Frame & Reference Podcast - 244: "Lord of the Flies" Cinematographer Mark Wolf, BSC

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

This week on Frame & Reference I've got Mark Wolf on to talk about his work shooting the new Lord of the Flies mini series!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello and welcome to this episode 24 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest Mark Wolf, B.S.C. D.P. of Lord of the Flies. Enjoy. I was reading up on you. Did you start as a documentary, like a nature cameraman? I did. A long, long time ago, I used to work for the BBC as a wildlife cameraman. So I did a series like The Blue Planet. planet and planet Earth, lots of other things.

I got those on Blu-ray. I mean, blue planet is a classic, isn't it? I stopped that in about 2003, probably. And what made you able to pivot from, and I'm asking purely out of selfishness, because I'm a documentary filmmaker or DP who wants to squirt my way to narrative. I mean, you say able, it was very difficult because obviously as you know

you get kind of pigeonholed into whatever you do so people would think oh I can film animals but I couldn't possibly make a problem about people you know

how can you do that but you know I've had a stills camera in my hand since I was literally about six years old so to me it doesn't matter what's in front of me

you still frame it you know with your own sensibilities and you know the way you look at things it doesn't matter

what you're filming but anyway so it's a long road to become to sort of change from because also I would sort of specialize in underwater filming Oh wow

I went from filming underwater you know wildlife to drama did a lot of underwater drama and then that became very repetitive as like endless tank you know it would all be in a tank generally car ditching two people drowning

a plane ditching someone falling into the water it was like, and all these movies would come through and I think, God, I want to be, on the whole movie, I don't just want to be doing these two or three days, you know? Right. And also, I can't think the reason why I changed from into drama side because I've always thought the real craft of

being a cinema photographer is enlighting. And that's really where, yeah. I mean, I started off as a photographer and I was photographing people and then I sort of slid into wildlife film in. So it's, yeah, then I started shooting music videos and I was, this one music video of a band called Kean and we were shooting in, like a rainy, horrible night in London in Old Street, which is not a very nice area.

It was like down an alleyway, and I was lighting it. And I thought, one point I thought, oh, I'm getting as much satisfaction out of this as I am going, you know, going to the Arctic or Amazon or the Congo. I mean, those are amazing trips, but the kind of satisfaction and fulfillment I got was from that really sort of kept me going. But it took me a long, long time to kind of break out of, or to get into drama, I guess. Were there certain, like, key people who helped you get there? Like, I know it might. But key people who didn't really care whether I was a wildlife cameraman or, you know, to them it didn't.

And you sort of get breaks into the next level, and then you kind of, you. eventually get a breakup into the next level and then, you know, as you know, it kind of goes on from there. You just have to... Well, for me, I just had to stick it out and keep going. Yeah. It is interesting how, you know,

like part of my sort of not job, but I guess hobby is film education and you'll get so many students coming out of film school you know, two years later going like, I think I need to quit. I haven't gotten a job yet.

No one wants to hire me. I've got my degree. What the hell? And you're like, brother, you need to buckle in, man. Yeah, exactly. It's a long ball. Yeah. No, in one way because you can, like when I started, everything was shot on film.

And it was very difficult to, you know, the expense of shooting stuff, something on film. Compared to today, you can, you know, pick up any DSLR and make stuff look amazing. so it's a lot more accessible. I don't know. I wonder if that's changed people's perception of how they think they can progress into the industry. Yeah, I mean, one thing that I've noticed

is that the idea of, because I went to college right, you know, right before the Red One came out, right? So we were still vaguely shooting film, a lot of mini-db, but you weren't going to, you know, even they had to shoot clerks,

on film. They were not going to shoot clerks on a DB or whatever. But the reason I became a DP was because I was like, oh, there's like an expertise here that you can be hired on. And now, you know, there's a whole cottage industry of YouTubers teaching people how to use a camera. So that expertise is kind of. So I would assume that's kind of the issue now is you're not, people hit you with, you know, you shoot a commercial. And they're like, oh, my nephew could do that. You're like, bad.

They couldn't. But thanks. And also I guess you get a million people on YouTube telling you how you can do things. I don't know, everything is so much more accessible, I guess. Yeah, I mean, when I started as a runner and then I started as a clap or loader and then a focus puller, I didn't. I tried to get into film school, but I didn't get accepted. So then I carried on going, you know, on the kind of the long path.

through the industry, I guess. Yeah. Well, and I've spoken to other British cinematographers, obviously, but there does seem to be kind of an interesting way in which the BBC has fostered filmmaking. We don't really have that in America. Right. When you're like, oh, I used to shoot for BBC, like, we don't have that. Yeah, yeah.

