Frame & Reference Podcast - 256: "DTF St. Louis" Cinematographer James Whitaker, ASC

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Tonight I'm joined by James Whitaker, ASC to talk about his work on the highly acclaimed "DTF St. Louis" and "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die". Enjoy!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Oh, and welcome to this episode 256, frame and reference. You're about to draw a new conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, James Whitaker, ASC, DPA of DTF St. Louis. Enjoy. You know, it was funny. I was like, oh, shit, I should probably do research. And then I was, I, I've been bad at my ASC reading. I got, you know, I got stacks of them. And so I went through all the ones still covered in plastic.

And I was like, oh, no, we do have, uh, good luck have fun, don't die. It's in there. It is in there. And you got a big, nobody read it. It's like half of the magazine. I know. It was fantastic.

I mean, you know. With Dr. Till Mary on the cover. I know. I have to say, I feel lucky because, you know,

Greg brought it in a big audience. And then, you know, so more people read the article, which is cool. Cool for me. And yeah, Stephen and the magazine

gave me a giant spread, which is fantastic. Super cool. I can't imagine that's your first time. No, I've had a few articles in there, but like, you know, this has been a good spell with good luck and DTF coming out at the same time.

But yeah, I've been in the magazine a few times, yeah. Yeah. The good luck was a film right up my alley. That's like the, I love, I love sci-fi, I love absurd shit, I love comedies, you know. Yeah, yeah. It was made for you. Yeah, yeah. We had some of our first screenings were, you know, like,

I wouldn't Like I wouldn't call a nerd fest But like you know Truly like fan fest Right It was just like film fan fest Sci-fi fan fest And it was just like

You know People just went bonkers for the film It was super exciting Was it not like Comic Con or anything No like Beyond Fest You know Beyond Fest Oh sure sure sure yeah yeah There's one in Texas

Yeah yeah exactly There were a couple of those really early on that I was kind of on DTF force. I was like, I'd fly home for just one screening, just because I wanted to see it on the big screen at the Egyptian theater, which was just... Oh, wow. Yeah, exactly.

And to see Gore speak because Gore's just like, you know, he's a brainiac. He's the kid of a rocket scientist, so he's always the smartest person in the room. It's always fun listening to him, talk. You know, it is funny. You get people like Jim Cameron or whoever, who always like, well, that guy, that's a genius, right?

and then you do look at Gore Rubinsky's list, you know, his CV and you're like, how has he had a miss? I don't, I think he might be low-key one of the better directors out there. Yeah, not in my mind. I think all of his films have been entertaining one way. And, you know, they've made a lot of money. Yeah. How did you even get linked up with him?

Because is, do you find that it's like a thing at your level where it's, because obviously with me, it's like, oh, you get. get one job that looks like another job that someone wants and blah-a-ba. Like, is it, once you hit Marvel, they're like, oh, let's get him for big film. And then you're allowed to do small film again? I wish, yeah. I mean, I wish Marvel opened the doors that much. But, yeah, I agree with you.

It's so easy to get pigeonholed in this business. And I think that has been one thing I've been pretty lucky with because my films have, you know, gone a range from, you know, really strange. dramas to a lot of satire which I love, like thank you for smoking was sort of satire, good luck have fun

with satire. DTF St. Louis, some people could say it's satire in a way. So I've been kind of lucky in that route, not having gotten pigeonhole, but the Gore Vibinsky thing basically came about because in between Pirates 1 and Pirates 2, he couldn't get Darius Walski to shoot a tiny little music video

for him in Los Angeles And so somehow my name got plopped in front of him and he was like, yeah, sure, this guy, I guess. Yeah, anyway. But then, you know, we discovered like, you know, he and Steve Conrad actually have a relationship, right, from DTF. Because, and that's kind of to go back around, like, DTF St. Louis came around in 2015 because Steve had seen a film that he really liked that I shot. And then when, sorry, when Patriot, sorry, not DTF St. Louis, but when Patriot came out. Gore Vubinsky reached out to Steve because they're really, really close friends

because Steve had written the weatherman and that Gore had directed. And so, and Gore was like, who's your DP? This guy's great. And Steve was like, it's Jimmy Whitaker. And he goes, oh, my God, I've already worked with him. We did a music video like three years ago. So we started having lunches and having some dinners,

plenty of margaritas and tacos and just talking about like, you know, what project would fit for Gore and I and then good luck came around and gave me a call and it was like let's go yeah the you know I was I can't remember who I asked recently but but I was we were ruminating about the idea of having a look as a DP versus I guess what would the opposite be like being malleable but people liking you as a person I suppose I don't know what the opposite of having a look is, but it is funny how sometimes you can see something and you're like, oh, that was, that was Greg or, you know, that way, whatever. And then sometimes you're, you get told and you're like, oh, of course.

Of course. Yeah, it clicks. You're like, of course that's him. Yeah. Like, you always know a Janusz film. Yeah. It's always got a signature, Janusz look. I kind of like to have a signature look like in some respects.

Like, I like framing my close-ups in a certain way that maybe people are. It would be nice, but I guess most people wouldn't go. The same D.P shot that, that shot that. So, yeah. It's kind of like when people talk about, you know, how like DV and VHS is kind of coming back in fashion with younger people. It's like it's only explored, or not explored, but explained by the failures of the medium. You know, like it's the outside edge cases. And it's the same thing with like, how do you know it was?

Bob Richardson. Oh, well, he hot-spotted one of those tables. That must be him. But otherwise, you're just like, yeah, it's normal coverage. I don't know. Like, just not. I mean, I think that goes to the bigger conversation is, should we be having a signature look? Or, you know, should we kind of disappear more into the story? I kind of favor that idea that we're doing whatever is appropriate for the story. What do you think? Well, it's funny. I was just thinking about this last night looking stuff up because I had seen you say, in other interviews, like, I don't, you know, I'm not trying to be Mr. Look guy. And, you know, I've done 260 of these now. And the vast majority of DPs say, oh, yeah, you know, whatever the story.

And part of me always wonders, like, does that how you really feel? Or are you letting directors know that you're not going to steamroll them? I actually have a new opinion about that. I'm going to be quite a most of it. And I'm happy to put it out there, too. And that is that I do think story should. be the informer of what we do, right? Like it's, it has to be.

Like, and of course, the director you're working with is going to inform a lot, right? But I think, you know, our job is cinematographer. Shouldn't just be to follow the story because that could be, you know, you read line one, establishing shot. What is that? That could be the most boring shot in the world. Or you can elevate the story, like elevates. So my whole thing is now it's like, I think what we should be doing is elevating.

