I've not used them.

And I just, I looked at them because someone said, well, it's like a new K-35. And I was a bit devious. And I had a look, and they're not a new K-35. They're a new lens. they have their own qualities. And I just thought, well, why would a lens manufacturer make a lens that's technically not very good? Because all the things we're getting excited about

are lenses that are technically not very good. We just love the aberrations, the imperfections. And now I'm trying to get more of that with my mummias, for example. I've always felt that the K-35 is they've just always given me something glorious. It's just, I wish there were more focal lengths in the range. But yeah, that's full frame. So now it's another whole journey for large format.

Yeah. I actually shot at sort of run and gun fashion commercial on the Sumerase. Okay. On my C-500, so it's full frame on those. I'll email it to you. Great. The nice thing about the Sumerase that I found is like if you need to back off, you know, like any lens, but they kind of designed them so that like once you get past F4,

they look kind of like standard sine E's or whatever the Canon but in your wide open there but that's the you know wide open on the 85 on full frame is like now now you're getting kind of that more medium format kind of look you know

okay interesting a lot of chromatic aberration but not in a gross way yeah right right but this is why some of the newest animorphics that I've looked at I can remember seeing the the Zeiss was it the master anamorphics

and they were so perfect there was no anamorphiciness to them I thought well what's the point yeah I can just crop this I'm not gaining anything with this yeah so

I sometimes find anamorphic the more funky animalific is a bit too loud I love hawks the hawk V lights they're sort of medium in their look gorgeous and small, pretty. Well, exactly, because I do so much handheld and mobile camera. I'm always after a smallish lens.

But, yeah, so many options. Speaking of handheld, I did see you in a different interview talking about how you got a camera operator who was like Hugh Lorry tall. And it's funny. Because I always found, once I started working a lot of, once I started working a lot of lot more with different directors. I found that my inbuilt style that I built shooting my own stuff tended to be, and I guess it was a little like Finchirian, you know, I want to see the roof, but also I'm five nine, you know, so like everyone's taller than me for the most part.

And I just liked looking up at people. And I kept on having directors go like, not just like up, go up. But that was like a technical consideration for you on the show. Yeah. I mean, there were times when I operated with Tom and Diego. I mean, they're both 6'4. I think Tom's 6'4 and Diego 6.3 or 2 or something. But I didn't want to ever be in a situation

where we're looking up his nose and we shouldn't be. I just knew that would be completely wrong. But I also knew because I've always operated myself. So it's been a journey of discovery and a wonderful new collaboration to yield and let go enough for another operator to really bring something in. And Dan Knight's ago, my operator on night manager, I don't know and all. And one of the things you probably heard me talk about before was I used to do Cabrera,

and that's really helped my feeling for movement and how I move. I was like, right, I need someone who used to do Capoeira, who's at least six inches taller than me. That's Dan. He used to do Capoeira. And even in the same class that I used to do it, just not at the same time. It was quite amazing. And then he'll say he's an incredible steady.

He's got the gimbal. He can cover everything. So, yeah, he contributed so much. And it's now I'm quite ready to share that operating when it's more than one camera. And in fact, I'm starting another show with Dan in that mode again. So, yeah, but there were times, as I say, when I was racing around with Tom, running around Alpahara Square, on a very long kind of five, six minute take, covering hundreds of meters of ground and moving fast. I'm just handheld with him.

I just love that stuff. Yeah. Besides someone who comes from such a borderline identical background, how do you communicate with operators the type of feeling? Because I imagine if you're behind the monitors, you're kind of, you could be holding your breath tense, like moving your head,

trying to, you know, like doing that move. How do you communicate with them your style? Exactly, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good question. I had a lot of time with Dan before. Obviously, I've worked with operators as steady ops or crane ops or whatever. Initially, the show I did before Night Manager, that was a more classical stand-two camera show.

