Frame & Reference Podcast - 237: "300" & "Watchmen" Retrospective with Larry Fong, ASC

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

What a treat we've got this week! Today I'm joined by my good friend Larry Fong, ASC to talk about his work on Zack Snyder's 300 (which inexplicably turned 20 last month) as well as 2009's Watchmen. Larry also has a new movie that just came out on Hulu called Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice that we touch on towards the end.If you're anything like me, 300 and Watchmen were incredibly influential films while I was a budding filmmaker, and this conversation was absolutely wonderful to have with such an incredible DP as Larry. I know you're going to love it.Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello and welcome to this episode 237 of Framing Reference. You're about to join a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Larry Fong, for a retrospective of 300 and Watchmen. Enjoy. To start, you know, you had already shot The Lost Pilot. You've done a bunch of music videos and stuff, losing my religion and whatnot. You know, like pretty, pretty storied career at that point. But going into such a sort of demanding. film as your first major feature, what were kind of some of your concerns and sort of pre-shoot

jitters that came about? Because, you know, not starting with like a romantic comedy or something jumping straight into what many consider like one of the most visually interesting films made of recent memory like that, that had to have been kind of intimidating. Yeah, it was intimidating, but Zach had a really good idea of what he wanted to. wanted to do because he hadn't done anything like that really either right he'd done the zombie movie right on of the dead dawn of the dead yeah which is very different you know more raw handheld i think not as stylized right so part of the thing was yeah it was very intimidating as far as how we can develop this look in this fantasy and also we wanted to emulate the uh the graphic novel which had

this painterly watercolor kind of feel. So that was a challenge. We always experiment a lot in school and in music video. So we were up for the challenge. But I think the hard thing was, yeah, when you're just doing commercials or videos you're used to one or two day jobs. And then the thing for me mostly was, am I going to be able to survive, you know, two months of shooting or whatever was?

Now it seems like it's short, right, eight weeks. I don't know if that's the exact number. but you have to get get up that many days in a row, other than the weekend. That was like I was thinking for my endurance. That's what intimidated me the most. But it was unfounded because as anyone knows who shot, if you do TV or a feature that the days,

it starts to be almost like a real job. It's not like you're, when you do a commercial video, you have that one day or two days and you think, okay, we've got to nail this. But once the animal starts going, you know, it's it's not like starting over every day. Right. What also made it easier, some people think this is harder,

but because of all the blue screen, it was easier and harder, right? You know, many of you do a movie, everyone's thinking, wasn't that hard to do it, but in some ways, it's quicker and easier because you don't have to light the deep background. Now, we didn't do the thing, like a lot of people thought we did Sin City

where, you know, it's their own green boxes, is not doing anything. Obviously, there are giant sets built, and there's that scene where they walk all through Sparta, right? And there were big sets where there's ground and dirt and buildings and whatnot, sand. But it did mean that as long as the big ground and the foreground and the actor looked good, then you can kind of not worry so much about the deep background. Although, I'm sure you've heard, too, where people say,

well, you just do blue screen and they light it later and VFX fixes it all, right? Right, which is bullshit. Well, some people might do that. I mean, the weatherman does. Right. But no, we had, it was all in prep. We always knew where the sun was coming from, you know, the time of day, the weather so that it was not arbitrary, right? It was overcast, it's the nice soft above.

But if it's hard light or has a backlight, you know, we bring out the big lights. And it was warm or cool. We filmed it that way. We didn't just worry about it later. And I think I've said before that I did take frames and quickly do a rough composite on my laptop. And the art department would give me a rough idea of what it might look like later so we can look at it

and say, is this the right feel? So that's kind of the process. You know, I mean, to your point, too, about like, being easy and hard. One thing that I was watching the special feature, jumping mildly head, watchmen needed more special features. There's no,

there's barely any making of. It's all like, do you want to know about real life superheroes? And I'm like, no, I want to know how they made the movie. But watching the 300 special features, there was like a whole segment on the rabbit. Oh yeah, yeah.

Just the big boulder. Talk to me about like how much of the film is on the rabbit. It's funny because Jim Bissell is so genius. And like every production is there's so many times, like if we talk about sucker punch, there's where the production designer is thinking, you know, we don't have the money, not just the money, but also it's smart, right, to reuse sets. So the rabbit was that one rock that kind of looked like a rabbit. And then if you turn to different ways, then you could reuse it to be different locations.

That was it, pretty much. which ones whenever you saw someone standing on a rock and you couldn't really tell where they were it was the rabbit like remember where they're lying down

and they're spying on the Persian camp down below that's the rabbit and other ones where I think the hunchbacks walking and the distance on top of it became the all-purple that piece yeah

yeah they can't tell exactly which ones but yeah it was reused several times yeah it's just it was just one of those things where I'm like because also I feel like

a lot of not a lot of but it's often now that you'll see a largely uh CG environment film not take as much care as it seemed that you guys took on the foregrounds but even looking back at that behind the scenes footage a lot of those foregrounds kind of just you know like when they're when they're running at each other for the for the triple head unit you know the zooms which in my my memory of it as a teenager was like that was like a 15 minute sequence and it's like 30 seconds. It was used in all the marketing and everything and it's like, you know, but it's amazing what you guys were able to accomplish

even into not that like 2006 is forever ago. You know, we had already done the matrix and everything, but just how well those composites worked even with a minimal, relatively minimal foreground. Yeah. Yeah. And that speaks to there's only, you can only manipulate. the foreground, the real foreground, so much. So the VFX people had to, you know, they couldn't go crazy because they had the match. But other times it could go crazy because it was out of focus or so far away or there was no

ground connecting the foreground in the background. It's like if it's a sky or something, you could do anything. As you know, the skies were very surreal and are often done with just throwing paint or coffee even literally on paper and using that. Yeah. It's it. One thing I did write down.

was like it does it's kind of like a cinematographer's dream in the sense that a lot of it feels like you just magic hour like you were just able to really hammer down magic hour time you know uh sometimes not all of it but yeah but were those actually before we get into like lighting and stuff I did want to go back and talk about the test footage fight that you guys shot to sell the film did you see it Yeah. It's on the Burey. Wild. But because that looked pretty polished. Like it doesn't look too terribly dissimilar from the film. So how much work went into that? Like was it, I mean, all the costumes are there where they're like did you double? Like it felt like the movie was already ready to go with that.

Right. Well, that was how they convinced, how that convinced everyone that, you know, it could work. By the way, I didn't shoot that. Oh. I was at Zach's house and he said, you know, I want you to read the script. And I go, okay. And I'm kind of reading through it and it's like, oh, wow, it's just a bunch of people killing each other.

I'm like, what's the deal? Fine. I know that you love that kind of stuff, but I don't necessarily. And he goes, no, no, no, it's not, don't read the script. Because it's not about what I need from me is the look. Because this is, if it's not about the look, then this isn't even worth making. They have enough gladiator movies. So if you think of a gladiator,

you know, mixed with the matrix or all I care about is the visuals for this. And I'm like, okay, that's what the DP wants to hear. And then he showed me that clip that you're talking about. And I'd never seen it. I'm like, who shot this? He was, I shot it. Of course.

He goes, oh, we just got him on stage. It was a 360. And it looks pretty hard to me. But, yeah, so that was the proof of concept for, I guess, the studio and also for me. So, but obviously we took it further. Now, I'm not sure. I haven't seen it in a while, but it can't really look like the finished movie because some of the processes we hadn't thought of yet.

No, I just want more so like the VEX pipeline or the vibe maybe, but not. Yeah, because like all the costumes look pretty much like they do in the movie. Oh, right. The, the comping is not shabby. Yeah, the shields are all there, the capes. You know, there's a little bit of, I mean, on the Blu-ray, I think it's like a 480p you know clip because it's from probably from a DVD

oh yeah whatever but and um but even some of the comping most of the the comic is like pretty good you know like it looks it kind of does look like you had already built everything out and then you had someone really quickly go make that wow like like you needed the okay tomorrow you know you were like this this right yeah okay good off we go yeah i don't know so it was just kind of impressive it was impressive but uh I don't know all the details of it. I think that, but there's speed ramping in there as well, right?

Yeah, yeah, a ton. Actually, it's largely slow-mo. Right. The speed ramping pretty much brings it up to regular speed for like a move that took too long. So the other way around, right. Yeah. Did having, I mean, it seems probably like a foregone answer. But like when you have such a visual reference as the book,

kind of same thing with Watchman, but does that make your life easier because you're kind of not to be flippant, but like there's a bit of like a paint by numbers thing where you're like, oh, just make it look like that? Or did you find that it was restrictive? It was more challenging than it seemed because a lot of people say,

well, you copied the comic book as a compliment, but then some people say you copied the comic book as not a compliment. But I don't agree with either because obviously we can't copy frame my frame because it's a whole different art form. As you know, comics I love because of the format can go vertical, horizontal, go backwards, forwards, do all kinds of weird visual puns and things like that. But film is relatively kind of boring storytelling, right?

It's the same frame. That person's talking. That person's talking. Let's see more. Oh, I know. Let's look from above. Hey, genius, right? So this is really, especially during dialogue, you have to just talking heads, right?

Comics don't do that. So no, we didn't really do that. But we gave the illusion of it because Zach had certain frames that he goes, okay, we're going to duplicate this shot. Because look at the shot. It's amazing. Just make sure we get this wide with this vibe and this feel and this composition. And then you go into the boring regular expositional narrative, right? Stuff.

So if if we do that and people feel. feel like it's the source material. Then we've done our job and, you know, we've, even though it didn't really do it, we've given the feel that you did, which I think is more important. Yeah. Well, especially with the color and the texture. Right. You know, and it's like anything when people do like camera comparisons.