It's a cinematographer. We shouldn't just be doing, you know, unless. It's an absolute dictum from the director. Like it should feel absolutely ordinary or whatever it is he's going for. I think we should be trying to elevate thing and make this an experience. And, you know, that's what I try to do on DTF quite a lot, was connect some of the thoughts, some of the ideas of the story to the characters with visuals. And I'm hoping that maybe we were able to elevate things a little bit in DTF.

Oh, yeah. I mean, certainly it has its own, like any screenshots you see of it. like, yeah, yeah, that's from, you know, that's DTF. It doesn't look because obviously a lot of people talk about things looking samey. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that seems to be how audiences feel. DTF, not samey at all. Widows Bay, not samey at all. You know, there's a handful of shows out there that look, I guess, I guess, I guess we've passed

realism into really well done heightened realism as what I feel is, becoming the norm. And I'm very much enjoying that because that heightened isn't a, isn't a, linear scale in one direction. You know, it can be any version of heightened. You know, even, even, uh, even, uh, have fun. You know, it's, it's realistic as much as it can be, but it doesn't look, you know, like a documentary. Right. Which I think a lot of stuff can blend together now that docs can look so good with so little equipment. That's true. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel, no, just to say it, like, I agree with that. I think you're right. It's like, you know, look, if DTF had been taken straight from the page and given just kind of the look where it landed, the story landed in a suburb, like it could be very ordinary and feel quite ordinary and maybe not so interesting to stay involved to the story. So, you know, our goal was to, by the way, that was something I was avidavoured,

terrified about this show because this is I've been working with Steve Conrad now for 10 years for right on Patriot and on perpetual grace I even was a consulting cinematographer on his stop motion animation show which was called the ultra city smiths and um so we have a lot of time between us but patriot was like you know Chicago and Milwaukee but then also European look so it had built in stunningness to it like had built in architecture that made things interesting and that was true with season two was Paris. We shot the whole thing in Paris. Our next show, Perpetual Grace Limited, was a Western.

And we shot it in Santa Fe, so it had built-in visual eye candy. You know, so when it came, when I got these scripts for DTF St. Louis, I was a little like, okay, there's a, this is like suburban malaise, right? These sort of middle-aged folk who are kind of dealing with some of the boredoms of life, new stages of their life. and it's in very suburban, you know, parks and houses and backyards and how are we going to make this interesting? So that was definitely a little terrifying. But you could go in there and you could just be like, all right, I'm going to give this a look. You know what I mean?

And it could be like super colorful, hyper colorful or, you know, like burning shafts of light through windows and, you know, really strong. But for me, I wanted to keep the drama real, right? Like I felt like the drama much more than the comedy was the important part of it. Like the, you know, the deep meaningful stuff between, you know, friendships between the middle age people. It was like super important for us to bring out a new theme for Steve to explore, although he's explores some of that in the past. But, you know, so it was like, how do we connect these characters within frames

that make it feel meaningful? And then, you know, when you're in the suburbs, like, you know, when you're at a school playground, how do you, how do you, how do you, make a scene feel like fish out of water. Like, for example, there's a scene that I love how Steve cut that scene. I don't think it starts on a wide shot because Steve oftentimes will use an establishing shot one of two ways, one to establish where you are or save that for later in the edit so that you can then reveal where you are, right?

Yeah, sure. I love that so much. So, you know, you're tight close-ups of a couple guys on a swing, having very intimate relationship and then cut wide at the end of it to see where they are. And, you know, our wide shots and kind of our framings in general were kind of intentionally made so that audiences would feel a little off kilter, like they would feel a little bit like, hmm, things aren't normal here. And that carried throughout all the interiors as well inside of the police station with really,

you know, I don't want to say strange framings, but intentionally off-putting framings that would, you know, that would kind of make you feel like, you know, maybe Jason Baben's character doesn't feel comfortable in this space, you know. Yeah. You know, you had mentioned in other interviews that you and Steve, you know, after working for a while together, that part of your relationship is challenging each other. And I was wondering if you could unpack that a little bit because I've mentioned this before, but like I'm now, I have now worked with my college friend

who I've known for almost 15 years now on a few projects. And he's a much, he's a director and he's producer. And his first documentary, he got nominated for an Emmy. Very, you know,

good filmmaker. Well, that's just my buddy from college. So our first few goings outs were a little more like me going. I know more than you about the camera stuff. You can't, you can barely turn it on, you know?

And then learning kind of what you're saying, like the emotional image is different than the technical image and to listen harder. How do you get past that with the new director into where you are with Steve, where you're comfortably challenging each other. What does that look like? Well, I think you could stay on the example of Steve

because, you know, our relationship started on the pilot episode of Patriot in 2015. and we were new to each other. You know, we'd had a nice conversation. We had a nice interview in Los Angeles. And, you know, the thing that came up in that meeting and it started right then and there because he's become sort of the perfect partner,

but it started in that meeting and that he said to me, how can I get you to shoot this show? And why don't you like shooting TV? Because at that point, TV was a pretty different thing. Like, you know, prime TV, like really quality TV. There was good TV. wing. Yeah, exactly. The really good stuff has now started around 2015 or 2013, something like that. So it was a new thing. And I was terrified of shooting television because it felt to me like the first thing that went out the window was cinematography. And, you know, because you're shooting a schedule. And, you know, maybe it's the style of cinematography and TV that was happening back then where you threw three cameras at everything. And, you know,

directors didn't really care about light always and producers and studios. And so the content that was put out was much lower. And so Steve and I in that very first meeting had like, he said to me, what is it? And I said, well, it's just, you know, why are we doing an 18-mell wide shot and a 300-mill close-up at the same time? That makes no sense to me. There's got to be a better way. Why do we need 45 shots today? if you're doing six pages of content, you know what I mean?

And he was like, okay, well, what would you do? And why doesn't that work? You know, he was like an open book. Like, why doesn't that work? Well, because it makes it impossible to get the diffusion in much closer so that your actor looks like, you know, a million bucks. So, and he's like, well, what would you recommend? I was like, well, as much as possible, let's shoot this one camera.

And I promise you every single time that I can get a second camera in there and make it look 95% as good as the first camera, then let's do it. And he's like, this is great. And I was like, you know, Steve, I've just read your pilot script. It's unbelievably good writing. And why can't we just trust the writing? Why do we need a million pieces of coverage to cut out of it?