And I went in thinking I'd operate and then realized, no, this is not the way this show is going to work. So step back, construct of lighting and just worked with the two operators. And learned that discipline, which is a different discipline. So that prepared me a bit for a night manager as well and sharing that knowledge and sensibility with Dan And we talked about films I showed him a lot of framing references We would sometimes in fact quite often

Shoot single camera on night manager And that would sometimes or often be me And so he could see the way it was operating And or if he's operating and I'm not We'd have a chat afterwards There were particular sensibilities or peculiarities the way I like to frame and not crop tops of heads and so on

like the way you're framed is perfect for me. It's a classic portrait jazz, you know, it's it's now and I love central heads as well and I think he was more familiar with you know, short siding or you know, playing with a space this way

but then soon enough he was saying, well how about this and we could lean it this way yeah that sounds great and then it would become an unspoken thing where we'd both be complimenting each other's work in terms of framing and camera positioning and what was also cool um was sometimes we'd be shooting two camera handheld and with the way that the actors are moving around a set will i'll be on tom he'll be on someone else and then we'll swap halfway through and then swap back i can feel what dan's doing where he is and duck underneath him

and move around and um that was really good fun um sometimes he'd be on steady and i'd be on a chatman or Chapman the cobra and if you know the cobra it's a little gas pedestal thing but it's on narrow

gauge track and I can move it myself without need of any help I can jubed myself a little slider on top if I want

it so I can move quite freely but in a much more classical mode so I'd be on that he'd be on steady and again we'd be dancing

around each other um fun a lot of fun yeah what were the DPs that you kind of you know

coming from a background and painting Well, maybe, I don't know, you tell me. Cinematography wasn't like the thing that you latched onto, you know, earlier in your life. But when you started making that transition, were there certain films or certain even DPs that spoke to you? Or, you know, again, someone like Fincher is very meticulous about how the camera works for us.

I feel like some directors are more like, that's the D.P. I don't focus on actors. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think when I was, I've always loved cinema, but when I was painting and working more in the art world. I didn't see what my place would be in cinema and loved what I was doing painting and so on. And I gradually moved across. And I remember seeing, I mean, first of all, Robbie Muller has been, you know, what an absolute legend. Not only do I love his work and his

sensitivity to light and colour. And the fact that he did things in such a simple way, but so beautiful. But the films that he shot, some of my favourites, you know, with Vin Vendant and Jim Jumush. I mean, Dead Man is one of my top five of all time. It's phenomenal. It's so artful. So quirky.

And his color and texture is incredible. I've always adored Harris Savides when I first saw elephants, Gus Vincenzo elephant in a cinema, projector on 35 mil. That was a real moment, you know, that was like when I first saw Blade Runner 20 years prior,

that I just thought, oh gosh, right. This is something I have to get involved in? The language that he was using in Elephant was, I'd not see anything like it. And then in the New World, Malik's New World, what Chivo was doing there was just heaven. I mean, so beautiful, such incredible storytelling. So when I see kind of a singular vision that I just sort of completely fall for it, I love Robbie Ryan's work. He's so free.

I've had him on the show. Yeah. Well, there you go. do you go from there? I mean, goodness more. He's a treat. Yeah, he's great.

He's such good fun. His parties are amazing as well. He DJ. I can imagine. In dungarees and woolen socks. He's wild. Such a laugh. I did second unit for him

on a music video with Jake Gyllenhaal for the shoes. Danny Wolff was directing this was years ago. And then seeing a bit of the way he was working there. And it's just grab it, do it, grab it, do it. Totally unfussy, totally natural.

So the texture again in his work is phenomenal. So yeah, there's a lot of DPs doing really wonderful work. And it's fascinating watching their journeys. Yeah. You know, outside of the job, obviously there's a lot of, well, it is the job, but outside of the sort of camera, like, whatever, there's the human aspect. There's, you know, we're learning what the director wants, maybe doesn't know how to articulate in technical terms or anything like that. What are some things maybe that you've learned over the years from your litany of experiences that helped you on that more interpersonal front? Like, you know, certainly early on, I feel like a lot of me specifically, but a lot of people maybe will push back a little too hard instead of a more democratic way.

on something they believe in or whatever. But yeah, maybe some of those lessons you learned from the more managerial side of things. Interesting, yeah. I think, I mean, this is a bit of a cliche to say it because so many do say it, but trusting instinct is probably top of the list. The only times, the few times, fortunately, that I've not trusted my instinct, it's gone wrong. Yeah.