Yeah, if you have them right next to each other, you'll be like, no, they look totally, but if you show them back to back, a lot of people won't. Right. You know, good point. It's the, it's the impression of it. you go like yeah that's correct yeah like i can't do a ted talk showing that movie and then sit here with the graphic novel and go fall along i mean i think pink floyd and wizard obf could do better actually than that going into the film did you have as the dpp did you have vfx concerns about

fidelity or um ways that it would affect the way you shot or did you was that kind of just a level of trust where you're like if I just don't focus on the background not not with the camera but like mentally I can do my job yeah I'm obviously whenever I do a film like this I'm get very very close to the VFX people and I love the effects and I think you know maybe I would have been in VFX in a different life so I'm not one of those guys that let them take care of it later right so I like to be I probably spend more time with the VFX departments than the director and sometimes because um I wanted to work.

So it's not all by accident. And you do work tightly together. Like I said on set, you know, there's discussions all the time and then, you know, and prep and after hours, disgusting,

disgusting, and disgusting to make sure it all works. But we did some things that were kind of unprecedented. So it was tough. So I remember because all the different vendors were trying to do this look. You know,

if you look at it, it's a little inconsistent at times, right, affected the image looks because you only can do so much and it's so much time and being different countries or whatever. So consistency is hard, but Zach always chooses really good VFX supervisors too because it's important to him and he spends a lot of time with his notes and revisions of VFX. So he doesn't let it slide by. He's very involved as well. Yeah. Yeah, it is because I know you, you chose like,

I don't know how many film stocks were available, but I was reading that you had chosen. I think it was like 5229 or something to like, maybe that was a watchman to for its ability to be manipulated in post. Yeah, there were a lot of tests. And one really weird thing was we were going to do green screen because at that time, green screen was a thing, right? Yeah. But we did a test and I'm getting this right.

when we projected it, actually projected the film from our tests, we could see that there was a weird fringing between these bright red capes and the green screen. Did I have that right?

Yeah, because you see the behind the BTS, it's all blue screen, right? Yeah, because, and then we realized we couldn't do green screen and we're like, how's that happening? And we believe it was because it's the layers of the film, the emulsion. Yeah. And it made enough of a difference on the actual film yeah the color contrast between red was too much for the for the for

handling it was it was affecting the wasn't making a they couldn't cut a clean mat basically right so that's when we had to do that we had to change a elevation basically yes exactly so that's never heard that before yeah I did see if you watch the you know the sparta kick sequence down the well I That was lined with green screen. Oh, that's right. Maybe because there weren't capes in that? Yeah, it's the Persians going down the well.

Yeah. Wow. So maybe VFX said for that one, who knows? I'm sure it changed from time to time. But, you know, that's the prerogative. Yeah. The getting into the lighting, one thing that I really love about the film is, and maybe this kind of did inform the way that I prefer to like if I had my druthers I would like this way.

But just the big super soft Fincher does this too, big soft upper source that's just kind of what was it? Gordon Willis or whatever called just room tone. But then you would always find these wonderful kind of sharp keys. but I also noticed a lot of eye light being very specific and I was wondering if you could kind of walk me through A, the generalized approach to keying these sub-it's not the same all the time obviously.

Like I did notice in the bedroom scene with Leonidas and the queen, you can see in the catchlight like Gerard Butler gets like a regular source and this is like old school. I think people don't really think about this anymore and you flip to the queen. I mean, you can just see a bit of diffusion around her, you know, panel, which is a lesson I had to learn as an early DP.

But, yeah, like, what, A, were those catchlights, like, very specific to you? Because sometimes it's just that square. Sometimes there's multiples. And because you're on a built set, but there is going to be a, were you just like, oh, we get to throw, like, just same key for, you know, for these closeups. Did it become easier? Well, first of all, it's interesting because I'd never used highlights before. Because I was super cool, natural, you know, kind of philosophy. And it seemed very Hollywood to me.

So I didn't do it in my commercial work and certainly not music videos. But I realized that I was doing now a movie where, you know, real actors, you kind of have to seem. I didn't want to get fired. but because I'm not as a brave obviously as Gordon Willis but I it wasn't really just a fear of getting fired you know it does give a sparkle and I'm obsessed kind of with highlights actually so it's funny you bring this up because I will always change and drive my lighting crew crazy because you know this one I want a big thing I light from far away this one I want to close up and round this this one I want a rectangle this one I want a tube and under the lens and

that they're going, well, how come now you want to be above the lens or the side of the lens? It's always changing, right? Because it's, and I don't know why. I've been obsessed, like, changing the shape. Yeah, changing the shape and actually cutting stencils. I think Steve Yedlin was talking about that in Glass and you know, one of those films that for the shape of a bounce. Because also I think about when you're outside, the fill card, it's always a square, right? Because it's a card or foam core. And then for photographers, it's always round because they have the flex fill. And the photographers are always down below because that's how you're taught to do it as a photo assistant, which I once was not realizing that's well, if you're outdoors, you go under because the lights, the sun's going, it's backlight. You want to bring it back under. But it doesn't have be that way. Right. It can be on a 12 by over there. And it's not under because sometimes you don't want it under. But certainly it's more natural when it comes under or it seems less. movie-like because exactly you're on the sand the bounce comes from under right sure but right now in my kitchen all the fills come from up there it's a big white kitchen right so there's no rules because

when they teach you things like the light should be right here next to the camera or in old school was it it was a hard light right putting a ping right but we all know it doesn't have to be like it could be a tube here or a thing off to the side if you're outside there's only so many places you can be to catch the sun, but if you're inside, it can be any light unit anywhere in any size and it could be two feet away or it could be, you know, 20 feet away. Then it's more fill, but then that becomes semantics, right? But I was kind of obsessed because we're using kinos a lot of that time. And so a lot of those highlights were kinos. And you can see that in the BTS. There was one guy who was the i. I mean, you're going to be the highlight guy for the whole

movie because if I adjust it, right, then he starts to get my feel and I don't have to go and adjust it by hand, which by the way, in the old days of film, like you couldn't tell anyway, because he couldn't stand by the camera and you really had to be kind of psychic to know what the image was going to look like. The video taps useless, right? So, and even it's hard to see through the eyepiece. So, you know, I let the highlight guy take his best guess and then we'd check dailies and I go, yeah, keep doing that.

or you know i would say for this go a little to the left or under or more i light or less highlight but i think it's kind of like um if you want to use the old analogy of cooking you know we all know how to do the certain dish but at the end it's the final seasoning of the salt or the pepper whatever that that just takes it to that place that you can't measure you just have to taste it right And to me, that's how I feel about highlights. Don't quote me on this. I'm really sounding potentials I realize right now. No, because here's the thing.

To your point about changing the shape and like, it's something that I've really started to key into recently because, A, you know, as a DP, you're always, if you're analyzing an image, you're always looking in the eyeballs because it's reflecting. You know, you can see where those sources are coming around. but the shape and placement of an eye light can either inform or trick the audience into feeling the way the actor feels. You know, it can make them look like their eyes, you know, like a tube underneath can make it look like their eyes are watering or whatever, you know. So it is an art form in and of itself that I think is potentially undervalued. Yeah, and I don't think you always need it, by the way, either. Sure. If you're brave for a certain close-ups, you know, the braver you are, you can get away with

it if you're on board with, you know, the director and maybe the actor or the studio before they fire you. Yeah. But it's funny you mentioned the thing about, you know, the emotion of the cry. I call that a cry light instead of an eye light. Yeah. Yeah. You can cry.

Okay. Better get a harder one. You put it right in the middle because you're not going to see that tear otherwise or you're going to see the tier more. Yeah. So cry light. It's a good one. You can use it.

I will. But the one that I noticed a lot of is there was always like a big square. And I think it started to really, and it was very, it was a very, it was rather big in the eye. But it just because of how graphic everything looks, it really, it made sense that it would be that like prominent. And I'm sure normal people don't see it. Are you talking about 300 on a specific shot? Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of Leonidas. Yeah, a lot of Leonidas, because there's a lot of him looking down, which I hadn't done a lot of. So I think maybe I was afraid. And so I put in ton of fill, you know, because for obvious reasons, got to see it. Because there's something, you must have said it somewhere, but there was someone mentioned that they called it the Fong light, which was just like a 2K. Oh, yes. Slapped it. Yes, I don't know how to develop.

I think is because I like to have fun on the set and you know and I think we kept setting up open face lights into four by bounce right and then everyone always had to move everything and go why don't we just make this into one thing so it's just it was just like a four by and an arm with the open face and so you can just carry and put it anywhere and the crew is kind of amused at that the Montreal crew oh and they called the phone line they put a Did you see a picture of it? Because I think someone wrote that on the... No, I didn't see it.

But, I mean, like I'm saying, I was just basing it off what I saw in the eye and then hearing about it. Oh, okay. About it later. But also, that wasn't an eye like, right? Because it was high. And because what happens is, you know, we had the top, we'll talk about in the second, the top soft on pretty much all the time. Because it was always motivated. But sometimes you don't want to put an highlight in.

But sometimes you also want it to wrap a little bit around the front. you know, remember in photo class, you know, the ball, Cuban cylinder and yeah. So maybe it's too topy, but you don't want to fill it. You want to wrap it this way. People don't know people talk about wrapping this way, but sometimes you want to wrap it that way. So you can actually have a, it was like at a 45 and it helped bring the top light, you know, around without getting too flat. That makes sense.