Like, you know, if you're on the day and you're seeing a performance from somebody who we cast, which is, say, Michael Dorman or Elliot Opheme, you know, it's like if you're seeing an unbelievable performance, then you trust it and you move on and you walk away from a day having 12 to 14 setups that are ideal and you're not making sacrifices and he goes, oh, this is great. And then it became like a challenge to him.

Wow, this is fantastic. Let's break more rules. And so for him, it was like stunts. What's a big one? It's like, I don't want to do stunts in a million pieces of coverage. It feels like a Marvel movie. And everybody's watching Marvel movies.

Let's do something different. Okay, cool. Let's study old boy and let's do our action scenes in a wide shot. You know what I mean? So, you know, and we've been pushing that way, but collaborating that way too. Like, you know, what if? What if? Like, you know, for years, we would shot list for hours and hours and hours, usually

over a beer at a bar. And it would just be, you know, like, this is hilarious. Who can come up with the funnier idea or the better way to block the scene or the, you know, and if we got stuck, it would be Steve telling me what is the essential part of the scene? what is the elemental part of this four-page scene that we're trying to convey. And let's start with that. Let's find the one shot that is important to tell that scene. And then let's build shot structure around that and see if that works.

And so this back and forth between him and I has been ideal. And yeah, we push each other a lot. We push each other a lot. And more so in a way that's new. In a way, he has my back more than ever because, you know, the trust is just unbelievably strong. but he's also much more savvy than he was when we started 10 years ago regarding camera and lighting. And now he gets it.

You know, it's like he doesn't, he needs to be, but he doesn't need me as much as he did back then. Sure. And, you know, he knows the time of day. Like, even in our production meeting on DTF, it was the best thing ever in every DP would love this story. And that is, and I didn't ask him to do this. He literally said in the production meeting to, every single crew member, all the people that were in charge of making a schedule in the studio,

that if we're in bad light, we will not be shooting. So don't schedule the day this way. And now that we're all on the same page about that, let's all work toward the goal of making a great show. But, you know, bad light for him, you know, say midday, top sunny, whatever it is, if there's no way for me to control it,

like if you're in a wide shot or whatever, that for him is a spellbreaker. It's not just a, I don't like how this shot looks, lighting-wise. It's a true spellbreaker. Like, it'll pop him out of a scene emotionally. So for him, it's super important that we get every single time right. So we spend a relentless amount of time on our shows, particularly on DTF St. Louis, you know, scheduling our days.

We'll make actors shoot out of order. We'll start one scene and starting close-ups pop wide. But then if we need to cheat a reverse, because when we turn around, the house is front-lit that we're looking at, you know, we'll wait until the son's gotten past that front-lit part of it and we'll go shoot something else for a couple of hours. And, you know, Steve's such a trusting guy that, you know, he builds these incredible relationships with actors as well as the crew members that he, you know, they get on board with. those ideas. You know, I can't think of a single time where the actors were like, God, damn it. It's all Jimmy's fault. You know what I mean? But yeah, sorry, that was a long ramble. People listen to this for you, not for me. The, I also have liquid. But your approach to,

spicy liquid, your approach to coverage probably helps inform that, though, right? If you're not like hyper covering a scene, you've got the time to wait if you know you're going to get these five angles or whatever and not 30. Yeah. Is that right?

Or is roughly? Yeah. That's right. And look, we did more coverage on DTF St. Louis than on previous shows. And that, in my personal opinion, was that the other shows had a real central character

that was kind of our guiding force as to whose P.O. every scene should be related to. So it was Michael Dorman's character and Patriot, and it was Jimmy Simpson's character and Perpatchel Grace Limited. And yes, there is definitely probably a central character, and that's David Harbour's character,

kind of what the story is about. Crushed it, by the way. Absolutely crushed it, right? Jesus. Yeah, I kept telling him along the way, like, man, this is just so inspiring for me to watch and, like, you're just crushing it. But, you know, like on our, on this show, it felt like oftentimes people were on even ground.

There were times, you know, when it was the interviews with the cops where that was not even ground, right? But it all, it oftentimes between at least Linda, Jason and David, we weren't trying to get a POV across of like, this is this person's scene. So we ended up doing a lot more. I wouldn't say traditional uncoveres, but like if we shot a close up of you, we would also shoot a close up of me. Whereas in Patriot, sometimes we would just take whoever seen it was, shoot a wide shot, and then that one person's coverage who's seen it was. And maybe we would shoot the reverse, maybe. And, you know, it was interesting.

Does that, do you find that scares the shit out of post in actuality, or does the idea of that scare editors and producers and stuff? You know what I mean? I think editors enjoy having lots of office. options. And, you know, in the case of DTF, we shot all these opposing angles, but that doesn't mean Steve used them. Do you know what I mean? Like, I would often shoot like close up of Richard Jenkins and then let's offer a B camera that's super low and a little awkward and weird, but let's also do that on Jason's side. But Steve might only use one of those depending on who had the power

in the moment. And a lot of that happened also with Joy and Linda. But yeah, and you know, the earlier shows maybe we shot a little too much coverage, but I think I always heard from the editors that they had plenty. Yeah. I mean, how do you personally approach using either DTF or good luck as an example, maybe a scene you're particularly proud of, but how do you approach coverage of people talking? I mean, you know, in DTF you're saying you wanted angles that were a little more,

I don't know, abstract or something, but it's very easy to just, you know, cross-coverage or just do what I colloquially have called the Fincher stack, but whatever you want to call, you know, just the two sitting on top of each other. How do you break out of that mold? Is it just time and preparation? Or is there, when you get in a room,

do you see something more than just what you would conventionally walk in to do for, again, a documentary or something. I think it's a bit of both. Like, it's that planning, you know, it's, you know, some experience knowing what I can get away with on the day. But yeah, I prefer the Fincher stack, if we're going to call it that, over the cross-covered I doubt he invented that, but that's where I learned it. Yeah, yeah.

But that's often what we'll do is, well, you know, we'll say shoot a medium over the shoulder. And then I'm always trying to get another camera in there for. Steve, because you know, you're getting overlapping performance then, which I think editorially is much better than cutting. And we might do, like if it's a five-page scene, you might do two or three setups, right? So like a medium-wide and a sort of tighter of that, then move in and do a close that's maybe a clean, and then maybe do a profile if you want it. and then a wide, right?