And even now, you know, Lord of the Flies, you're going to that. I mean, it was made by the BBC, but then sold to Netflix. you know. Yeah. Things are very different now, though. I think because when I was, I started edging into documentary filmmaking, and I think I was one of the last group of cameramen that would shoot on film and then on sort of more observational documentaries, whether you spend, you know, a long time just

observing. And then the, what was it, the PD-150. Do you remember that camera? The Sony. And then all of a sudden the game changed. They said they were giving PD-150s to like assistant directors. And they would go and shoot all the stuff that the cameraman, the cameraman sound team, you know, would go off and shoot for weeks on end.

And I kind of saw that. I really saw that happening. And I thought, I've got to get out of this now because otherwise. I'm never going to, you know, I'll be stuck. I'll be like a cross or, you know. Yeah, kind of stuck in the old way. and yeah and then they would get a cameraman and a sound team in like a proper cameraman sound team in for like four or five days

to make things look nice and then somebody else would shoot everything else so yeah for me that was a big kind of game changer when that camera came out I guess it was the point where every camera or cameras became accessible you could shoot you know you could get good images didn't need to worry about necessarily about expose exposing, you weren't given that big responsibility of having 400 foot film which costs 250 pounds to buy

and another £200 to process. Yeah. It is... On the wildlife documentaries I did, I used to be given 150 rolls of film I just sent away for four months and come back, hopefully, with 150 rolls so correctly exposed on.

Right. And then you're like, here's 70? Yeah, yeah. I hope it's all still there. Yeah. I hope it's on the focus. I hope it's in focus. Yeah. Well, now you've got, like, what did you shoot flies on, Venice 2? That was on the Venice 2, yeah. Venice 2 and the infrared stuff were shot on the red epic. Oh, word.

to convert to infrared. Yeah. But most of you've done this too. The, well, I was, I was just going to say, now we've got that and you've got to do the opposite of like the PD camera, you know, where you're like, oh, how can we make this more cinematic now with these new cameras? You're like, how can I like less? I need less. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the, yeah, that's always the thing, isn't it, to make it less digital, I guess. Yeah. It is. What we're using, there's a lot of like Pets Fall looking stuff. It seemed. Yeah, I was using, so I used to shoot a lot of large format still, 10-8 plate photography. And I love that kind of out of focus, swirly thing. And I've always tried to spine that. And I actually, I did have a Petsville lens that I adapted. But it was just such a big, clunky thing, really hard to use. So I've been looking for like smaller

Cine lenses I guess that would create that effect and then I just came across these these at Opavo animal fix. Yeah. And they actually give that some of the 24 mill and the 50 million in particular give that look and I thought wow that's... I mean and also that look is very prevalent when you're shooting foliage so I thought this is like an ideal

lens to use in that situation. that's such an excellent point I didn't necessarily think about that but whenever you see lens tests they're always like up at a tree because that's the one thing that will really show you the boca of everything yeah I mean if you're in a

if you're in like a house with walls it doesn't really show they're not very well yeah yeah that's that was yeah I was really happy to find those lenses and also because

a lot of it was handheld I needed a light lens and anamorphics obviously a heavy and also needed a fast lens and they happened to be fast as well so it was like a perfect combination for that project. It is kind of insane how excellent these random lens companies have become. Like out of nowhere we're just getting tons of animorphic options, tons of really good cinni primes that are very inexpensive. I mean I thought they're now looking over.

I start a new project, I feel like there's an overload of lenses now. What do I do? What do I choose? There's so many millions of different types now. They're all tuned to digital, less digital, which is quite amazing with most of them are. It's funny to me how, like, I feel as if so many people are kind of, you know, we'll see Panavision as like the ultimate lens. you know, like the C series or whatever. And yet all these new animorphic companies,

like I've got a set of the nanomorph LFs, you know, which are pretty small, coverful frame. But they're quite perfect. You know, it's like animorphic. It's like it is anamorphic, but it is very clean. And it's like no one's tried to do the, no one's tried to steal Panavisions shine yet. Yeah, exactly.

I think it's a lot of snobbery about lenses as well. Like if, you know, I tell people I'm cheating on the, DZO lenses and their kind of thing. They don't really kind of take them seriously. Because they're not expensive. You can buy a set for them for like 20,000 pounds, which is a lot, but you know, nothing can...

Not for a full set. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Did you go through a lot of tests before you landed on that set? Because that is interesting that you went with like a pro-sumer lens set on a...