Well, yeah. And the other thing, too, to the point of like the photo assistant flex-fill from the bottom that's something that's always bothered me because light doesn't come from down there like especially if you're if you're outdoors right and you're like on a really cheap shoot or you're on a photo shoot out in the desert or whatever like i've done a bunch of and i keep on having to tell the random person who because i never get enough money to bring somebody uh you know hold it up here and then they immediately they're like okay and then they just start looking around and they're not but most people do and i think it partially it's lazy but then i said that to somebody

recently I was like yeah that's dumb that you just to bring in the reflector of the button he was like I do that and I was like all right well fuck me sorry but it makes sense for like a desert bounce but like as a as a light if you're gonna be using that thing as like a light it I feel like it should come from up top yeah well there's no right or wrong is the thing right so yeah when I was a photoist I remember we the photographer I he always used these four by four boards with kind of a gold reflective thing on it. And we're always at the beach because it was always kind of swim suit photography.

And you get lazy and you just like you rested on the ground because they're heavy. But that's what he wanted. He just wanted tons of gold into there. It was something I would never do, but it worked for him. He was very successful. And I think I might have even suggested because I think I was in film school at the time. I held it up high and he yelled at me. So there's that.

Yeah, that gold, that gold bounce was very of the time. Yeah, like most like magazine, you know, model shoots. Real hot, overly gold, you know, sun return. Yeah, where that comes from. That's not golden hour because the sun, you can see the sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This side's warmer. You know, a DP would always make this side cooler if he could.

Did you have to, you must have. But you know you're going to go. through this involved color correction process to get the look. Yes. Famously a 10-step borderline B-FX process. Did that affect the way that you were lighting in an appreciable way? Like did you have to give it less contrast knowing that it was going to get popped out? No, I think I made it look as good as I could by my eye knowing that it was going to

be even cooler later. And if it was a contrast, more contrasting like night scene or something, obviously, and be more contrast in that situation. But, you know, I never saw the finished product while we're shooting. So I was just trying to be as consistent as possible. The best thing I could do is to make it if it look good to me, even though I know it's not going to look like this later, that I know it's going to look good in the same way, I guess.

Right. They weren't going to fix it later. They were going to enhance it. Right. Now, this is funny because when, when we did the first preliminary scouts up in Montreal, we first were going to work this weird brick rundown factory or something. I go, okay, how's this going to work?

It ended up not. We worked in a TV studio. But either way, I realized that we need top soft light for these big areas because in the daytime, obviously, and it's like we said, it wasn't a small area. It was giant. You know, when they're running around, that was a giant set. I knew that I would need overall top light.

with some hard lights mounted, you know, it be so often to ring the set. So no matter which way you're facing, you can do backlight or a hard front light if you needed it. Sometimes on a crane, I think it's standard practice. But I was a little worried

because I told the producer and he brought a local gaffer so we could talk about things. And he said, how do we get top? Because in those days it was basically space lights only. There was nothing else, right? I think to get top. soft light.

I guess the silk as well. The photos that I saw, it's a massive silk. It looked like a blue silk and then probably just, yeah, tons of space lights behind it. Yes. So I told the gaffer, somehow we need a ton of top soft light. And my idea was that it was slightly blue, like half blue. It would work for daytime because that's the skylight, right? But in nighttime, it's also slightly blue.

and then later we just pushed a little bit. We don't have to change gels on all the space lights, that old thing. Remember those days? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they need to work overnight. All the grips have to get up there, whoever, and change all the gels in all the spacelights. So I thought if we just had that one and committed to it, we could save time, and it would work for both scenarios. Just tune the grade the night scenes a little bluer and latch onto that blue, right?

But I go, how are we going to do that? And also in these factories, how are we going to get? tons of nothing to hang them from. And it's going to get so hot. And also we need the light levels for these high speed and all the time. So the Gaffer goes, oh, I can do that. Our last shoot we did that. What are you talking about?

He was on our last shoot. Like we got a bunch of soaked. We dye them half blue. And then I designed these aluminum tubes with globes, those tubular globes, 2K or 1K, globes. You know, the kind that the ends, you know, the spring. thing. Oh, oh, like. Like for use for an open face, like blondes and redheads. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Every six feet or something, you know, they had a wire and it was the thin aluminum pipe, you know, super thin with wiring it and then the two sockets in there. And then it'd just be basically a long ride because hang by wires or strings or any of the ropes from above. I know, you have these things. Yeah, we just finished a movie. We have tons of them. I'm like, oh my God. Okay. You're hired. Yeah, yeah. And that was day after tomorrow, right? Yes, exactly. How'd you know? That's my thing. You never argue with Kenny with the facts. That's exactly what it was. And so he was the Gaffert for that. And he was amazing. He's retired now. But that's what we did. It worked out perfectly. Only thing is some, they were solving they'd pop and then a piece of glass would come down. They were not to run. You know, the silk started catching on fire because there's no, at least the space light has the thing underneath the catch, burning things that explode.

Right. There's that. But that only happened once or twice. You know, it's funny. All the Spartans are running. Yeah, look out. Some of your compositions just are so striking in the film and in many of your films. But I was wondering, was there any non-comic book reference it?

Like, was that the Bible and were done? Or did you reference, like, other films or photographs that kind of informed it a little bit? good question I don't know I don't think we had any other references yeah because I remember in watchmen there were some and then later in sucker punch there's on Batman or Superman like there's three volumes of references put together you know he had a whole person um I actually have those book they're bound somewhere crazy but I think that was such a unique thing that no we're on the skin of our shooting that in the skin of our teeth and uh Yeah, Warner Brothers, you know, legendary had a lot of faith in us.

They had to because they're taking a risk, you know, the Dailies, like I've said before, did not look anything like the movie. Right. So, but they trust the deck, you know. I'm not sure why because after that, I'm sure he is the wonder kid and everything, but at that point he only let Dun Don Don and the Dead. But they believe in anything. That's all we need is someone to believe in, to believe in us.

podcast is morphing into a therapy. I think that's, you got a side hustle now. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, to that point, though, you can have all the trust you have in the guy and, you know, the support team that's been put around you and stuff. But kind of,

sort of a rehash of the first question, but like, do you, how prepared did you feel going into that with all the unknown? and people, you know, like, you know, saying, hey, this is kind of unheard of. Did you, you know, was this an above average level of anxiety? Or did, was there enough prep that you felt like, oh, this isn't going to be difficult. Like, I heard this one quote that was like, there's no such thing is easy or difficult.

There's just familiarity. Yeah, I think that's familiar with none of it. So it all kind of blurred from the thing. For being in a different country from, like I said, like all the days, the endurance. takes plus the daily is not looking like what you're going to do plus there's a certain things that Zach was throwing a lot of things that they're right from the speed ramping to the three cameras to the um photosonics just sadly not around anymore right um to the crazy yeah 300 frames per second um that's another story the

And the look, right? All of it. And then, yeah, it was very surreal. It was like a fever dream in a weird way. So for some reason I don't remember the stress and anxiety, even though I'm sure it was there as in other projects. Because I think there's a weird quite confidence that we needed that we've been familiar. Like I'd work with Zach a lot and known Zach after, you know,

going to film school with him. So we were very familiar with let's jump in the playbox. uh sandbox and play and um and trust ourselves because we took a lot of risks you know before that and they usually paid off so there's kind of a weird confidence that's good to hear because i mean even the smaller gigs that i'm getting still like i still like i feel so prepared you know i'm like i've done this before and then you get yeah one too many new problems and then you get the next And you're like, how many new ones are they're going to be here? I don't know anything anymore.

You know, it's funny is I, like, I don't think I'd seen 300 in over 10 years. I forgot Fastbenders in this movie. I know. I know. It's like second main character. I know. It's crazy. He's everywhere.

Yeah. Just what. That's because I was watching the killer screening at the academy. me and I'm like, I remember sitting with that guy. And he'd always come with this. The iPod was new, right? And he had the white iPhone. He's always like in the corner like,

he doesn't be listening to jamming out his own thing. And then I finally, he's always tangling his things, right? So I at the story, I saw one of those things that cable handler, right? Right, right. And that was my gift to him. And he was so grateful I remember that because he was just always jamming. But he was so funny. Same guy.

So good. Do you remember a guy named Tim Connolly? Yeah. What character does he play? He was one of the Spartans, right? Right. Yeah. Because he's a hockey player.

Yeah. There was all, yeah, there's, that was a mixed bag of really interesting people. There's a guy that, a lot of people that became stunt, people out of a couple of them directors. Then you could see them and there's Spartan going claws. And also, I believe one guy that was famous for his one inch punch, he could do that, like, loosely, because, you know, they're all fighters. And then also, I think one of the guys that, you know, the squirrel suit that could fly. I think one of the champions, I think he was one of the Spartans. Can't remember the names.

Sorry. Yeah. Well, the only reason I bring up Tim is because I was looking through the IMDB. And it just said Tim Connell, but he's uncredited. And I was like, he played for the Maple Leafs. And so I'm like looking around like, which one is he? Cause like, you know, their helmeted or like obviously you would have been a lot younger than the photos I could find of him. And I'm just like, which was he like, did he have lines?

Like did I miss this random. Well, you would have. Yeah. I mean, he might have had a wig on or whatever and you didn't recognize them with the. Yeah. The outfit in the six pack. That's funny. That's funny.

Also you can see six packs with your hockey player. You don't see their bodies. No. So. And they don't have any either. That's all functional muscle. Like, yeah, if you look at any hockey player with their shirt off, like when they're doing the after, like, game interviews, they always get them in the middle of their undressing for somebody. It's weird.

A lot of times. It's very strange. The news people go, and they ask the dumbest question. Hockey reporting is horrific. I can tell you're not bad. Yeah. But they're all, it's all functional muscle, right? So they're not like, they're all really like in shape, obviously.

But they're not like, I feel like, bad. Basketball players are all very like shredded. You know, they all look very like models. And then hockey players are just kind of like bulky meatball guys. One thing I did want to just draw attention to because I forgot it like what rewatching the movie like a lot of things started flooding back to me. And I had the 300 soundtrack by Tyler Bates.