And it sounds ordinary, but I think, and maybe it is, like in the case of good luck, have fun, don't die, Gore works in a very different way. So he plans every single shot of every single day. That doesn't mean there's not room for improvement by me or other people in the crew, camera operators, you know, whoever it might be. but there is a shot plan whether or not he and I have storeboarded the frames on the weekend before,

a month before, or he shows up the day of with two empty pieces of cardboard and starts drawing 15 minutes before call time. And, you know, you see him over there noodling doing that while I'm getting some stuff in place. And then safety meeting is brought together. And we all hear the safety meeting. And then Gore presents his plan to the crew. for the day is like this is what we're going to do. And sometimes it'll circle parts of it in blue and say this is these shots are that direction. This shot's that direction. That shot requires

visual effects. And then he opens it up to the floor and says, you know, who wants to start where and kind of opens it up to everybody. Our department to say, well, this, you know, prop department to say this prop won't be ready until one o'clock or me to say, let's shoot this in the morning, that in the afternoon or whoever has, you know, we got to get 250 extras ready, so let's not shoot this now. Give me a little time. You know, but his, you know, his shot structure is much, sometimes we do opposing reverses, but it seemed like he was editing much more in his mind and knew exactly the moments he needed. So we wouldn't always shoot the opposing reverse. We would just shoot, you know, like if there's a punchline or a real meaningful moment that's meant to be,

given to the audience at the end of it, like, that's here on one character. We don't shoot the opposite of that. You know what I mean? Dave? I think it's different for every director. Yeah, that makes me think, like, obviously with a seasoned expert, like, gore, are you still shooting? I imagine you still shooting, like, commercials and stuff on the side. I've got to make money.

Yeah, we're sure. What are the, assuming you are working with, like, younger directors, what are, what are some of the things that you've noticed to that? someone like Gore might do that a younger director should be doing. That maybe as a DP you should look out for is like, all right, keep, you know, keep note of that. That might go wrong. As a personal, you know, like person, you watch mistakes and you're like, all right, well, I've seen that. And okay, just keep an eye on that. Yeah, that's interesting.

I don't, I think that's a really good question. I don't know if there are any mistakes. There are things that I definitely would not be excited about. For example, I don't love it when you bring in actors with no plan and just say, okay, show me what you guys would do. You know what I mean? Because that just opens yourself up to a lot of exposure for mistakes, like light being the wrong direction, getting problems with the line that often takes

time to work out. At least, like, as a basic, you know, I hope, people show up with, like, You know, I find that, and I know a lot of directors don't, but I find that the best, most successful scenes have been when a director shows up with at least an idea of where they would like people to stand from the beginning and for a reason. And ideally, the director and I have had time to discuss that before the moment of so that I can pitch in, well, this is great. But, like, what if we do this?

Then I can offer you, you know, this sort of background versus this sort of, you know, put a person against a flat wall never looks great. or, you know, there's a lot I can recommend as opposed to getting stuck. You know, because we're always, at the end of the day, we're always up against a clock. It doesn't matter what it is. We're always against the clock. And, you know, it doesn't take long for actors to work you into. By the way, I love actors, love working with actors.

And I think most of them like to be guided as well for the exact same reason. Ben Kingsley on Perpetual Grace would tell Steve, please limit me. because, you know, it's a free room. If you give me a stage, I'm going to do whatever I want. And then it doesn't take long. Kingsley. Yeah, exactly. You'll take the route.

Yeah. It doesn't take long before all of a sudden you discover you need 11 pieces of coverage and you've got two hours to shoot it. Right. And so that can be a real trick. But, you know, in commercials, I find, you know, with younger directors or older directors, most commercials, you know, have agencies and clients. and there's a proven, you know, you have to present exactly what we're going to.

It's very rare that you don't walk into a commercial set where you've got, these are the 12 storeboards we've got to do today or whatever it is. Of course, there's room for communication and making things better, of course, but like everybody knows the goal. So it's rare I see commercial directors get into trouble in that regard. Listen, there's commercial directors I work with that are unbelievable at blocking actors. Some of my favorite directors are commercial directors. That, you know, just fantastic, incredibly artistic people. I love working in that medium too. Yeah, it's somewhere.

It's a thing I have yet to broach, and I'd like to. What's funny is the past three some odd years, I've been working on four documentaries, like two features and two short ones, and none of them have come out yet. So I'm in that perpetual, you know, you're only as good as your last gig, but my last gig hasn't come out in three years. So I'm like, especially in a downturn, I'm like, all right, well, it'll look really cool when these all come out. And people like, oh, he's getting work. Let's get him.

I hope. But commercials are definitely interesting to me because of, as you're saying, A, the structure. But B, at least from my perspective, I might be a weird person here. But like a lot of times, do you want to talk about sameness? A lot of commercials can look. The Super Bowl is just like everyone's in a living room. There's that fast pushing at the beginning. There's some wides that are low.

There's that hot sun coming through the light. There's a lot of color. And I kind of mentally enjoy the idea of like, well, if that's the brief you're given, if that's what they really want. And it is a Super Bowl commercial, so you're not changing it. Like that paint by numbers thing could be,

I don't know if less stressful is the right word, but just like an interesting like, oh, all right, just fucking put this IKEA together. together. Like, let's, you know, let's have fun. Let's, you know, no problem. I don't know if that's the case, but that's how it seems from the outside. Well, I think, you know, honestly, I think this is actually something I've been working on lately because, you know, I've shot thousands of commercials. But, and I'm guilty of what you're talking about. And that is that, you know, some of my stuff ends up looking like everything else that's on the air. Part of that is that it's very rare that a cinematographer is included in the final color. Right.

And it's pretty rare that directors are also included in Final Color. So it's like you have somebody color the shoot that had no idea what the intention was of the filmmaking on the day. And we work with, there's super high-end colorists. So sometimes that works out fantastically. But I guess what I was getting to is one of the things I've been looking at and thinking about a lot is when shooting commercials, the problem I think we deal with so much with commercials is we don't have a backstory. Do you know what I mean? Like all we get is this commercial.

you know, we're told that these people sitting in a living room as you're talking about, you know, this is the situation we're coming in. We have no idea anything about how we got here. So it's not like we developed a look for this thing based on an entire two-hour film or nine-episode series. We're literally just coming on into this room with not a lot of information. So I've been actually working on, you know, either developing my own backstory. so that helps me give something a look that feels to me right. Or, you know, I'll talk to the director about it or maybe if I've got a good relationship with the agency

and the director isn't threatened by that. I can ask that question as well. But I do think, like, when you just ask to go in, you know, and it's supposed to be sunny and morning, that's all you know. It's hard to be, you know, definitive with a look. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like when actors will, like,

make an entire backstory about a character that is never written is never brought up and it's literally just for them to inform like maybe the way they do one specific thing

in one scene but I feel like audiences can feel that I agree they're good at reading not true subtext but just like that there is

something else in that universe is the wrong word but universe that can be reached into a little bit more. I agree 100%. Yeah. I think with the actors, that's a whole other thing.