Which doesn't mean the product's gone wrong, but the experience has. And there are a couple of things that I've shot that I wished I hadn't chosen to shoot those things or I was shooting them for the wrong reason

and probably someone else in that scenario might have been a better choice. I felt I wanted to gain that experience or work that project. So whenever I've had those doubts they've played out. Now, having said that,

I have always learned something through all those experiences. I know here's the best teacher. Well, exactly. Every single shoot, however a big or small, well-funded or underfunded, I always, always learn something every single day. And I love that. It's fantastic. So it's not that those experiences were bad in total.

They were good ultimately. But I sort of beat myself up a bit afterwards for going against what I felt was right. So when I do go with something that I feel is absolutely right, it's always just instantly good. And I feel I can bring the best to it and then we can all move on together. So yeah, that's a big one. I think you've got to speak your mind. It's just that there may be more diplomatic ways at times that you can put things across. And so that's part of the same point as going with my instinct if there's something that I

really feel is not working. I do want to share that. Hoping that we can resolve it and move to a better place. Usually you can. Almost always you can. But sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to get to that point of communication. I'm not sure if that's answered your question or not. Yeah, no, totally.

And it actually brings up something that I've had to learn myself, which is related to instinct. And instinct is funny, too. I'll be, you know, leaving the house. I'm like, should I grab that stand? Now, that'll be fine. And then, of course, that's when we're, you know, do you have that connector? And you're like, damn it.

But instinct to kind of like, I feel like that we're saying this and having the same thought here is that instinct is the flinching, for instance. You see something out of the corner eye, you flinch, right? You don't intellectualize, oh, I should dodge this thing coming for me. Yeah. your body natural reacts. And instinct creatively is, you know, I've always said that emotionally correct always supersedes technically correct. And when you listen to your instinct, which is sort of a arm of flow state, that is when you really get the good stuff. When you try to over intellectualize it, you not only tamp down on that internal creativity that can be your signature or something that you've learned.

over the years that just should come naturally, you tend to make more mistakes. You know, if you're walking over a tightrope and you're just feeling it, you're going to make it. But if you go like, all right, left, foot, right? But you'd fall right off. Yeah, you're absolutely, absolutely right. I couldn't agree more.

There's a couple of ways that plays out. I know if I wake up and I'm really anxious about something that there is something that is not resolved that we're about to do. I walk into a set or a location and if something doesn't feel right I now trust that's because something isn't right because my instinct will get to that conclusion

quicker than the technical analysis route so I've learned to kind of lean on that and trust that however I will always go I'm a meticulous prepper with shot listing with shooting plans with diagrams, because it helps me walk into something with complete confidence knowing that I'm fully prepped. And if I've gone to all these processes, there's the very best chance that we'll have all the right bits of equipment and personnel in place on the day,

which means you're in a better place to move quickly when things change, which they will. So I think some people think, well, why do you bother prepping so much if it's going to turn out differently, but I'm in a much better place and we're going to get to where we need to get to much more quickly, having done all that prep beforehand. But as I say, I now wouldn't let that technical prep route override the instinct route, because the instinct route is the quick, as you say, that flinch. If I feel something about it, I just know, okay, there's something to look into here. Well, the prep informs the instinct, right? Your instincts could be If you don't know what you're doing, you know, you'll see a signal that tells you to avoid.