Like on my iPod. I listened to that like throughout high school. Just yeah. Just a soundtrack. And it, he did so well. And then I look him up. I'm like, oh my God, he did John Wick. Amazing.

He's still going strong, man. He's so talented. Let's see. I wrote script of one-liners. There's some great one-liners in the movie. One-liners? Like what? Oh, just, you know, like, you know, give them nothing, take from them everything.

Or like we've been sharing our culture with your own line. Yes. Just the little quipies. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you brought up the multi-cam, the triple-cam thing. You've mentioned before how it's like it was just three cameras. Was there a beam splitter or they were just next to each other?

Oh, this is a good story. The original thing, it was called the Crazy Horse rig. I think it was from Claremont. Giant Beam Splitter, two cameras used for, if you Google it, you can see why they're used it for a movie called Crazy Horse, cowboying engines, not science fiction or anything. So it's enabled the two cameras to, you know, like capture the same image for whatever.

Almost like the same thing you do with the 3D rig. Right, right, same axis. Capturing two different ways for two different reasons without an offset. So he wanted to do that, but the wind lens and a tight lens. And then so we did tests and it was kind of cool, knowing that he would stitch make the zoom later so you could do when and where you wanted it.

But then when we did the actual shot, which was not easy because it's one long take, you've seen the BTS. When the film came back, it was unusable. Good. Because there's some kind of microjitter. You know what? This is kind of a silly question almost, but. Yes.

was there any effects work to make Xerxes look so big or was that just framing? Oh no, that was all the effects. Yeah. Super complicated, actually. Why's that? Because when you shot that,

we shot one thing and then let's say over the shoulder of Xerxes down to Leonidas, then we had to back up the camera. Right, they didn't shrink him later. We had the back of the camera to make him shrink the right amount. out to get the right ratios because you had these same lens, right?

So yeah, every time you did that was crazy math that the VEFX supervisor's figuring out like where we had to be. And I'm like, you just tell me where the camera. I don't get any of this. Yeah, it was super weird and complicated. Yeah. It's funny. I've got a lot of Persian friends on the couple of these documentaries I've made,

meet a lot of Persians. And every time I'll bring up 300. They always like, they always say it with a laugh. because they know they're like nitpicking. But I feel like every Persian I know now is like, oh, that movie. It wasn't you. It was fake. Is a propaganda film 300.

It's one guy telling the story. Of course, he's going to church it up and make everyone. Yeah. I missed that when I initially saw the film. I completely, as a kid, skipped over the fact that this was all a retelling, even though it's painfully obvious. There's voiceover. They show the guy telling the story.

It just did start my... Yeah. I just like, in my head, I was like, no, that's cool. Yeah. Not that this guy was, you know, churching up the story so that everyone would go fight. Right. You know, that's media literacy for a 16-year-old.

That's so funny. But you're right. Yeah, it was not meant to insult anybody. He was a storyteller who went out the rails a little bit for the sake of, you know, his team, as you said. Yeah. Well, he's a propagandist. His whole job was to go back and do that.

Yeah. Narratively. People did that. People did that and do it today. Yeah. Speaking of the monsters, too, like that was, and I lights, the immortals don't get highlights, except for one shot where they're really far away and their eyes are glowing when they're like up on a hill.

And I was like, yeah, that's good. Is that funny? Is that funny? Oh, that was anxiety. RITEN. Like, okay, bring in the Chrome people to the studio shoot with the top light and the anything screen everywhere. Right. It's bad enough when you have the glasses that reflect. Can you imagine Chrome everything? Bring in the Chrome people. You know what's cool? I right under the Xerces. I was just thinking about effects. The when they're getting hit with

those like grenades, like sparkly grenades. That's just a very cool scene over. How much of that was practical. Yeah. You know what? We had not a second unit, but Splinter Unit doing that. So that cool one where the guy rolls and the guy's ducking in and it explodes. I didn't even shoot. Yeah.

Second unit or Splinter, you know, did that. Yeah, but it was really cool. There's just so much of that film that like feels, like, untenable. Just shots like that where you're like, that couldn't, that had, that's the only time that happened. Like you can't, you know, that's, I mean, we've said it sort of before, but like, that's the magic trick, right? Where you, you film something that you're like, that could only happen once. You know, going back to the Fincher thing, like, I remember a story. This kind of reframe the way that I think about perfection was like for Gone Girl, I think.

Ben Affleck's sister in the film, like, she's working at the bar and she, like, picks up the phone and she, like, fumbles it. and then drops the scene. She's like, my bad. And Fincher apparently was like, no, that's the good. That's good. That was real. It was never. Dude, yeah, fuck it up again, please.

And so that kind of stuff, I always try to like, if I can, like, I keep that. You know, that's good stuff. Yeah, they call all those the happy accidents that you can't predict. Oh, sorry, we have to go back to the two camera thing with the unusable footage. Oh, right, right. Yeah, sorry. So we had to reshoot that because the image came back all like this. Whoops.

Oh, that's how it started because I was doing gestures. So, and no one can figure out why. So we go to the camera department, go, the camera's fine. And then there's something wrong with the film. The film goes, it's not us. It's clearly at the lab. Lab goes, no, it's not us. Must be the mirror.

And we go to the mirror and we're looking at it and we're shaking it and trying to duplicate it. And we couldn't. So no one, we never figured out. with all these different companies and geniuses and scientists, figure out why he was jittering and microscopically vibrating. But the point was, we had to do it all over again. So the next weekend, we had to do the whole, or the next week we had to do the whole thing over again.

I'm sure fight of the people are killing themselves. And Gerard Butler thrilled about that. But so we had to punt, right? So Zach was like, hey, we're going to just cram two cameras really close to each other. and hopefully no one can tell. We're at a distance enough, like 30 feet away, then there shouldn't be any parallaxes. During a Zoom, I'm sure it's going to be fine.

No, it's not like we're going past a bunch of bushes and trees that anyone would notice anyway, right? Right. Even then. So that was very sad until we realized, well, if we're going to cram two cameras together, let's cram three cameras together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we stuffed them together. I think this is what I'm saying down? Like, how did we do it? Because those are filming, they're airy-threes, right? Shooting at 120 frames. So if there's squeezed together, wide, medium, and tight, I think the mind, my mind, medium, and tight was above. Because then you could that was the one you aimed with right.

Right. Right. Zach wanted operated, but it's like keep that on his head or if it's going to go on the spear, use the top smaller tighter frame and the other ones, you know, they'll work. So that's how that happened. So and you've seen it on YouTube, right? Someone got three iPhones and duplicated the effect and yeah. It's pretty smart as I can do that.

I don't know if that's been done before and stick it all later. I think the technology came together right around that time where that made sense, right? And speed ramping. Yeah, besides like the Matrix, you know, like, I don't know, you guys basically did. I mean, it's not like true bullet time in 3D space, but the sort of playing with speed in such a way was, at least as far as I know, not incredibly common. Yeah, but I mean stitching the making a fake. Oh, yeah. I mean, fake zoom.

Well, but also those fake zooms are flawless. Like I went through slowmo on the on the Bluray and I got the 4K Bluray too. And there's no like there's, you know how like you'll zoom in on your iPhone and you can tell when it switches to the other lens? Like none of that. It's just it's very, it's really well done. Pretty cool. I guess it gets a leeway, right? Because it's all blurred.

Yeah. Not to take away. But. How do you kind of going back to the idea of the look, there's no such thing as a shooting let on film. See, are you just like, I guess you kind of touched on it earlier. You're just going off of trust. You know, you're filming it to look nice.

And then you're like, this is probably going to be good. Well, there's a standard day look, right? And then like you said, maybe there's a magic hour look, warmer, key, bluer, ambience. In this case, and we'd have to do it in timing or grading to make it bluer. So we'd have to make the sun even more warmer than we think because it's going to be undone once we make everything.

Right, right. And that's where the, that's where the DSLR comes in real handy. Because you can do this and go with your laptop. Yeah, that looks pretty good. That'll work. The, Oh, in the night stuff. The, um, you know, it's funny that talking about the DSLR, I realized that back in the day, now that when you shoot digitally, you kind of know you can, what you see is when you get.

It was, I'm trying to remember back in the film days when you, when it was, you could not sleep because you weren't sure if he did the right thing. And I think starting 300, I'm sure for sure on watchman. I remember using the DSLR almost as, remember he used to ease me use Polaroids. Right. Right. because he wanted some kind of, you know, assurance or confidence that you weren't screwing up. But I would use a DSLR for that a lot of times.

And I remember a specific shot in Watchman, maybe you should say the story for them. But you can be fooled. Even if you do what the meter says, like, let's say the scene is a dark, the person in dark clothes with a dark hat and a dark stairway at night. Like, for example, Roar Shacks. breaking into an apartment. I go, okay, that's going to be cool. And they'll just take a still. And everyone's getting ready.

I'm like, can't see anything. Wait, Chuck, can I expose that right? But obviously, it's black things, you know. Wow. What if I open up two stops? Oh, that's better. I think we'll shoot like, you know, save my hat. So, you know, they clearly, I'm sure.

Gordon Willis never used the DSLR or anything. Yeah, no problem. But, you know, some people, they're better than me. I'll admit it. Like, you know, it should seem obvious. You need to open up the compensation for all black scene or something. Or some people would say, no, you don't. So I don't know.