And I, yeah, 100% agree. It's just like, how do you find depth within this character when all I've got is this one C? Yeah. I did, going back to the idea of compositions, you know, obviously you'd mentioned a bunch of times that the, I wrote down the photographer over here. What was the John Claude Douche, Dutch? I assume it's Dutch. I think it's probably... I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, that's just going to stick with me. Thank you for that. Yeah, yeah. My bad, Jean-Claude. But, you know, I was looking up some of his photographs, and I recently purchased a Lika, so I'm a real DP.

And, but it's a film one. I don't know why you'd get a digital one necessarily. But that has, you know, sometimes the, the equipment does inform what you do. And now I'm like taking that thing everywhere because it's so small, you know, your zone focusing. You're just like,

you know, and then maybe it comes out. But I definitely understood where you're going with that and like some of the Todd Haido stuff, you know, the misty kind of. Yeah. Were there any other photographers for DTF that you were referencing or just in your

life that you, uh, kind of. to look that photographically and went like yeah that's a little bit of me i mean i'm constantly looking at photographers i mean there's so many but um boy i'm like completely blow this too because there's so many but uh it's it's often street photographers you know it's like i love fashion fashion and art photography i really do but it's it's often street photographers for me because i i think it's an art that i don't fully grasp i'm actually um i've been working really hard over this last few months on my own

photography trying to understand that trying to become better it. That's why I brought it on. That's why I bought the like it. Because I was like I'm not, you can't do it with a DSLR. It feels wrong. Yeah, it does. And well, you and I should go ahead and do a little, little photo hang. I'd love to.

That'd be phenomenal. Let's do it. I have a much more open schedule than you. So you say the word. But yeah, it's, it's something, you know, it's, it's this idea that, well, first well, I think, you know, getting to the Jean-Claudeau, for example, like, I don't think that was a stolen moment. That very much was a set-up shot with Sharon Tate sitting at La de Margot Mago in Paris in 1967,

you know, and she was there very much on intention, and he was there to take her photo. But it feels like a stolen moment. And I think that's what I was going for with TTF St. Louis. And yeah, we referenced Todd Haidow mostly because of those misty sort of backgrounds, cinematographers love Todahito's work because of that sort of atmospheric quality to it. And, you know, when we find David Harbour's character dead in a poolhouse with 13 minutes in the first episode, you know, it's an atmospheric situation. And we go back to that in episode nine for the finale of that.

You know, we just loaded that place full of smoke and backlit it in ways that, feel a little bit Todd Haidoish. So that was just something for us, Steve and I, to look at and talk about Gregory Crudson. Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah.

Greg Routtson was a big reference for me for, and kind of always is, to be honest with you. And I think the reason why Gregory Crutson is such a big influence on me and maybe many cinematographers is because his work is, it's, it literally references the film business. He sets his shots up with entire film crews, you know, stills that are. invented, you know, cast, there are condors with lights, there are massive lighting crews,

and, you know, he lights them like we like movies. So we reference him. He's a one-frame DP. Yeah, and he references us. So I've loved that about his work, but, you know, we looked at that a lot for good luck, have fun, don't I. There's Cartier Brouson.

There's, I mean, a big one for DTF and also perpetual grace as Saul lighter. I was literally just, when you were done, I was going to be like, I'm a big Saul lighter guy. I got a few of his books, you know. Yeah, exactly. Look, there's one right here.

Oh, damn. Oh, you got the good one, though. I got some of them get hell of expensive. Yeah, they're not facing me right now. But like I said, if I move the camera sticks at this whole coffee table behind me, I've run out of shelf space. So it's just stacks of photo books. I think we all should be studying, you know, photography and art and ghost enemy.

museums and see what makes you what grabs you, you know what I mean? It's like for Patriot, uh, the ref, the main reference for Patriot was one image. There was a painting of a self portrait of Van Gogh when he was very sick at the end of his life, had a lot of green painted into his skin with worn, warm tones offsetting it. And that became like, that's how I want all of Europe to look whenever we do Europe looks. So sometimes it grasped on a one image and then other times it's many images or like one film. Yeah. Yeah.

Who's that there's a photographer that will like hide a flash on the street and just wait for people to get right into where the flash is going to pop and then take, I can't remember the person's name. Is that Philip Lorca de Corsia? Yeah, there you go. Like that type of stuff. I'm like, that would be the type of street photography. I would be most interested. It's kind of like the Sharon Tate photo where it's like just enough

artifice to make it feel super intentional when in reality you did steal it. Like I just, I love that kind of thought. I was reading about, I think it was Cartier-Bresson, I was reading about the other day. And, you know, he would talk, you know, very little of his work, even though it all feels stolen, you know, like grabbed in the moment was that way.

He would find a location that photographed, well then he would go there 10 times to find what light he loved and then he'd go there 20 times to get the right person to walk through the shot um and that wasn't set up it would be a stranger but you know and i just think the intention of that is unbelievable and i think that's kind of the way we approach dTF in a way it's like we have these actors we tell them where to stand sure but the idea was that we were trying to make it feel like maybe there was an absorber in a neighborhood that was grabbing these moments. It wasn't meant to feel overly set up.

It was meant to feel always natural light, even though it was far from not. It was more about taking away light than adding light, for sure. That does seem to be the thing now with digital, right? It's way more, it feels like a lot of people are leaning more grippy than lighty. And I'm wondering, like part of me is kind of wondering,

like if I get a couple shoots, like should I just throw a crap ton of ND on there and just make it hard for myself and have to light it? You know what I mean? Like make it more theatrical almost just because, you know, I do see audiences going like things look flat, which again, I do not agree with.

But if it's like, if that's what they want and I'm doing a project that's like not, I get asked by friends to do random crap for them all the time. You know what I'm happening. So it's like if they don't care what it looks like, then I can just use it as an experiment. I've been thinking about like, do I just do that?

Do I just like hard light everything and just start at a really low like equivalent like 100 base ISO and try to etch everything out? That's interesting. I mean, do it the old school way. Yeah, it sounds like fun. I mean, the thing I think that we all feel from, film is that it had a really strong black. And that's kind of one of the things I was going for in DTF was like to make sure we had a

really strong sort of printy quality black to it. So that's strong, that starts with a lot, right? A lot that has a baseline black level really far down. And then you light from there. But you know that, I mean, stylized lighting is super fun for sure. Like, you know, it's not for everything. So it's got to be for the right project. And I think if it makes sense for the right project, then that's great.