Yeah, I didn't... I did consider a lot of different things, but once I saw that sort of look I was kind of sold on them and the practical reasons that they were light and they were vast and also another one they're like close focus is like one point something feet

so like everything everything was and we were doing long takes so we you know we weren't able to kind of um you know shoot everything with one lens and then choose another or put

or put diopters on or whatever that wasn't going to be an option. We were going from like far, you know, I don't know, say 20 feet away from the subject up to a close up. So we needed that sort of flexibility in, you know, close focus or that we needed a small focus distance. So yeah. Well, and what, because you had, you know, they say like, oh, don't work with animals and kids. And then you were like, how about 7,500 kids? Yeah, animals as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but because of that they can only work

what was at three hours and then for certain age group and then six for another age group I think you had five hours I don't know the exact yeah I think it was roughly five hours but they were having to they were being schooled at the same time

so they had to a very strict rotor on who could be on set at what time because they had their chaperones taking them off to be schooled right what was the all days of

of shooting in in terms of we never actually got a full 10 hour day of shooting with the kids well and they

can't work at night right yeah then they can't work at night so yeah I mean that was another reason for shooting infrared

as well is that well first of all we shot on all these very small islands which were about an hour away from

land so number one we weren't allowed to travel at night on the sea with the kids number two the kids

could only shoot work up until 11 o'clock at night, and it got dark at around 6, so that would give us, what, five hours of shooting with them, which is not enough at night. So there are all those practical considerations as well. There, how does that affect the way you feel? Because, like, in my head, I'm just imagining, like, all right, assume that it wasn't kids,

it was just the schedule necessitated that you had to do it that way. was that like a blessing or obviously it was a bit of a curse because you can't you know it's going to make the shoot longer but aside from that like what how did that in any way make things better or easier for you or was it all kind of a slog? I wouldn't say it was a slog I think I think you just have to adapt to being with the kids and what they can do rather than I mean I guess in one way it made things a bit more relaxed because you couldn't push them like, well, not that you push actors, but you work up until a very last second, don't you? Yeah. So there was a bit of that.

And you just, you know, just as kids, you can't, you know, there are any, like the oldest was only 12 years old. You can't really be too harsh on them. Yeah. Well, yeah. And also, I guess, you know, as a film crew can't, you know, there's no fratter days or, you know, 12-hour, you know, 14-hour overtime.

You're like, done it's six. I mean, it was really, really, very, very hot and incredibly humid. So I think we're all, you know, every day was kind of exhausting in that sense. And being in the forest, you know, the terrain was really steep a lot of the time and very rocky. So, I mean, we were quite happy to have short days. Yeah. I mean, you know, we did actually work most of the, shoot most of the day because we ended up shooting. we called it coconut time

because we ended up shooting things like coconuts or strange-looking bits of rock or insects to fulfil those hours so yeah I think without that was good you know without because often on a film you all that sort of peripheral detail stuff you end up you have all these ideas

of stuff you want to shoot but that goes out the window because you know you got five minutes at the end of the day to do something which isn't enough time but this was almost a kind of reverse of that we had so much time to do you know all those interesting little cutaways and details

I'm stealing coconut time I don't know that tickles me yeah all right coconut time let's go yeah it's a bit ridiculous like a whole crew of like 30 or 40 people standing around watching you film coconuts

literally the I did want to talk about the infrared stuff a little bit because that it doesn't it doesn't you know when I first read like they did this, you know, day for night infrared stuff. I was imagining something a lot more affected. And then you watch it in the show.

And it is, it is relatively naturalistic. It's not like, you know, they don't have glowing eyes or anything like that. You know, it's, what was the process for shooting like, like testing, first of all? How did you come to that? But also, like, how are you processing that film to make it look not ridiculous? Yeah, I mean, I guess number one, the reason why shooting infrared was logistically, there's a lot of scenes where kids are running through the forest, you know, quite big distances. How do you light a forest at nighttime?

You can only really light it in patches. Sure. You know, how do you run through a forest for ages and ages? It just can't do that. How do you rig? How do you light a forest at night when the island is an hour away? at the time, at the time, we didn't actually know we could not film with the kids at night, fast 11 o'clock.

So we did have plans to shoot at night. And then as we learned about the restrictions, you know, it became obvious we couldn't shoot at night. So then, you know, I'd watch films like Nope, which had some great infrared stuff. And they used a combination of RGB and infrared images and overlaid them. And Mark kind of like the idea of, I mean, I suppose we were pushed into shooting day for night. Right. My big thing was that, you know, it's never going to look like night.