I, so that's one of the things I really do love about digital cinematography is that I can see that. And then, yep, and go to bed at night. Yeah. Well, Hoytah still uses, I mean, he uses a, like it because he's fancy but he you know he's telling me he does the same thing still okay there go well i'm not he's still shooting film and i'm not so yeah well but i think they they seem to own the film pipeline i'm sure in in probably like five years maybe there will be enough of their work that everyone else can go back to shooting film if they so choose right now it seems like they

get all the stock. They're paying for Kodak to exist. Well, this is jumping forward, but on Batman versus Superman, we had to talk to Kodak and we had to promise that we would shoot a certain amount. Sure. I've heard them do that for a lot of people. For the IMAX. And that was when IMAX were thought, uh-oh, because even then we're going, hey,

IMAX, can you please update your cameras? Maybe because it'd keep jamming. Can you do this, this, and this? And they're going, no, I don't think so. And then we're wrapping the movie and then we go over in Panavision. And I go, I see Hoytta in other room with these brand new climaxes, you know, a year later. What? Those are all the things we asked for.

They said he would never do it. And then his cameras have the thing. They were like, we said we couldn't do it now. Must be nice to be Nolan. Yeah. And Hoyta. The, you know, to that point, um, it, this is kind of a, a hacky question, but it doesn't elucative.

Given all the experience you've had since then and the advancements in technology, would there be something you'd go back and do differently? Not necessarily like, oh, I fucked up that shot, but just like in terms of process and in terms of, you know, maybe artistic choices if something sticks out. But has time given you tools that would have made something more to your liking or easier something? But obviously having a shooting lot would be one. But or do you think like, no, I'd grab another film camera and do it in exactly the same way? Are you talking about film versus digital or just in general?

In general. I mean, the film, yeah. But, you know, like would LEDs still be relevant? You know, would you still go tungsten? You know, that kind of thing. That's funny. because you have to roll with the punches and sometimes I feel like

well every film has certain cringe shots I don't think I've done a film yet where there isn't a few where I just can't and you look at the screen what was I thinking or you know there's at least two

of my films I think that were slightly out of focus on the very last frame of the thing and you know I didn't do it but still um didn't bother anyone enough not to use it in the cut um but yeah i see i see things where but they're never equipment-based um regrets they're all i made the wrong decision

you know i should have keep on the other side or there's too much fill or you know um yeah i should have it's more of lighting things that because you know how it works when you're in the moment you know you're very nervous and it's very high tension and then you have to shoot and you're not sure when to say, okay, this is a good let's roll. You wish you could work on it longer, but every DP which is he had another minute or two. But you have to say at some point,

Kay, they're all glaring at you. And you know, okay, let's just shoot it. And sometimes you go, it will be fine. Other times you're, you know, you're mad and I mean, I haven't done this, but you want to throw things because you're so angry that, you know, someone's just yelling at you that we have to, we have to go, we have to go, right?

But I find it's, time goes on, there's less of that for some reason. Really? I think there's a confidence to know that, this is, it starts to be diminishing returns, right? When you're working on a shot, most of the times. And you have to just let it go. For the, for the cooking analogy that you keep bringing up all the time,

it's kind of like cooking the thing. You're like, I don't like it. More salt. I don't like it. Oh, more garlic. Pepper and like going forever. It's five hours of you adding stuff to it and then pretty but you should have just stuck with the three ingredients, right? But it's hard to know that. I think it comes with experience

where I'll see, you know, I can do this one light. I can tell you. We can have time to, yep, I already know it's in my head. It's going to be one light. It's going to take three minutes, I promise. You know? I think it just comes with experience. To that end, what

did the film teach you? And this will be a good segue into Watchman. Like what lessons did you take from that into Watchman? I don't know if a lot of it applied technically because Watchman was its own beast. And then that stress levels, I remember, much, much higher than 300 was mainly because it was like 100 shooting days. Much larger film. Yeah. Over $100 million.

Crazy. So I would say, actually, here's something that I didn't think I would say. but you put the do not disturb on. I think one of the most important things I learned was from Zach being on set how he treated people. This is getting weird thing to talk about. But Zach as a human being is so impressive and positive and uplifting and non-judgmental that the vibe on a set is one that everyone's important and no one is to be disrespected. from PA to catering to whoever. And because my first films with him,

I think that might have informed me. I'm not saying I'm flawless and the nice person in the world and that's definitely not why someone would hire you. Let's not hire the good DP. Let's hire the nice DP that's funny. I wouldn't. But this whole

environment that a lot of us know that's changing a lot, but for the better of any workplace of how you treat people, right? Whether it's class or whether it's gender or anything or race to foster environment of positivity and not just as a moral thing or as a philosophical thing, but also do people want to show up to work in the morning? Right. And I remember on a sucker punch's grip that worked on it, I said one day, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years or whatever. He goes, this is one of the few times like, I get up in the morning and want to come to work.

And that's purely because of Zach. So is that the reason like is that our goal as filmmakers? Not necessarily as a life lesson. Yes. You know, a lot of people that criticize Zach don't know how he is as a person or on the set. So again, it doesn't really make it. matter to box office or to critics, but it means something to me as someone who, um, as a citizen of the human race, you know, right. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I mean, not only that, but I think you can make the maybe not the best movie because then people will just bend over backwards for you, but you can make a very good movie. But if you're a dickhead,

like, you know, the money havers will keep giving you budgets until that hits a tipping point. And then it's suddenly like, hey, we're going to take that in a different direction, actually. We're going to go with the guy that people actually want to work with. And even at my level, like one thing that I, 10 years ago when I started and I needed to hire people, I could be wrong. But I don't think I've ever had a friend work for me that didn't get at as close to a real day rate as, I could possibly get. Otherwise, I would just do it myself.

Because I know someday I'm going to need a favor. And I'd rather be, I'd rather the favor be on the back of actually making sure they got paid and, and we're taking care of and not starting that working relationship with, you know, we'll get you on the next one. It never happens. Oh, this one's small,

but we'll get you on the next one. It's like, okay. Yeah, I'm really a big fan of yours. Yeah. I tried that approach once. I went to a Ferrari dealership and I said, you know what? I don't care what anyone says. I love your car.

Can I have one? Yeah. Didn't work. When I buy my second car, it's going to, it'll be, I'll come back to you for that Ferrari. Going into Watchman, I think revisiting it just reminded me of how, like I said earlier, like how much and effect it had on me, because there is something about the look of the film that is so like sharp, like it feels like everyone's etched out of, this is going to sound almost derogatory, but I'm just trying to get it out, like plastic.

Like everything is so clean, but it's such a gritty film. But there's something about like the sharpness, the focus of it, the contrast that is just so clean. and yet that gritty aesthetic comes through. And I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to say, but I was wondering if you could even for a moment, because Batman for Superman kind of has the same thing. Maybe it's just the VFX,

but even the opening scene, you know, you've got comedian in his unit 300 apartment. And just even that look is like, you know, Rorschach walking outside. There's just, there's no, um muddiness to anything. Hmm. And I was wondering how like,

are we just shooting at a deep stop and we're keeping it sharp and we're, you know, making sure that, uh, there's exposure deep into the shadows or what, what's giving us that, that textural, um,

polish. I know that was only my second movie. I didn't know what I was doing. Yes. Yeah. I said, fuck you, dude.

Oh, no. You know, it was my second movie. But, The no, I'd been shooting, you know, for, what? 10 years at least at that time. Um, but seriously the, I know it has a cool look. I'm not sure how to articulate it and I'm not sure to explain what you're saying. Cause, uh, when I see it, there's also cool things I see that I don't know how it happened.

There's like some magic in a bottle. Um, I'm not saying it by accident or that I was a hack and they fixed it later, but I am saying that trying to figure it out as I hear you talk. I know that we shot, you know, then everything, I'd not shot anything anamorphic yet. So that was spherical Panavision, 35 mil, primos, no diffusion. And I'll have to say that a lot of it, I think that world that was designed, you know, first of all, the color palette that was chosen by Alan Moore. well, Dave Gibbons, I suppose. But the actual graphic novel was the, obviously, the Bible.

And we all studied the color palette of that. You know, I did and the production designer definitely and even the wardrobe so that it subconsciously, it feels like that. You know, the strong use of the secondary colors, more than the primaries, for sure. And then from wardrobe on down, they put this amazing, these amazing, these amazing things in front of me first of all right and um because i didn't use crazy crazy colors if you look at that i didn't do there weren't any you know this is the red room and everything's red or this is all the green kind of color vomit as my d it it's not a lot of that it's kind of shot pretty straight as far as light and color um so i credited it to production sign or war job etc makeup

did i say word job i keep getting yelled at by me oh yeah it's to be caught Yeah. I was there for that the other day. That's right. A quick earful from the costume lady. And I had to make a nomadic so I wouldn't forget. I'm not going to tell you what the nomadic is. But the...

Can't say that word anymore. Not to take my work away from it, but I think we need to give credit to those people that would that be as, you know, people say the cinematographer is responsible for for the look of the film, really? Because the behind the scenes guy, certainly has the same vibe. So again, not putting down the fact of the job that we have. There are geniuses in the industry and that do a lot, but let's be realistic. They're, you know, from the concept from the directors has to the meetings and the

production designer and costumes is what's in front of the lens, right? As well as the actors and the writing and everything. It's collaborative. So I don't know how to answer your question, really. And they had a very excellent colorist, you know, in Stefan Sonnenfeld who did the DIY for the greats. Yeah. He does all Zaks films, I think. Yeah.

You know, and it's, I think, too, I'm jumping a little ahead in my notes about this, but there's such a beautiful way that you've been able to film scenes, not like, whoa, coverage, but like, you know, kind of traditional. traditionally. And then there's always like just one, I'm not going to blow too much smoke up your ass, but there's always like one like kind of breathtaking, maybe insert or something. There's always like a punctuation shot that I really love the way that you're able to get those and they feel very highlighted almost in a way that you kind of go like, and it's shit, you know, it'll just be whatever. It's the button or, or, you know, the camera coming over to some rain soaked windscreen, you know, whatever, just some kind of close. But the, Those little inserts are always just so artistically done and feel very, you know, almost CG, even though they're not.