But as far as like taking away light versus adding light, I mean, it's all about ratios, right? And so it's also for me, like, I don't like pinging eye lights. And in nature, when you're outside, for example, that can happen because of a million things, a white house across the street, whatever, like whatever might be a car that's two blocks away. You know what I mean? So I end up just building walls of negative. around our actors because I'm taking away highlights like that, but also blocking

incidental light as well as like green bounce off of the grass, taking away all that stuff, and then adding sort of a minimal amount of balance for balance. But this isn't really a new thing because of digital. It's, you know, I think about John Toll's work and the thin red lump. Yeah.

And his work, you know, he would hang massive, massive sheets of black in those jungles. to take away light coming from the front because then that makes the highlight that's on the back of your shoulder and on the top of your head win, right? Because you expose more for the shadow, those things go brighter.

And his work on that movie was so stunning. But it's just an old theory, really. Yeah. With DTF, did you, you know, you talked for a second there about the Lut, but what was the intentionality that lot because obviously the lighting is is like you said very shaped uh or i guess the ratios are very shaped but how much of the look was in that lut and how much was that let just kind of

setting your base contrast and and i guess a bit of a color shift or were even just doing the color shift in camera it was pretty neutral um yeah we would we would add slight CDLs on top of the i mean the base lut essentially was pretty neutral as far as color goes the black black level was pretty down. And then one thing I always like to put into my luts is a small amount of negative saturation, some desaturation, because I find that one thing most cameras are not great at, and maybe the Alexa is slightly better at it is skin tones. And all of us have kind of blotchy skin, right?

Like a little more red here, a little more blue. You're telling me. Exactly. So that tiny bit of saturation, desaturation, like 10 to 20%, maybe 15% that range, built into the Lut, immediately get skin tones into a really nice place, and then I build on top of that. Yeah, and then we would cool things down. You know, we kind of had like a base rule for DTF, which was that sort of everything pre-David Harbor dying, all the flashbacks and all that was slightly warmer.

There were memories, right? slightly more happier moments and then you know when you get to him after he died things were slightly cooler and maybe even slightly more cool from there when it came to the police detectives investigations and all that but we broke those rules like every rule we broke it also was you know we did the flashbacks were also mostly handheld the um the investigative part of the show was mostly static you know uh more static with the camera but we broke those rules. You know, it's like,

I don't believe in being steadfast than rules. All right. So when you're breaking rules, how do you know when that's a rule or a time not to break the rule because otherwise,

you know, it'd just be visual chaos. If you're like, oh, we're always shooting, you know, everything's going to be going to have an overhead.

And then you're like, except for these five scenes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when do you know? Yeah. Yeah, it often was gut on DTF especially,

and it often was Steve's idea that, you know, and I would challenge him. This would be a place like, are you sure? Because we're in flashback. You know, we should be handheld. And he'd be like, I don't care. Let's put it on sticks, you know.

And he would often give me a reason. Like, you know, and I can't remember a great example of it right now. I mean, an obvious, obvious place that we broke that rule was when at the very end of episode one there's kind of a flashback of when Jason meets Linda for the first time he's talked about it just previous to this in an investigation room

it was kind of like a holding cell in the police department where Richard Jenkins is kind of grilling him and he's like well cornhole and then he starts talking about this cornhole and that's where he met Linda for the first time and we broke that rule very intentionally and we shot slow motion on it too

but like we used almost a petsful lens as his point of view of Linda and that was a big break and it definitely was not hell yeah the in sort of in regards to that you know I've gotten notes over here and so I got everywhere

but you've been an advocate for larger sensors. I personally agree. Big sensor good. Mostly because you can get the edge of, you know, lenses that aren't quite covered. You know, it gets real fun. Yeah. But is there anything else about the larger formats that bring you joy or that you like?

Because I think especially with like the Odyssey being out and stuff, there seems to be a lot of younger filmmakers who are confused, because they're comparing everything on the same screen on their phone. oftentimes, they're only thinking ratio. They're like, can't I just, I can shoot Super 35 and just crop the sides. It's the same thing. Like, that's not the same thing. What is it about advocating for those, not advocating, but what do you enjoy about the larger sensors?

Because it is slightly different than larger film. Yeah, it's true. It is. And that actually, I saw The Odyssey yesterday. That'll be That's an interesting debate Because You know

IMAX Odyssey Sure epic Fantastic While I was watching the movie I was thinking about Ben-Hur And Bridge Over River Kwai And movies like that

But is it more epic Than a David Lean movie I'm not sure I kind of don't think so To be honest with you So there are things about Large sensors Like the super shallow depth of field

If you want to shoot wide open That And the way they used it on IMAX and The Odyssey and also in Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, I personally preferred a little bit better because not everything was shot on IMAX. And so when you got some of those portraits really puffed out in that, you know, those great close-ups of Sillian Murphy, Killing-Murphy, where it was just like, wow, this is a really special shot. It really stood out, whereas in Odyssey, every close-up was that way. So it's an interesting thing. I'd love to pick Hoytta's brain about it for hours for sure.

When it comes to large format for what we're talking about, yeah, we shot on Alexis 265, which is a very large sensor digital camera. And what you get is what you're talking about is you get this massive sensor that very few lenses can cover the entire sensor in a quality traditional way, right? In a scientific way.

In a scientific way. You don't get a beautiful field of view where it's edge to edge sharp on every thing. And that's what I love about it. Like that's where, like, as you say, the fun starts, right? It's like the edges start falling off. And for us, it's not just fun. It's actually part of the storytelling because the portraiture is the reason why I chose this camera. Once we knew we were going to be in on these faces, trying to learn about these people's everyday lives

and what they were dealing with and struggling, I knew we were going to be shooting tons of portraits. and the camera itself does that with a whole bunch of different lenses. But if you pick lenses and pair it with the camera that have edge fall off, then you get additional things that lead your eye toward the center of the frame where the character will mostly be or slightly off center. So that's what's fantastic about it. And it worked really well for this series. Now, it's the only series I've shot that way,

and I'm not sure I'll ever shoot that way again. Every show's different. So, but I do think it's a really beautiful format for sure. Have you, have you been able to get your hands on that Fuji felt, the Eterna yet? I've not. And you're like a shoe,

like a shoe, I'm a huge Fuji shear. Oh, so I only, I mean, oh, they're not there. I mean, my other cameras, well, I have the, got the X100. Yeah. I've got a 50R. I just sold my XT3.

because I found that like if I'm ever going to get asked to shoot photos professionally, I'll just use the 50. I don't need, you know, I got the XT3 is an emergency camera because at the time I was only shooting film. I had an RZ 67 and I had to shoot the Russo brothers. It was like, it's the only time I've ever been hired to shoot a photo. And it was like this massive sort of almost vanity fair style like big couch of people. And it was like the Russo brothers and Palmer Lucky and like a bunch of other people in the

industry and I only had my RZ and they were and they needed like 50 photos. So they were like, how much is this going to cost? And I was like started asking all my like photographer friends like, all right, so you've got to shoot. They wouldn't tell me who it was. They just said a lot of high value clients and it's going to be like nine of them. So I and they were like, I don't know, like five grand. And I was like, all right, cool.