So I kept telling everybody it's not going to look like night. It's some kind of representation of night. Not going to look like night. I think people kind of accepted that. And then I, so, yeah, 11 films gave me quite a good budget to do some research. So I went to Germany to test various. rigs, like, they were actually 3D rigs,

which would overlay an RGB image with an red image. Kind of like what Note did. And they had these really small rigs. I can't remember the cameras. The cameras were like, you know, little cubes. But anyway, that was, it was,

it looked great, but it was very sort of technically finicky. So we can't take this to a remote island. It's going to, yeah, be disastrous. So that is. is actually really worth exploring more because I think that

could look amazing but anyway and kind of subsequent at the time Mark was showing these references of a

photographer called Richard Moss who had taken, gone to Africa and shot child soldiers in Africa

and all the foliage was red but they still had their skin tones and their eyes didn't look weird like infrared usually

makes eyes and I thought oh there must be like a post thing that he created all that effect in Photoshop but in fact it wasn't what he had been using was a Kodak film called Aerochrome which was

an important film which created that I think he was made for some kind of industrial use so he had shot all these those stills on this film so then I thought oh wow that's amazing but we couldn't use that film obviously and then I found out how to

create that effect digitally in camera so it's not a post effect so it made all foliage red but it retained the skin tones the eyes looked kind of normal the skies did darkened a little bit but it still wasn't night it still didn't look like night

it looked like weird sort of hallucinatory kind of thing and it kind of fits with a story because you know the Lord of the Flies there's nothing you know you've got 30-odd children that have crashed into an island and a plane and not a single one of them is coming out with a bruise or anything. It's all sort of magical realism, I guess.

So I think the kind of infrared, this particular infrared, day-for-night look, kind of went along with the feeling of the film. And my daughter watched the film. We didn't watch Lord of the Flies with me. She's 11 and, like, she didn't know anything technically, but she just said to me, God, when the foliage goes red, I know there's some danger coming. So that was kind of, if it evoked that feeling in her,

then it meant that had some, you know, kind of worked in that way. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of sky. There were, it's really hard to create that day for night look when you're on a beach in full sunshine with a, right. It's typically a sky that's cloudy and sound that's white.

A lot of those, a lot of those skies are sky replacements. Yeah Are you keeping it close to the chest Or how did you get that in camera then Just the with that you know the aerochrome kind of I found So we converted a red epic to infrared Which is easy

And any bottle can do that And then I found this filter It's like a blue filter Which creates that What it does I have no idea technically how it does it But It retains the skin tones

And it changes all the foliage red But it also does really weird things. Like if there's anything black in the scene, that generally turns to kind of maroon color has very unpredictable effects on colors that we did a lot of kind of makeup testing for because obviously the makeup was quite a heavy. You know, there's a lot of makeup applied.

Yeah. You know, that reminds me I was doing, there was a production company over here that sadly just went out of business. or it was a rental house, but they sadly went out of business recently, but we were doing a lot of, like, YouTube videos testing cameras and stuff,

and we were testing the Pocket 6K from Black Magic, and we were testing ND filters. Yeah. And there was this one super heavy ND filter that had really bad IR pollution. Yeah. And I was wearing a black, this is all just coming back to me now that you've said that.

I was wearing like a black, sort of cotton overshirt and standing in front of some green you know like a wall of ivy and everything went purple. Yeah, yeah. And this wasn't even a converted camera. This was just a bad ND filter like 2.8 or whatever the really high strength ND was.

Yeah, I remember when the first Harry Alexis came out they had that like when you went to a 1.2 ND that would happen. Yeah. but yeah that's damn i gotta find that video again and be like hey you want to do lower the fives on a budget here's get this really terrible ind filter um that's fun i was watching that you know it's it's so one of the reasons why i started this show was because of the uh lack of

special features now you know no you know um no one's really buying dvds or blu-ray actually it's coming back people are now but there was a big long time or no one was buying blu-ray's or dvd and therefore they weren't making supplementary materials. But luckily, you've guys got this whole hour-long ETS doc. Mark Manda's wife was with us and she's a documentary focus. So she was with us the whole time. Yeah. So it must have been his idea to be like, hey, this is going to be good.

You should film this. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think she made it on spec. I don't think it had been commissioned or anything. She just said, I'd like to tweak this. And then I think subsequently she found She I think subsequently the BBC funded it

So yeah she was there Well it's it's such a treat to watch But one thing I noticed You know obviously you film outdoors You know you don't have a marvel budget So you know you're funded but not you know I was expecting to see no lights But you even did have like a few like that 24

400B seemed to be doing a lot of work just everywhere. We had we had yeah that was mainly for the lightning effect actually it created a lightning effect yeah with those

pretty much I mean there's not yeah very little I mean there was like yeah very little lighting few lighting units but that was all for those sort of light scenes which took place Yeah.