There's such a precision to them that feels very enjoyable to look at. Yeah. Well, Zach and I love inserts because, you know, from the commercial background, you also see this in Finchers working stuff. When you have a close about something, we can do it so quickly and can do it. Their eyes closed practically, right? So those go really fast, but we know exactly what to make it look sexy. Right. And I think that's, you can tell that there's effort where sometimes the inserts are thrown off to just done quickly. Like so quick, no one cares, right? And we're not allowed to take a lot of time, but we don't take a lot of time on them. So I think that's maybe subliminally where you can tell that there was care, maybe.

Yeah. What goes into a sexy insert? The composition. And then like, you know, the highlights mainly if something shiny, knowing how to put a highlight of something shiny. like this. Yeah. This is a couple things here. Pretty cool. And you're going to talk about this is an oversized lighter they're going to use for a shot of the close above the comedian lighting is cigar.

Maybe in Vietnam. Oh, sure. And they didn't use it. But oh, yeah. Look at. Look at that. Oh, yeah. So look, the highlight like I was talking about.

So. But then the, the production designer. or the prop guy made these than cave that has a gift to see the uh that's really cool so oh funny nice oh my god it's an actual zip oh

yeah that that's the that's a zippo mechanism that little snappy thing I think I've never opened that there's no way it has a flit in it oh my god bro we got to fill that full of kerosena or something

okay this weekend Let me show you real quick Yeah, yeah I was on eBay because I knew Watchtrain was going to be huge So I found this weird thing on eBay Is that crazy? Wow

And that's from the From when the book came out Whoops Man down Wow Wait, it's up the food influence Do you think like this Yeah, yeah

He always got a The makeup thing there That's cool Last thing oh Remember when the lady Gets her fingers shot off Yeah Yeah

Secretary There's a little one of her fingers. I didn't realize that was practical. Oh, no, when it hits the floor. Right. That's funny. And then finally, I'm going to see if you can guess what this is.

A little box. Looks like a dice almost. I don't know. Is that a... Can you hear it? Oh, it's got a rattle. What is it? It's a sugar cube.

For what? Tension of detail for the restaurant scene. Oh, my God. when Dan is wrapped yeah exactly a sugar Cuban and a rapper see that I will say the production design in the film is uh you know it's stunning I mean you especially you what you built like three blocks yeah from scrat new york city yeah people don't do that anymore it doesn't feel like but but it was very you know I think uh after one rain it all just kind of melted it wasn't like fully conceived.

They did put the eye beams in the ground and pipes underground. So we put a wiring for the dimmers and the wiring. And the way it was arranged was such that if went around a corner is a different block, you could reuse it. Rabbit, big. Yeah. Yeah. That was the rabbit.

That was the Gunga diner. That was the brown stones where Dan lived. That way was something else. Super smart. Alex McDowell, man. Genius. The, there's some of this stuff that I think

when this film came out came out on the precipice of what I would consider to be like modern, like today film. There was a mild transition to the digital then. You know, we were getting a lot more of, you know, Iron Man came out. But watching the Blu-ray is hilarious because A,

you get this. unskippable Blu-ray opening where they're advertising Blu-ray like you're not watching it. And they had said there's, they go you know, we can if you watch this on Facebook,

you can watch live with the filmmakers. And I was like, you guys were advertising that Zach was going to be on Facebook talking to you and Chris Nolan, because it was 300 watchmen and Dark Night that it was saying you could go, Chris Nolan's going to be on Facebook.

chatting with you guys whenever you watch it and watch it with your friends. You put it in, bring it up on Facebook and your friends can watch it. Where was this? None of this happened. Really? But it's in the unskippable ad at the front of the watchman. That's hilarious. I did wonder, was there a, this is kind of outside of cinematography, but was there

kind of any discussion around the Dark Knight's influence on, because you guys were making them sort of simultaneously say I don't really know like what was being made and when they came out specifically I probably should have looked that up but obviously dark night kind of changed the way that we look at comic book movies but so did watchman I feel like so many times people point to watchman is like that or dark night but that was the best we did for comic movie movies because then marvel just made Marvel movies right Marvel has one thing whereas at the time dark night and watchman felt very true to the form but also unique Um, did you did was there any kind of, uh, discussion or knowledge of, of the dark night coming out and it like wasn't enough. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it's ironic though. I mean, because if when you talk, if you're a true comic fiction, I know that, you know, Alan Moore is and you know how deep he gets with his all his writings, not just comic books. Um, all that deep stuff is is in there. And anyone who hasn't read the graphic novel, which is insane. Um, um,

the depths that goes to and the levels of sophistication and meaning and it's not just a regular comic book right so it was a deconstructive thing and showing the fallibility the fallibility is of that a word yeah the weaknesses of these superheroes that was like almost like a soap opera in a way that no one had done before like it's kind of bringing part of the genre with that Alamoor was a part of. So it's very ironic, I think, too, that you know, that Zach ends up doing the DC universe and

Man of Steel, Superman and all that, when this was even before that whole thing really became a thing, right? Yeah. And I don't really count Nolan because that was its own thing better. Yeah. But you know what I mean?

I think a lot of us didn't even realize what we were doing at the time. And Zach, who's always been at the comic books, Anyway, even when we're in film school, I remember him showing me Frank Miller and Dark Knight and things like that. Where so he's that's why he was the one finally directed because it was in his blood, not you know, someone handing in the script and hey, here's your under armor ad. Do this.

Yeah. Here here. Here's a quick catch up. Here's a summary of what's been happening in the comic book world. He was a comic book nerd from the beginning, right? So it's in his blood. when yeah shows when you uh you know just thinking of the comparison between 300 and this one 300 largely outside right everything's motivated by the sun this movie either nighttime or inside um and one thing that i noticed that was that i kind of going into this doc i'm about to shoot next week i'm like i'm gonna be putting some scratchlight in here i don't care there's a there seem to be we're talking about the art of the island Just, you know, the like the like hot highlight on the back. You know, it's not quite a hair light, but like, yeah, that's a scratch light. I thought it was called. That's what's called. Cool.

I like that term. You heard it. There you go. You can use that. Thank you. But in this film specifically, people are like really etched out of the background in a really wonderful way. Was that just kind of your nature or were there references that brought you to that?

I have no idea what you're talking about. You should be you show me the shot. I don't know. Just like on a lot, I always, I guess in my head, I'm always thinking of closeups, right? But I'm not a super backlight guy, unless it's motivated, but sometimes, you know, no, backlight never hurts. No. Well, that's the thing.

Like, I always feel like backlight looks fake, but just like having that, like, kick on the bottom of the chin or like the side, like that looks good. Yeah. Settle anything. Just like the highlight. Yeah. It calls attention to itself. Maybe not. But depending what you're doing, there's no rules.

But yeah. I guess because I was sitting there analyzing it, you know, I was like really keying into, but I think it also comes back to that idea of that kind of like sheen that the film tends to have, you know, obviously we said the production design, but just the way you were, and I'm thinking close-ups here, because in anything that's not a close-up, it's just like a really nice composition, but in a close-up, you can really see the lights and stuff, but just the way you were shaping everyone's faces was very like, again, intentional. And I guess that was the question was like, was that intentionality?

born of the material or was that just the way that you like your preference in the end you know Zach and I just wanted it to look super cool and I know that I had taken a lot of this is a pattern directors will tell me just make it look good you look cool this is a nightmare for me what do you mean good is a nightmare explain good well think about it the opening scene where that that fight when I realized it had to be all moonlit because it didn't have to be all moonlit

but it was a guy at night watching TV just before he's going to sleep extensively so I think there's a few practicals on but there's no lights on really other than the glow of the TV right which is is broken shot at the beginning so I don't think I'd try to see like that so it's kind of weird to be in an apartment and using only moonlight and I'm thinking how am I going to make this look real.

So I just remember really praying hard and not knowing if it was going to work. Because also like when you do the reverses then now why are they in silhouette? Like you know, there's so many and there's so many things about cheating and what you can get away with and, you know, even if it doesn't match. And speaking of moonlight, very blue moonlight where I know this has my crew goes on that the the moonlight is less and less blue. feel like in your old work it's full blue then half blue the quarter than pretty a soon green yeah orange so I don't know what that's all about I don't know if that's general cinema taste or just my taste or you look at loss and I go wow that moon's blue that's great but you know you can't tune it in because if you have a lighter you have

a like I think maybe HMI is up there on the grain and you put so it's half blue maybe then sometimes depending on your angle when you're shooting, it looks too blue and you can't adjust it, right? Unless you get someone up there and put the eighth blue really, you're going to stop all the production. So now that's the cool thing with LEDs is because you can fine tune in colors, right? Yeah. Oh, that's what the thing you said about equipment and the evolution of things. LEDs. The thing is we use LED lights and most of them are soft, right? So it's hard to get really hard light.

I mean, you know how you have to get a tongue center. or plan for it, but let's say you suddenly need one and you're in another city and the Gaffer doesn't have any hard lights on the truck or like even a baby, then sometimes you need one, right? You don't have one. I have a leco or what's too hard. Let's let those little baby things, black and yellow light. The Dito? No.

Yes. No, not those. The kits. They're always coming in. kit. But anyway, the little spotlights spotlight things. But anyway, sometimes nothing just beats like a 1K. Like remember the old days you just pointed out

a person or diffuse it. There's nothing really like that. I mean, now, so now ironically, you bring out an aperture light or aperture light or something and has gone full circle, right? Because they were more for the consumer or low budget thing. And then now on the set, tons of

tons of aperture lights. More and more. And now they're all hard. Yeah, because I feel like LEDs came out to replace keynos and then now they're replacing 10Ks or whatever. Yeah. The other thing I got to give a shout out to on Watchman is whoever the focus puller was. Because there's a lot of just very, like especially with the camera, you know, very kind of robotic camera moves a lot of times. And then just really just smooth as good.