So then I just bought an XT3. And I was like, that'll, I can use it for video too. Great. You know. Right. Yeah, yeah. I was proud of those photos. I mean, they're all great opinions.

But yeah, the Fuji films are great. But the Eternah, same thing, big ass tall. It's, I believe at the moment, the tallest sensor you can get. Right. So great for anamorphic and stuff. I like that camera. It's got a few, I think a version two is going to be fully fleshed out. I would think, yeah.

I mean, to me it makes a lot of sense. I mean, all of these cameras, I mean, you know, all these cameras are still trying to improve. The trick is to not take away the great things about it. For example, I personally don't like the Alexa 35 as much as I do the, Mini LAP and the cameras before. I think that new sensor feels sharper and more digital to me. And it's just a feeling and I know that's going to be highly unpopular. But the 265 is the old sensor.

Yeah. It's the mini LF sensor with the color science of the Alexa 35. And I think that's really interesting. So, but yeah, you know, for example, Sony's working really hard to get better highlights for the Venice. And I think the Venice too is an amazing camera. I literally just wrote, I had this theory about photos to let me know if this gets way too. Are you a very technical person?

I'm not nearly as many of my colleague. I wasn't either. But I had this theory that bigger photo site always meant better cinema camera. Because the article started as like, when did cinema and photo? converge in the digital era. And I thought my thesis is going to be and cinema censor better because it's always got bigger photo sites la la the A3 sensor from the original Alexa.

And come to find out that is not the case. It is the case, but it's not. Because you've got your venuses that have way more pixels but still resolve in a very pleasing way. But it doesn't surprise me that you like the old sensor technology because it does have the largest photo sites of any camera on the market, more or less. And it does seem to handle light a lot more organically than when you're trying to super sample an image down to fix the physics problems.

It's an interesting thing. For me, it always comes down to a feel. You know what I mean? It's like I just said, the Alexa 35, I've used it in commercials. I've not used it on a show yet. And it's, well, I have used it on a show, like for very small things on the last show I shot, also on DTF St. Louis. But it's just something you feel. You know, it's like, and you can't fight it.

You know, I've got friends who are doing incredible work on the Alexa 35. So I know it's possible. And I'm sure I would do good work on it, too. But like, there's something that, well, I think part of it is also the large format of it, right? It's the medium. It's the mini LF has a bigger sensor than the 35. So I love that look. Yeah.

With the sensor itself, for me at least, it's just the smoothness of the gradations. And it's not a true super sampling, but like when you have a bigger sensor and it gets put into a 2KDI or whatever, it just, it has a smooth sharpness, I guess, versus like a, I guess what we would call it digital sharpness. You know, because I think the depth of field thing is far overblown. Like you don't, like you said, you don't have to shoot wide open. that is an option you know some people love it but you know

you've got the tools to shoot quote unquote normally but the rendering of the image itself uh I think with a larger sensor looks more

organic or pleasing I guess to me exactly it's to you right yeah and also I get real I get real I try to not talk shit

about Sony too much because all the internet that will yell at me. Sony makes the best cameras, don't you know? I did want to ask about the Jimmy practicals of it all. Okay. When, how do you keep, you know, if this is something that I am not good at, which is why I want to ask is like,

obviously, if you take a wide shot of a lot of sets, there's 400 lamps in a room, but when you're shooting angles, you only see one or two at a time, so it's fine. but do you have a not a rule book but sort of a method to having practicals look good and not just a mix

because in especially in good luck you know there's a lot of different color temperatures and colors going around how do you keep that from looking muddy? Oh wow interesting. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by you mean because the practicals are different colors that mix things?

Yeah like because it would be it would be easy to just chuck everything, not just chuck, but you know, you put them all in there and you're, and you're filming, with all those mixed color temperatures,

it could look unintentional. Is it just a matter of making sure that the key light is like true, you know, quote unquote white or, you know, what's your method for mixing? Yeah, I mean,

like for example, and yeah, good luck at fun to die. There's a lot of night scenes that are, you know, we kind of played off of heightened version of night, right? which is more like the Greg Croutson, like super warm sodium vapors and super green metal halite fixtures and then basing off of that.

But we would, you know, for key lights, I'm not a big fan of lighting sort of neutral. I think neutral is kind of boring. I think it's kind of, that's personally my take on it. I like picking one of those colors and maybe slightly neutraling it a little bit, but don't go back to white. Like, but I do believe that there should be white in every frame. There should be something white and frame that your eye can grab onto. Unless you're looking for something that is kind of murky and muddy and meant to feel and dingy, which we did also on Good Luck, have fun, don't die.

Some of those alley scenes were meant to be extraordinarily dingy. So we wouldn't use a true white point. But yeah, I use practicals liberally because I like working at super low light levels, for one thing. and to have those practicals do some work for me is really helpful. That's kind of the source of the question is when you are, you know, when you've got a more sensitive camera, they can tend to pollute, whereas I don't think your image is pollute. Yeah.

I mean, I think then you make choices. Like, I mean, there's definitely some stuff where it looks like a furniture store because I've got, you know, eight practicals in one shot. That's good, though. I like it. I mean, I just think it keeps your eye interested, you know. And you're right. It's not in every single piece of coverage. And then it allows you to have a highlight in the background. And it allows you to motivate the light, you know, the edge light, that's slight edge light on you right now is coming from the window. But it could very well be coming from a practical. So. Yeah. I don't know. That's my theory on practicals, I guess. Sure. I just love the. Yeah, I get Jimmy Practicals. What did that come from? That's hilarious. Let's see. I have the source here.

Oh, it was your interview with Patrick Tomaso. Oh, cool. No, I guess maybe he stole the, maybe he took that. Did you talk to him? Yeah, I did. Okay, yeah. I just have a transcript. I don't have the video.