There wasn't even really, at least as far as I saw it, you didn't even go like full grip jungle on it. You kind of were just working with what you had in the time and stuff. I mean, I used a lot of textiles, silks and stuff and blacks, a lot of negative. Yeah. And we had these amazing grips that would like just climb these trees and put, you know, 20 buys up in the trees. Like no effort whatsoever, like monkeys really.

I mean, you could never get away with that kind of thing. cheating in England. Right. Yeah. Yeah, everything's, yeah. So they, yeah, I used a lot of that. And, um, I mean, a lot of fire as well. We had a lot of real fire.

Yeah. Which was really good. I mean, and that was enhanced in VFX, but. Yeah. The, you know, everyone does like nighttime differently. And I, it's really fascinating to see that. But there's kind of a lot of options. there, fire is one of those things that

it never, I don't think there is a single fake light that makes fire or fake fire look realistic. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you can use real fire, it just looks incredible, I think. Yeah. Yeah, like you say, it's the, it's real tungsten, but in a pit. Yeah, physically real, yeah.

Yeah, so we use a lot of that. Yeah, not, yeah, just lots of textiles, I guess. Yes. Yeah. Well, it shows what you can do with relatively affordable, you know, fabrics, fabric. But the show looks incredible and, you know, I think that's, did that become fun? Because I know earlier you were saying like, oh, you know, I really wanted to get in the lighting and here you are having a show where you're not really lighting anything, but you are shaping light. Yeah, shaping.

I mean, yeah. And I guess it's also where you choose to You can say there's no lighting going on Which is true but it's where you choose to put the subjects And where you choose to put the camera relative to the source So yeah I had a part of my sort of plan was I didn't want to look too kind of shaped

And beautiful at times I wanted to feel they're in this harsh Harsh sunshine And I wanted to feel uncomfortable And they were like squinting rather than beautiful softness. And in fact, all those, you know, there's lots of portraits of the kids in the film.

My idea was to have them looking up, squinting into the sun and feeling really uncomfortable. And I gave, my gaffer is also on the show. He's also a BOP. So he went off in shoplets, but he shot them with really lovely soft light. So they weren't doing that horrible squinting for me. But anyway, I was fine

But it was just amusing He couldn't resist He couldn't He didn't have it in him To make them look To make it look ugly Right He was like

Can I have some options? No Yeah Yeah He did anyone He's great guy So I'm really pleased How he did it

How he did them It is funny You know I was thinking about it Oftentimes As a DP You have to shave the light

In a certain way for older actors and actresses. Not necessarily, I mean, depending on the project, it is literally just make them as pretty as possible. But then other times it's like, you know, doing your friend a favor more than anything. Like, hey, we're not going to, you don't need to look terrible, but let's, you know.

And imagine with kids, it's almost the opposite where you're like, you're too smooth. I can't, we can't get anything. There's no shape here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, they look too good. Yeah, I caught out a lot where you have. I mean, there's one actor on the show that I'm doing at the moment.

He's got this most incredible fates. And whatever lighting he's in, it just looks amazing. So it's always, often it's such a relief to have him in the frame. So they just think, this is just going to look good, whatever we do to him. Yeah. It is, you know, we, was it, go ahead. I was just going to say, you know, we talk about production design a lot, you know, how that's like really, when people get awards for cinematography, a lot of times,

it's really the production design. Yeah, yeah. But the actors, there's certain actors that just take light and just look really impressive on camera and you're like, thank you. Yeah, I mean, often I like frame up and light a stand and kind of think, oh, this looks all right. It's not too bad. It's kind of acceptable.

And then the real thing turns up and it's just like, wow, this is, it's just come alive. Yeah. it's like Jody Cohn was like that when I did help with Mark. She's just got these film style looks and just looks incredible. And you line up on a poor stand in and you kind of think, that's all right. And she turns up and yeah, just blows you awake. Yeah.

That's another thing. Matt's to harp too much on actors. But there's also like you see like some super famous, you know, Tom Cruise type or Angelina Jolie type. And then you see him in person. and you're like, oh, I get it. Yeah, yeah. That is a different looking person.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, they have an indefinable thing, that may, which is being photogenic, whatever that is. Yeah. I'm sure there's a study done. I did want to ask about, because obviously there's Lord of the Fly's very famous book. Were there any references? for the show or the I guess it's a show

that you were trying to touch on visually or were you trying to make it its own thing? You know, it's such a well-known property that like I imagine there was a bit of discussion about like do we make this rhyme with something else? Do we make it our own thing? Yeah. I mean, we did talk about lots of references.