It's good. That was Simon Jory and that was his last film. Because he was going to become in DIT. and we're like, what's the DIT? There's a lot of, I'm noticing now just looking at, like, while watching it, I seem to have just been so obsessed with how clean and like sharp it is, but those are not good descriptions of the actual image of it. Those are just like the vibe I'm getting where it's like the contrast is so,

It's just good. I don't know. Like, do you think that shooting film was a strong element in the look of Watchmen? Do you think you could do the same thing digitally? Or do you think it would inherently have a different look? That's interesting. Because you weren't like bleach bypassing or anything, right? It was shot.

No tricky things. Nothing tricky at all. That's weird. That's weird. It would be a weird experiment to see. because you'd have to have the exact same situations of the right same set same everything right do side by side thing and nobody wants to do that no it could be great experiment brother i could i bet i could find someone to if you agreed to sign out i bet i could find someone

to pay for it like it's you know just get like a little set and then be like all right we're going to do it to do the same thing that you have to do everything though like it was the apartment you need the apartment set you have to do all those shots right including the one from out outside. Oh, that's a good point. You couldn't just not it's not like the shot deck thing, just one image, right? Yeah. So in, you know, we were talking about like the Fong light and stuff in 300 was was were those approaches to lighting kind of replicated in Watchman or did you have to kind of read? No, there's nothing special. Watchman is very done traditionally, which has kind of made sense, right? There's nothing fancy. There's no tricky lights. Um,

other than key knows. It was pretty straight. It's classic. It was great because our gaffer, you know, he was, I think that was his last film and he was an older guy that was, you know, was originally from England. So he had this, he had an aesthetic and a work ethic and a kind of taste that probably infiltrated the look too. Yeah, he's the perfect gaffer for that. He actually is really cool because you know that scene in um it's like the war room nixon is there in watchman yeah the that i have here uh dr strangelove set is fun yeah the doctor like kubrick obviously my favorite so we were duplicating that scene or replicating it from from dr strangelove so we kind of made

the same version we didn't have a room to have that door there was a guy standing in doorway way back there so we made a smaller door and put a little person That's awesome. It's so Zach, right? But a force perspective. So, you know, the maps of the original movie and the little dots showing like track of the bombs going. Yeah. So they were talking about it.

And then they were going to do little light bulbs. Turn them on. So it's duplicating the thing of the track arc of the nuclear warheads, right? And I go, I don't think those are light bulbs. I think because when they turn off, you don't see anything. So I'm telling the Zach in the production designer. And they go, yeah, who cares? And then I go, yeah, it doesn't matter.

So then when I hired the Gaffer and I took him through the rooms of all the production art, concept art, and showing him these things. I go, oh, look at, we're going to do the thing like Kubrick. And the screens up there, I think the reproduction, they're just going to make art work with light bulbs. And the Gaffer goes, no, that was definitely your projection. And you go, how do you know? And he goes, because I was working the projector. Hell yeah Hell yeah

You're the right guy I read this job Yeah sit him down You're like I've got questions Right I could grab it Like this guy Tell him what you told me

Yeah yeah That was so great Dennis That's Brock Well and I'm kind of glad You said all that Because I think that's kind of What I was getting at

With like I didn't want to jump ahead In the sense of I think one thing That I really appreciated Rewatching it was how I don't know if formalist is right but it is like kind of classic like you could show watchman in a film school in a in a film class and be like this is modern but this is the same stuff that you'll learn in any of the books that we're going to assign you or whatever this is

all pretty like not that it not that it's boring certainly not but that it is it is classic and it still looks great and I think maybe recently people have been getting away from that classiness. Yeah. Classy, but classis, classicness, um, in a way that maybe we should return to because I think people are, the children yearn for Fong. Yeah. It's funny. Well, people are returning to vintagey stuff, right? Everyone's shooting on, but their, their shirt shot cameras on on film and everything, um, or vinyl or whatever. So you're right. It's funny because that's when we were at our youngest, ironically.

Yeah. Right. Doing more mature work probably than we're doing now. Now it's kind of going rogue. It's supposed to be the other way around, isn't it? So interesting. Yeah, what I really drove that? The, I think, well, that, that actually is a different podcast because I have a lot of thoughts on that.

You could piece it together if you listen to fucking everything. But there, I think there's, I think there's, I think, We've done the youth of disservice in ways that we can't control, but we as a collective have fucked it up. But after the Strangelove thing, I've written T2. I don't know what moment. Is there a Terminator 2 reference or like shot in there? Because I don't actually know what I meant. No, I don't think so.

But then- Shooting stop. Shooting stop? Oh, no, no. Terminator 2, yeah. But then after that I did say that did see I wanted to ask in the prison scene, the breakout scene, it is giving a little bit of an old boy slash matrix kind of feeling like the lobby scene. It's somewhere between the lobby scene and the matrix and the old boy hallway scene. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, because we were behind the through the cells dying, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. From behind, took the walls out and all the stuff. Yeah, that was. Huh. Was that before after old boy? Had. It was not 2003.

It wasn't a one take thing at all though. So no, no. But just kind of the, not nearly as hard. But yeah, there's weird because I went stuntman that takes that crazy hit from her and like falls, does a flip or falls flat on his back or something. That was a guy that could actually do that. That was the no.

Oh, just flipping. Yeah, no pads on the ground or under it. He could just do it. It's crazy Asian guy. Yeah. did you was there anything here that you know

this is kind of the same follow-up question to the 300 but that you came into and thought like oh this is going to be easy and then it struck you as being hard or maybe in reverse or any similar like lessons that

Washman taught you because while it may have been you know sort of as you're saying classic to shoot and conceptualize there had to have been challenges for such a large film. Yeah, but I think our job entails a lot of just problem solving. That's the fun part.

Yeah, like in any industry. So, oh, this is cool. You remember the title, the opening sequence? Yes, and it was so, just real quick, sorry. The floating title thing in like the early 2000, I remember me and all my film school friends were like, we have to spend weeks in After Effects figuring,

because it had a, it had a shadow, right? It had like the title was in the scene. Not for every title, but like it was you guys, panic room, moon had the like floating title thing with the actual shadow.

And I was like, this is crazy. I have no idea. Title company. I never really thought of that. I could show you an after. I could not have been easy. It's still in my head.

Because that's not CG, is it? No, okay, real fast, what you do is you just put a plane in After Effects where it ever matches up on the footage, and then you project the light. You make the text solid and you just project the light at it and it just lands. Oh, right, they do have computers in those days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was TV.

I forgot. Because I'm thinking I'm at the time of the movie, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, not the 80s. So the Zach said he wanted to do this thing And he wanted to keep having photographers

bulbs go off as this transitional thing right He was yeah and I want to shoot that super slow motion Okay And then you know the only way to really get a good flash is to actually use the flash right And you know the whole thing I'll know about now But they would slowly run out of them So I don't know if they run out yet

But there's only a finite amount because they don't make them anymore Oh those those like weird Real flash bulbs Yeah yeah yeah With all the back in the day with the It's got like a boiler pad in it. Yes, exactly. Have they run out?

Because we've, I don't see them anymore. I imagine. But every movie is like, well, we can do so many of these, you know, the prop guys, there's, we're going to run out. So the best way because, you know, they go and they go bright and then they fade, right? There's no way to duplicate that. So Zach said, I want to, uh, but I want to shoot it out a million frames per second. Right.

Like, okay. And I thought about it. I go, exactly. That's not going to work. He goes, why? Because I go, because the flash bulb can't get any brighter. and you wanted to you wanted to white out the person right so if you should add normal yeah it'll happen but then we start increasing the frame rate we can increase the light on

the person like you do any time with slow motion but we can't make the flashbulb any brighter right and he's like oh shit you're right but you go figure something out and then so me and the gaffer were thinking about and thinking about it and then i came up with the idea that you never actually see the flashbulb, right? Because you're behind the photographer. So in the reflector, it was actually a 5K open face, a 2K, or maybe 1K, bulb, just like we talked about earlier, 300, you know, the globe of real light, movie light, bright inside the thing.

So what you would do with, you know, the not dimmer, but the rheostat, remember this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put it on 100, turn it on, then quick, quickly fade it. So there's one guy that has a job. And I made him watch flashbulp to cut so he could emulate the how it fades. So that's all acted. That's a,

that's a light bulb pretending to be a flash bulb. So that way we could shoot at 100 frames or whatever it was. And, um, and white out the person that's right in front of me. Was any of that not slow mo? Oh. Thank you.

because it would we could only shoot 100 frames even with that method but Zach wanted to be 360 frames can i go i can't do it so that's why he just goes okay then let's have everyone move slower see because there's a few there's like one or two yeah there's couple we're no watching but we're dolly all of them are dollies but right some they're moving a little bit and some maybe not enough so look like their statues well there was one added to the surreal feel I think it was like I think someone like had like a guy in a headlock he's shooting a gun or something

but when the when the dolly's back something about it made me feel like he was holding like holding still but we were still at 24 and just because like I felt like I saw a little wobble but it could probably just twitched if you're shooting it at like a hundred I think we did many things so it could have been because I wish we'd practice that had been more and did more test because it would have been better

someone had kind of moved right because some of them are not at all so it looks like statues which is still cool and surreal but it was just playing with that aspect because you could slow the camera down just had the person move slower yeah that's pretty fun that's what I'm talking about

the sandbox that we play like always kind of with crazy ideas you know Zach what have we did this that's crazy that's nuts no let's try it uh did you know oh I just wrote David Hater Because I love Metal Gear Solid, so I forgot that he had written it.

And I was like, oh, hell yeah. Let's see here. Where would you stack Watchmen in your, you know, pantheon of films? Was this like the most involved film you have done? Or like in, I guess how much effort you had to give to it, which will be relative for every film, right? the more films you do probably the less quote unquote effort it feels like. Yeah, it's hard to say, but I think that's pretty high up there. But I'd say I think Batman versus Superman was the one that I felt like me and my crew gave the most blood, sweat and tears in.