But I can never tell with certain YouTubers if they're just taking interview clips or if. Right. I've found when I'm doing research, I have to just use transcripts because I can't watch five hour-long interviews. you know, so I just dump transcripts into a document and then I've got like, you know, polls and stuff. Right. But yeah, I guess that's where you said out.

I do have one director, actually two directors in particular that do call me Jimmy Practicles on, I have been known to be called Jimmy Practicles, not going to lie. Not a terrible nickname as long as, you know, it's not Jimmy takes too long or. There's a few, there's a few nicknaps, but. Jimmy pisses off the AD. Let's see. We've already come to the end of the hour. That sucks.

You know, the one thing I always like asking is about, you know, every job informs who you are as an artist. And with Gore and with, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I wrote it down. Not Scott. Steve. just on these last two projects, like what are some things you learned as a DP

that will probably inform the next shoot? Or maybe have. Sorry, tell me the question. Things you learned working for, you know, a Gore-Varbinsky or your long-time relationship with Scott. Like, what are those things that you learned on these specific projects that probably have informed you as a DP going forward? I mean, the film with Gore was an everyday learning experience

because I was learning a new director and one that's kind of a master what he does. So it's like it was me learning his style, but also learning how to keep up with him as well. That movie, he was super interested in cutting for pace. So that meant to him that we needed an immense amount of coverage. So we would often do north of 40 setups a day. Good Lord.

We did that for 60 days. So it was like an incredible amount of coverage. And we rarely got more than 15 minutes, maybe 10 minutes to do it, the next setup. So, and he would take, he would do a fair amount of ticks, which cut down our time. So if he wasn't sold on a performance, you know, we might be in the 7 to 10 takes range after we're ready, after 10 minutes of lighting. And then he was like, we're rolling. You ready? Yeah.

And that was, I think, specific to that film. He really wanted to be able to handle the pace of the movie with the amount of choices. had in the edit. And it was a tough movie. We were in South Africa, cheating L.A. Norm's diners on Lassianago Boulevard right here in L'A. And most of the movie happens within eight blocks of that. So you built the norms in South Africa? Yeah, that was a set that was built. Oh, wow. We built two blocks of Lassianga Boulevard within the soundstage so the cars could actually drive on it and we'd see real scenery outside the windows. I thought for sure you actually shot that all located. I was like, yeah, I know that numbers.

That's great. We fooled you. I love that. That's great. With Steve, it's probably, I'm constantly amazed working with Steve because, I mean, it's not that I thought we shot one thing and then he delivered another thing when it aired. But it definitely is slightly different. And I'm, I stand in awe of how he cuts and how he cuts and how.

he adds music as an element to create mood. And so I think that'll make me question next time around. I think it is absolutely masterful. DTF, the way he used sound and music and just performance takes and which angles he chose, like we were talking about earlier, not doing the exact opposing angle as the next angle, you know. So that might make me ask more questions of him for sure. And then, you know, with both of these guys, DTF St. Louis, we did a lot less sort of shot planning before the day than we did on Patriot and on Perpetual Grays, which were mostly shot listed. We shot listed extensively on DTF for maybe the first month of prep, but then Steve, his world got so swampy.

It became very difficult to find time with Steve. And so with Gore and for me and Steve on both of these projects, it allowed me to sort of become a more fluid cinematographer, be ready. be ready for everything, but don't expect that my plan is going to be, you know, we're not always going to have a plan. Let's be ready to shuck and jive a little bit, which was a useful tool. And so I think that's a better filmmaker for sure. What, in your mind, what does be ready mean? Because obviously you could have everyone on standby to fly in every piece of gear on the planet. But what does that mean to you? you know know where the light's going to be

when you show up at you know it's like don't don't figure out anything on the day you can figure out the blocking on the day but as far as what tools you need and sometimes you have to have those conversations even without a shot list I have to say to Steve you got to let me know when we need a technocrine to be there or you know but like in general I know the scene's going to be outside I know we're going to be stuck there in the middle of the day

so I need two fly swatters that are going to block the sun maybe three or for example at the at the skate park you know unfortunately we started the show kind of in January when the sun was super friendly and low and just breaking the tree line and it was you know beautiful dabble that the sun would travel through but by May the sun was high and hard and nasty and so the scenes in the skate park and there are a few we're going to happen over two days all day long so that meant that my

Keep Rip and I needed to build a massive 60 by 60 or 80 by 80 sun cover above that skate park. And, you know, these are luxuries. You don't always have that on a budget. But, you know, it's working with production and making sure that they understand why you're doing that. And trying to get them on board with that. And then, you know, just being ready, just in general. Yeah, with gear and people. And you hire the best people, not because they're your friends always,

but hire the best people that are available because they're available because they're going to elevate you as a cinematographer. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that I've noticed a lot of, again, because I'm constantly talking to younger filmmakers is like, you don't have to have the right answer. You just have to okay the right answer.

It doesn't need to come from you. Like, get people that are better than you. Honestly, like, then everyone will think you're amazing. You know, just as long as you can. execute and like manage people. Yeah. That, at least from my perspective, seems to be the majority of the job. Just having a good perspective.

Yeah, to have good taste, good perspective. And then the other thing that's really important in my wheelhouse is showing up with calm. You know what I mean? Just like constantly being calm. There can be chaos happening around you. But if I start to show chaos, my crew is going to get grumpy. It's going to be a much less. fun working environment for everybody.

People are going to be less excited to come to work on a daily basis. That's true with the director too. But Steve runs the most smooth set. So I try to do that with every set of one, but working with Steve and makes it really easy because he sets that tone and then I can just follow it and then everybody follows it. And then it's just a nice, nobody runs. That's one of the rules on our sets.

Nobody runs. Pool rules. Yeah, kind of pool rules. I like that. Yeah, no diving. No diving. There are actually that pool we shot at that's right outside of the pool house where you find David Harbour's body.

Yeah. There is, and that was a real pool, but didn't build it. You know, there's those markers that show the depth. At the very shallowest end, it said zero foot zero inches. And I was like, okay. Yeah. I don't know if that's accurate. No diving.

No diving. Well, it was absolutely phenomenal talking about. You too. Absolutely flew by, but I'm relatively confident. Accolades will be coming your way for this show. Oh, thank you. And I believe they are well deserved. I'll let you go.

Enjoy the rest of your day. Sweet. Thanks, man. Take care. Frame and Reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny McBillen. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frame and refpod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated. And as always, thanks for listening.