The one major one for me was film Nick Rokes' film Walkabout. It wasn't necessarily the visual references. It was just, I don't know, have you seen Walkabout? I haven't, no. It's about a brother and a sister who, they go out. It's very weird.

They're out driving in the desert. Nobody knows really why. And then the father shoots himself. So you've got these two kids. It's all set in the outback of Australia. So you've got these two kids that are just left alone. in the desert and they have to fend for themselves and it's the kind of the environment

and all the things they come across and all these weird things happen in a sense they're not weird but they're weird because they're being seen through the children's eyes who don't know what they're looking at so the feelings that that film evoked were very much what we had in our minds

or I had in my mind just that sense of unease and kind of looking at things through innocent eyes eyes through children's eyes. Yeah. Not nothing is all, not everything is always explained.

There are things that, you know, why is that person doing that thing? Or why are we looking at that? Or what is that we're looking at? So I guess that was the kind of visual. I mean, maybe not even visual records.

As I said, that was the main sort of feel for the film. I mean, I often have, I find I have loads of references and by the time I come to shoot, I did not think about them at all. I'm not referencing in my head at all. Often it's just like a feeling that you get from a picture.

You know, I've actually mentioned that before, that something that I've learned is you like really study either your references or, you know, the stuff that you and whoever were talking about when you want to make the thing and then you like store it and then go shoot. Because like if you keep going back to it, you're just going to copy. but the further away you get from it, the more you kind of like create it in your brain. Yeah, exactly.

You make your own kind of style. Yeah. Because if you're sitting there with shot deck, you're like, that's terrible. I guess everything is derived from something else, isn't it? There's nothing that. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't know. Nothing seems purely on its own, stand on its own. It's always a reference to something else that's gone on in history or whatever. And also anyone who says that they created a wholly unique ideas full of it. Yeah, exactly. No, you're right. You were born today and just came up with an idea. Yeah.

I mean, also, there's so many inspirations in the location that it's like, you know, you've got to be looking at what's there, really, what's in front. All you need is to see what's in front of you and choose what you like and you think it is appropriate to shoot. It's so rich, such a rich environment. But, you know, you don't need to be thinking about much else, really, other than where you are. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you and Mark have worked together before famously. Did you, have you guys developed kind of like a shorthand working together? Like, is there, you know, you start. working with a director and the first project or two. There's a lot of explaining things to each other. I'm lucky, like, the main director that I work with is my friend from college. Right. And so we don't, you know, we can yell at each other and know that it's friendly.

And also all of our touch points are exactly the same, you know, that it's very quick. Do you have that with him? And how does that manifest? It's very, you have very, you have very. similar sort of tastes and visuals that we like. I think we have similar approaches to things and we like to, we kind of like to observe reality or what's happening in front of us and then maybe mold it with our own thoughts and ideas.

Maybe not be too, I don't like to be too sort of prescriptive with actors about where they should be quite like to give them flexibility. I think he's a similar, similar, has similar ideas. is that way. And also we both kind of like weird, we don't really like things that are too obvious. We both kind of like weird, strange occurrences. And, yeah, I mean, Mark is always obsessed with things not being sort of conventional. He goes to long, he goes to, you know, big efforts to make things not, he hates it when you think he's, you know, seen that before somewhere or just repeating something that's gone on the book, which is quite interesting because pretty much

every film he does is a very specific look and it's not just a kind of continuation of a previous film right yeah yeah he doesn't he doesn't want anything that uh you know that's almost kind of i wonder if that kind of makes it easy for him you know because if you're like i don't want to have if you if you've seen a lot of something and you know not to do that yeah that almost makes your choice for you you know those decisions are gone you're like just don't do that that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he goes to great lengths.