Sure. So much, so many things. And with the schedule that was tight. And then, you know, production of saying want to make it cheaper and do with less lights. this and that you know it was just a challenge and we're doing so many elaborate things that that was a lot of work i remember being exhausted physically after that thing because that that was almost a year all told put in between prep and then delays and then hiatus extended hiatus and then you know different cities you know watchman is at least in one place because we shot in

Detroit and in Chicago and in Arizona and in, uh, what's that place? The, we shot the top of the mountain where it was all snow and icy and actually did freeze. There was no oxygen. Oh, I forgot what mountain that was. No, it was in the US. Oh, it was. Because people go, people go ski there, but we were going to go to Morocco until they had floods and diseases and then we had to go to copper mine, I think, in Arizona or something. Sure. That was that to play for Africa.

Well, but also Batman versus Superman, there's a lot at that point, there's a lot more writing. I feel like you make Watchmen, correct me from wrong, but you make watchman and that feels like, all right, go make your movie. That's you know, Rand, cool, whatever. But now with just how

superhero films have dominated over the past decade or more, you know, there's, I'm sure, a lot more eyes on, especially property like Batman, but But a lot more cooks in the kitchen on that than potentially watchman, right? Yeah. True.

True. I can see how that would be more stressful. The sandbox probably got a lot smaller. But it's still a lot of playing. I mean, even the nightmare, that's something Zach thought of, you know, just. That is a six. Left than a week before. Like, let's just come out of the thing and do a 360 on IMAX.

What, yeah. I forgot you've shot IMAX. Yeah. But like, you've done it a few times. Yeah. What is, are there any like, I suppose I've talked to like other people about this, but for you like, is it, is it kind of more of this? Do you look, do you like IMAX as a format or is it kind of, do you feel like I could, you know, whatever? It was fun.

I like what we did. I like that and that member of Superman at the end. It wasn't because of a chase scene or fight scene. It was all about the stillness and being very photographic during the sad, you know, funeral scene at the end that a lot of people forget that's an IMAX. And it seemed like it was shot like a with a hosselblot or something, you know. actually probably was also a lot of lens right right but it had that feel but I think it's lost if you don't see it in the cinema like when I saw it and I thought god this is gorgeous it just doesn't translate even if you have a 60 inch 65 inch at home it's yeah even I was very moving to that

sequence seen in IMAX but I don't know I've never been crazy about large formats or four you know I could six eight K 12K whatever K um like I I prefer to shoot digital projects with Alexa 35 because it takes me back to like when we shot Watchman, for example, that form factor, right? I don't, I know people want to shoot hired for sometimes visual effects or sometimes, as we know, with with sinners and one bell after another people are getting bigger formats. But I'm not sure. I mean, the director wanted to do it.

Of course, I'm on board. But I, if I was directing, I don't necessarily see what the advantage of a large sensor or a large, large piece of film. I don't know. Maybe because I'm old fashioned. I think, maybe it's stupid to think this is the format and stop there

because I'm definitely not a dinosaur, afraid of the future. But the thing is, right? There are people that shooting digital wanted to look, you know, from putting fake green on. Anamorphic and then distortion and things to make look like film. But then I want to look old. That actually, I want to look new.

I don't know. I'll do whatever. We'll just take a quick five-minute detour to Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. Okay. What I was, it was, it was a privilege to be able to watch it in theaters with you because it's on Hulu now. And a lot of laughs, a lot of fun. But similarly to what you're saying about the classic kind of look of approach to watchmen. Not if for how much, not globe-trotting, but you know, it's, we've got time travel.

We've got, there's a lot of different sets. It's a comedy, but a lot of action. Still shot quite classically, but it gives off the feeling of something very high budget for what's hitting a streamer. A, how did you get involved with, what's his name, Ben? Ben, David, Grubinsky. Ben David, yeah. And then also, what were you guys discussing when trying to, what was the, where did the look of that film come from? Oh, that's an easy one.

because when I, well, first I got the script and I read it and it's pretty hard for me to get through a script and I take my time. But this one, I just did one reading because it was such a quick read and so funny. And I was laughing out loud literally, which doesn't happen a lot. So when I realized he wrote it and was directing it, you know, I called him, ironically, and said, you know, we should get a coffee. And then later that week, he was, you know, he practically lives at Vidyats, right? So he was introducing the last Boy Scout. And what year was that movie? I don't know.

You can look it up. Anyway, that era, like the John McTierian, that's his favorite director. You know, and he loves diehard and he loves that style. Yeah, so he's love that style in the 90s. So he goes, that's when I'm thinking of up for the movie. Like, oh, cool. And I don't think I'm hired yet. We're just talking about it.

So what does that mean? So you know, he also did the predator. I mean predator. I shot the predator. Yeah. Yeah. The. And I can tell I've been David for being a writer, uh, but before being a writer, I didn't

mean to say like that, but he was really into the like he loved that D.P. Yon de Bond and, and, um, he was interested in those lenses and the look. He goes, what kind of lens are those? I go, I don't know. So I get on the phone with Dan Sotsaki and I go, what can you tell me about McTiernan and about die hard in those movies? And he's telling me all the stuff about the lenses. I go, how do you know so much about those lenses? He goes, because we made them.

Of course he did. And I go, cool. And he goes, I think we'd still have some of them. I said, you what? Because yeah, we totally have those. Does I never rent them? Can I rent them? He goes, yeah.

Do they have the whole set? He goes, well, we can make. lenses if we're missing any we can make some that emulate them go are you kidding me so I call I call Ben David and I don't know if that's how I got the job or if I had the job by now but I said hey helped or yeah had to help I got the diehard lenses and it's funny that you know you think someone like fincher or something would care so much about the lenses but Ben David I did not expect him to scream and hit the roof and be so excited more than opposite any director I've worked with about the lenses yeah and but that's the kind of

the guy he is which made it so fun he's such a fanboy and knows so much about film history and references that the whole all of my knick and alice was um he had so many references also the point where like please can i throw on some ideas right right every scene is something right one car why this or that you know um so um so you can see that at sometimes sometimes in the movie there's like it seems like there's just all these gimmicks to be thrown out from the step framing to snap zooms to more color than I've ever done right the color vomit talked about had to eat my words colored lighting you mean color lighting no I'm not asking like you mean like more colored lights or yeah like you know the hotel things and clubs and

all I mean obviously clubs can be colorful oh right rooms and but other things where I still you know I have to have some kind of motivation and I'm like going to have red light coming from a toilet for example right Hey, that's a good idea. A monster movie. But it's just a fun time. I think you can feel in the film that it's not just because we had no ideas and we're trying to rip things off, but it's in the DNA of the movie that's kind of lighthearted and fun. And, you know, I don't do a whole bunch of comedies. Well, done some.

But this movie is kind of unique. You wouldn't think the same guy did Watchmen or, or Batman as Superman did Nick and Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice but like you said there is a I think because I'm the older guy of the two of me and Ben David that I was able to even though I can still hang with the young kids and do the cool stuff

I also do have that sensibility that I was trying to rain him in a little bit so that it still had wasn't to hold it together right well it seemed like just a parody of a million things yeah well and you're such a great filter for that, right? Because like, and I think some of the, those are some of the best working

relationships is when there's restraint somewhere. I think you and I were talking a while ago, or lunch the other day, like, you know, some people would consider that Lucas's best work is when people were like, hey, rain it in. You know, so if you have someone with just explosive ideas and someone who can be a, sort of a tastemaker, you know, the radio DJ sort of version of the funnel, that that usually does result. in a great project. And I think with this film, like I said, it's just so enjoyable. Granted word video, it's granted, you know, there's people that worked on the film.

There is like a heightened levity to when you're in that environment, which is something I love about going to screenings and living in the city and all that. But I think you were a great filter for. Yeah, but just to be clear, it's not like, you didn't say like, that's a dumb idea. I'm not doing it. No, of course. You're still doing it. but I'm going to add the flavor and things and other things,

whether it's the composition or the framing and stuff that, that, um, it's all very subliminal, right? Yeah. It's polished. You know what it is?

It's hard. We haven't talked about this, but it's like seasoning for food. Yeah, like when he was putting the chili peppers all over the pizza, he didn't know when I was holding the napkin here, like diverting it on the side. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. But there's still chili peppers on the pizza or chili flakes. it's still his movie and the thing is that despite all of it he has a vision and he knows what he wants and you know that's even though it's only his first big movie um i respected him so much for that that he had a vision that i could follow right and it wasn't just a big like you said a conglomeration of notes from studios and or a thousand rewrites you know it's his script and it's also It's great that he picked like it's not a simple script because there's a lot going on,

but it is like it's perulsive. It's doable. Yeah, it's like it's just the perfect amount of excess within reason. Yeah. Yeah. You get it. And even on the page when I read the script, I go, okay, I get it. Sometimes you read the script and like, where are they going out?

Like that's not going to be possible, whether it's the budget or just physics. You thought of this. What the hell? there was never a point in the script where I thought that this no yeah yeah

that's not fun there's a lot of fun well it's fun to watch I did see a clip of Ben David talking about how he didn't realize that you'd have to use motion control for some of the doubling or no maybe it was Jimmy

but what someone was saying like I didn't know we had to get this big machine do that especially Vince Vaughn didn't know Yeah, you're going to need to do that again. Huh? What? Go again.

Keep rolling. Keep rolling. No. All right. Well, like I said, man, the 300 in Watchman specifically had such an effect on me. And it's a privilege to call you a friend and continue. Likewise. Time with you.

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 fpod.com and click you on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated. And as always, thanks for listening.