And then you're like, oh, should have leaned into that. I had no idea what we were doing. Yeah, exactly. But the other thing is you only get one chance to have a first reaction to something. So in this new series I'm doing, I'm saying to the director, I want to do my own version of a shot list in a way. Because, or at least to note down my thoughts before anyone else, because I will only have that once. and then later, later, later, months later when we're shooting, I can look back and think, oh, actually, when I read the script,

I really noted that that guy sat on that chair holding his drink was such a key moment where I might not have that thought on the day because I'm dealing with the mechanics of making it all happen. I refer back to those notes and that instinctive initial reaction and I can kind of reclaim that. So again, there's a combination of having the instinct and then making notes based on it. So, yeah, I think that I'm bouncing back and forth

between those processes, those mental processes as we go. Yeah, you know, I was talking to, this is a few years ago, but I was talking to Eric Mezzershmet, and he said something, he was being kind of flippant, but obviously he believes it a little, he's like, I would almost just rather prep a film

and then not shoot it. Because in prep, you get to have so much fun, you're dreaming, you're learning, you're trying new things, and then you get to shoot it and you're like, compromise, compromise, compromise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The layers of compromise are incredible.

But for me, it's also down to, or harks back to, I remember when I was on Art Foundation, which is a year of education after A-Levels before you go to art school degree. And there are stories about Art Foundation in the UK that, you know, when Brian Eno went to Art Foundation on his first day, he and all the students were just locked into the quadrangle

and all the teachers just stood in the classrooms above and watched them and then left and left them there overnight to see what would happen. You know, there's really bizarre experiments, psychological experiments going on. But for me, I remember this class where it was life drawing and I used to draw very meticulously. And the models, there were three models and thought,

well, which one do I draw? I don't know. And then the teachers were playing music and all the models were dancing. I was like, well, how am I going to draw them if they're moving around? They've got to stand still. And then we weren't using pay. We were using charcoal, then we were using paint, then we were using our elbows.

Then we had to step back, move on to the next person's painting and work on their painting. And of course, I'm looking at my painting, watching someone else ruin it. And then we go all the room like this. We come back and I look at this absolute mess in front of me and then paint more. And by this time, I'm completely liberated and do a bunch of work. We go off on a break. We come back and they say, right, pick three pieces of work. And I'm going to have this one and this one.

So you pick your best three. And, right, tear them up into little pieces. No. You tear them up into little pieces. And then, right, make a collage. Here are the models. They're still moving. Make drawings through your car.

The work I did that day was the most incredible stuff I'd ever done. And it was all based on these discoveries. And each discovery was something that I would never have got to on my own had I not been pushed. And I could only make discovery number five, having made discovery number four. So this is the way I see going on set. You go in with all your prep and everything and then it just changes and moves and evolves. It has to.

And when there isn't a sense of discovery, something's missing. And that's, again, what's so wonderful about the way Georgie runs things and the way she was able to do with Night Manager, there's always that discovery. So yes, there's a script to articulate. But when there's that discovery going on,

there's more edge and more energy. And when everybody's involved in that process of discovery, is fantastic. Yeah. No, that's, I have to sit on that because that's, first of all, just the fact that you went through that, not like it was traumatic,

but just what a wonderful way to learn. It was, and then I taught for 15 years, and I was teaching an art foundation, so I was doing the same with the students and just loved it, just love watching them go through that journey, to let go and where you can get to if you let go. It's obviously a very abstract example,

and it's very separate from the world of filmmaking, which is much more industrial and regimented. But where you can find angles like that, it's just so inspiring. Well, and I only learned through analogy. You know, you can teach me something, but a lot of times it doesn't stick. So, you know, it's always when I'm, like, building a shelf

that I'm like, oh, that's how I should have shot that. You know, I don't know what it is. Totally, yeah. But it's great. That's the way to learn. And I love films that are experiential like her. I don't know if you've seen Sirat, but that is a sensorial experience. Monos as well, Colombian film.

It's when you're taken to a place and you don't know where you're going. And you feel like the filmmakers didn't know exactly where they're going, but they get somewhere very interesting. It's a rare opportunity. Yeah. Well, I can see that the sun is gone where you are, so I will let you go. but it was phenomenal chatting with you. Thanks so much, Kenny.

Really enjoyable. Cheers. 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.