And I think often you're sort of thinking, why is he doing that? Why is he doing that? And then eventually he sort of realized that it is actually, you know, it is very clever what he is doing. And he, you know, he gets kind of really obsessed

by certain things. And, yeah, I mean, I guess he sees things in a very particular way. It's hard for me to describe exactly, you know, specific. But yeah, we definitely do have a shorthand, I think. We can definitely, I mean, I know what he likes. I guess, you know, my job is to kind of service his whipsches, really,

and hopefully put on the mind in the mix along the way. So I've got a good, you know, I've got a good idea of what he likes and what he doesn't like and how he likes to do things, how he doesn't like to do. Yeah, I was going to say, do you remember a time maybe early on where it was pretty apparent okay, don't do that again. That's not him. Yeah, definitely, yeah. I mean, a lot of directors are like,

like I remember I used to work with Nick Brumfield. You know, Nick Brumfield? He's like a quite well-known English documentary filmmaker. And I made a couple of feature films with him, and he would say, like he didn't want anything, a bit like Mark in a way, he didn't want anything sort of preemptive, so I could never like plan what I wanted to,

to do in the frame. It just happened. I had to do it sort of first, first take, as it were. I think Mark is kind of like that. He doesn't like to be, he likes things quite, to be done quite spontaneously. And I quite enjoy kind of doing a first take with not knowing what I'm doing and just sort of finding what happens in the shot. I really enjoy that. I guess because I'm kind of used to that shooting lots of observational documentaries where you haven't a clue what's going on. sort of follow the action and try and shoot it in a kind of flowing way and link people and link their dialogue. So yeah, I guess that's a, and we shot quite a lot with Lord of the Fly.

The Big Steens and Lord of the Flyers we shot in a very observational way. Because we started shooting in a more conventional way and it just wouldn't work with the kids because they wouldn't, they couldn't really repeat the same thing they were doing. So you couldn't sort of shoot in from that angle and repeat the same action from that angle. ditched that idea very quickly and just shot. Just that we sort of stood back on longer lenses and just let them kind of do their thing. Yeah. So those first few scenes were quite painful trying to figure that out.

But luckily we did. Did I read this correctly that those were all like first time actors? I mean, they're young so probably, but. I think, I mean, it's definitely all, yeah, I mean, 90% of them. Like David, who played Piggy, had done a lot of acting. I would hope so, because that kid's good. He's going to be a star. He really is incredible.

He's such a great answer, I think. Yeah. And I think they got locks. And yeah, a couple of the other characters had done quite a bit of acting before. But there was another thing, because most of them were quite inexperienced. they wouldn't have any stagecrafts. They'd be saying their lines with their backs of the camera or they'd kind of be hiding behind each other.

Or, you know, it was a big learning sort of process for them as well. Which I think why the first few couple of weeks were quite hard because we were all learning. They were learning what, we were learning how to shoot them and they were learning what we kind of wanted from them. So, yeah. They were actually amazing. I go after a week or two.

they get bored, you know, I thought the novelty would wear off. You know, it was a hard day for them. They'd have to get up early. You know, there's no kind of, they couldn't slack. They had to be where they had to be on time. It was like a proper job. And they really did stick at that for the whole, for the whole 90 days. I thought, I thought, you know, they'd sort of tail off very quickly.

But I was really impressed at how they handled that. Yeah, 90 days is a lot for a big group. kids. It is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they're kind of used to it going to school, but that's, you know, honestly, looking back on it being a child going to school, the worst part was sitting in a hot

classroom. The second you got to go outside. Yeah. It was great. So I guess, you know, I'm sure they probably looked forward to it. I mean, they did have an amazing time. You know, every day we'd be on a boat going to set. They'd get to set, do a bit of work, and then they'd play for a while.

have a bit of schooling. A bit more acting. It's a pretty good life for them. And then at the end of the day they'll they go home to the hotel with a swimming pool. Right. Did you find yourself

relearning anything? You know, being around anyone of inexperience a lot of times that you're like explaining something or did you find that? I'm not sure. I mean, I guess

you just have to be very patient I don't know if I really felt I was re-learning stuff I know what you mean like when you're teaching somebody you realize you kind of yeah yeah yeah I'm not sure I can't think of any particular

I mean I remember being sort of quite frustrated and then thinking hang a minute you go let go you can't fight this you just have to let it go slow down and you relearn Zen yeah exactly

you relearn Zen yeah Yeah Yeah You know Was The I told you We were going to do this

In a very tight Under an hour So I'll let you go here soon But I did want I'm not rushed for time Is that all fine Oh no I was just preempting the

Well you know Wrap it up kind of question But Obviously being in the hot Jungle Kind of a pain Maybe not as much of a pain To only be using

fabrics for the most part. But was there any kind of challenge that you weren't expecting beyond like the kids and the jungle? You know, the obvious thing you read it on paper. You're like, yeah, of course. But I suppose the whole infrared thing was a challenge really. And I was kind of definitely had sleepless nights about it thinking this is just not. I guess my fear was the perception of, you know, the expectations of everybody else thinking,

oh, this is going to look like night. it's definitely not, didn't look like night and I kept kind of repeating that. But, yeah, I'm still, I still kind of, with me, the jury is still out slightly. The show, the show's out. And you're like, I don't know. Yeah, I know.

I'm still, I still think, okay, if I was to do it again, would I do it differently? I think, yeah, shooting, very difficult shooting day from night when it's a bright, sunny day. When it's cloudy. When it's clouding, you've got enough budget for scholar replacements. I think that. You mean, if you look at no, I spend, I mean, this hell of a lot of money on, in VFX.

On all that infrared stuff. And they shot IMAX. And they probably, I don't know, they only had, I don't know how many shots, but they wasn't that many. Yeah. Well, it was not only that, it was IMAX with the infrared camera. on a crane, or not a crane, but, you know, it was on like a truck. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think they shot the RGB infrared overlay thing. Yeah, yeah, with the bean splitter. Yeah, which really, which I would love to try and do. And I found this, yeah, this German company has like a mini version of that, which is amazing. But it's just technically it's really, you can't really run around with it too much.

Yeah. Well, now you've got, Because, yeah, I bet you could use like two Komotos, you know, keep it nice and small. Yeah, in fact, they were using two, what was the camera you just mentioned before? The Komoto? No, it was before that. Oh, the pocket 6K.

Yeah, maybe two pocket 6Ks. One was converted. I think they were two pocket 6Ks. One was RGB and one that they converted to infrared. But the part of this thing is lining up the two chips. So the image is exactly overlay one another. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's the hardest thing with any stereo rig, but...

Yeah, and there are... It has to be pixel-perfect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that is the thing. It has to be so perfect. I know you're still on the fence by, but I think that night stuff looks cool. I don't know if cool was your goal, but I think it looks cool. Yeah.

It has a... Yeah, like, it has a... Mark sort of calls it hallucinatory look. I think it has a look that's fitting for Lord of the Flies, because it's a... It's a crazy story. There's nothing is bedded in reality there. So that kind of gives me the license to go a bit crazy with it.

Maybe if you're doing a more conventional thing, it were just people that just... I mean, I'm surprised more people who haven't said, what the hell is going on with that red foliage. You know what? I was doing research. Yeah, there's loads of complaints about the fish eye lens, which is only an 18 mil.

It's like we shot three or four shots with this 18 mil. And all of a sudden, the whole bloody show is shot with an 18-mill wind. It's hilarious. That's literally what I was going to say was doing the research. I was like, people are complaining about the lensing. And exactly what you said, no one, that's how you know it worked, though. Even though you're on the fences, no one cared. Yeah, yeah, nobody realized, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that 18-mill, there were a couple of shops that were a bit, yeah, one show in particular, which was kind of, you kind of thought, okay there's a camera behind this shot which drew your attention to it but yeah it's all right we'll let that pass on a

four hour film you know was it always going to be a miniseries like that or did it start as a single feature I know I think it was always going to be a four part because Jack who only wrote the script split it up into the four characters

but I think it was always going to be think it was always going to be that. I do, I prefer like a capsule show like that. I like it. I always think a six-part series is one or two episodes too long. It's just drawn out. Yeah. Yeah.

It depends on the show, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, my wife is Chinese and she watches these Chinese series that are literally 84, 85 episodes. They're not splitting the TV room. They're just one long thing. She loves it.

I can't do that. I like everyone who got into like, although I'm saying that I really did get into like Dr. Who and shit, but the shows that have like 40, you know, friends and the office and stuff like that, I'm like,

I can't. Like that's too, I can't keep up with this. Yeah. Yeah. You can't, yeah, exactly. But yeah,

it was always, it was always four episodes. Well, I think it's a phenomenal show. Before I even watched it, like my girlfriend was like, oh, I heard that was amazing. I had a bunch of friends that were like, oh, like, you know, I'd tell them who I'm interviewing and stuff. A lot of interest, at least in my friend group. So I think I think you've done a great job and at least all my friends are excited for the project. One of the few shows I've worked on where before I've started making out, told people, I'm doing Lord of the Fires.

And they say, oh, that's amazing. I'm really interested in watching that. I think it's because everybody has it in their childhood, don't they, pretty much, as a book, he read or know about. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me, especially on your schedule. But like I said, it's a great show, and I'm looking forward to your next one. When you do the next one, we'll have you back on. Yeah, that'll be good anytime.

It was good. I enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you very much. You too, man. Take care. Yeah, yeah. Bye. Frame and Reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny Macbillan.

If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frameendrefpod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.