Frame & Reference Podcast - 261: "Slow Horses" & "Cape Fear" Cinematographer Eben Bolter, ASC BSC

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

This week on F&R we've got the tremendous Eben Bolter, ASC BSC, here to talk about his work on Slow Horses and Cape Fear and a whole lot more.Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hello and welcome to this, episode 261 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Ebben Bolter, ASC, BSE, D.P of Slow Horses and Cape Fear. Enjoy. I think, you know, as DPs, I think we're always guarded about what we say, because, you know, we are about pictures, not words. And I've been there, as have many others, Gary Oldman, is a thing like, right now about what he said about Bond, where you can so easily say a thing that triggers a

news story that becomes a big deal. I probably shouldn't say what, but I did that once on something I worked on. I said a thing that caused a news story, and I had the studio calling me, and the thing that I had said was, in my opinion, trivial and also true. But it's like I hadn't piece together that the combination of those words as a headline is a headline, you know? And it's so funny that how that is, yeah. I think about it a lot. Well, especially when you have the studio calling. That happened, what's his name?

The guy who shot Atlanta and Widows Bay. Oh, Springer. Springer, yeah. Christian Springer. He, that whole thing about like under-exposing the Alexa or like goosing the ISO. Oh, yeah. Or like gooseing the ISOs, you know. And I asked him about that.

And he was just like, all right, I have to, I have to address this. And then I went and looked up because I remember that story breaking and everyone going like, oh, the best way to get like a gritty look is what Christian did on Atlanta. And then it was a big story. And then I went and looked up where that originated. And it was actually on the website that I write for. And I was like, oops. Oops.

I didn't write it. but it was my co-worker. You never know what's going to sort of stick. And also, like, the thing I struggle with a lot is I am opinionated. I am, I think, naturally a little bit outspoken because I just like to sort of say my truth. But equally, like, what we do as filmmakers is so difficult and so subjective. And you got to be so careful not to offend anyone because it's never,

like, like not liking a moment. movie, is that offensive? Do you know what I mean? And when you potentially are going to meet that filmmaker in the future, it becomes offensive to have an opinion that's negative, which is so interesting. Because it can be like, this just didn't work for me, you know? And that's okay. I've done that here.

I don't want to offend anyone. Yeah. I figured that. The way I've found the way around that is Ivy and said it to people's faces like, oh, it's not that it was bad or that whatever. It just wasn't made for me. Like, and I, I remember as a kid, not as a kid, well, in college, I think, I think Twilight had come out. And I was doing the classic young man thing where you hear one opinion and you just go, like, I guess that's our opinion.

I'm going to parrot this. Yeah, yeah. And so I was thinking like, oh, stupid fucking Twilight, the books were terrible. I read the first chapter's ass, whatever. And then my friend Sieber and goes, well, I just wasn't made for you. And I was like, what are you talking about? every movie should be made for everyone. And she was like, no.

And she's not even a filmmaker or anything. She's just a friend of mine, you know? And she was just like, yeah, sometimes you're not the target audience. And I just remember about a month later that finally landed. And I was like, oh, that's right. Because there's a bunch of movies that I think that are great that other people say are dumb or whatever. So I always just say, you know, I just wasn't the audience for that. And also, I just, that's another argument.

you know, what is better? Yeah, totally. But also the not made for me thing. I also think that can be, that's time relative even to yourself because you can watch something in the wrong mood, tired from a different perspective and be like, that sucked and watch it 10 years later and be like, wow, I was wrong. You know, or the opposite. You know, childhood movies that you fall in love with and you see them as an adult and it kind of breaks,

as an adult and it kind of breaks your heart because you're like, wow. I really was dumb or, you know, or I loved it for what it was before I understood what it was as a more fuller human being. Yes, it's pretty interesting. It changes all the time. I do love that though. Like it's, you know, like I very rarely will play a video game a second time. But sometimes those, not including the like new game plus stuff, but sometimes like revisiting those and you see like, especially like I just started, you ever play a Horizon Zero Dawn?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and the sequel, yeah. Brother, that's some of the best storytelling. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. I'm on, uh, Forbidden West right now. And, uh, and, and I just was like really sitting with Zero Dawn for like a full day before I went off and bought, this is on sale, uh, Forbidden West. But, uh, I, like, after finishing it, I was like, is there like an audio book I can list? Can I like, and I just, well, I'm like, I got to replay it.

I just have to play it again and just like get the new. You know, going back and knowing what the story is now, getting all kinds of, you know, new insight and like picking up all the little codexes and reading and shit. Yeah. The VR game was pretty interesting as well. It was very good. The PlayStation VR did a Horizon game that was kind of great.

It was the one that I would put on my parents if they came over to show them what VR was. Yeah, it was decent. Like in terms of scale, like it's kind of an on Rails thing most of the time. But, you know, dinosaurs walking over, like electronic dinosaurs walking over your head. It was, you know, you could really feel that scale. It's worth a go. How close do you think we are to a Horizon television series?

Oh, well, I thought it was happening a while ago. Like Netflix had it and they were doing it. And actually, I knew a director who was doing it, who even asked my availability. But I don't know what happened to it. I don't know. I think they tried. Yeah I know they're making

Yeah Like the third game is apparently Some like live service multiplayer thing And I'm like no No I need you to make the actual This is important like It's very rare that a video game makes me go like No no no I want to finish

This is the half life problem Don't fucking do this to me Gabe Newell Yeah yeah yeah Yeah I think they're trying I don't know if it was prohibitively expensive Or yeah I mean who knows it was going to be a series.

I wonder if it comes back of the film. I don't know. It's funny how these things, you know. That first game alone has got to be like Aloys time in the Noraland. That's one film. I mean, like her breaking out into the rest of the world is like the perfect opening for a second film, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you didn't make that, so we don't have to talk about it.

I feel like we're very similar doing that. Yeah, we'll just, this will just be the, the, us campaigning for Horizon to be made. And then you have to shoot it, obviously. I'd love to, yeah. But I feel like we have a similar, we're only a handful of years apart, but I feel like we had a similar like

cinematography sort of beginning, you know, that whole like 5D self-education thing. That's me, yeah. And I was kind of wondering like what, again, as this is intended to be bagly educational, I feel like the arc of cinematographers always tended to be like reading either American cinematographer or learning from other DPs and then the sort of online 5D type thing happened. And then that has just been

repeated over and over and over again because the internet has made everything so accessible. But things are getting lost as generations are made. So I was wondering kind of what your, how you came to be here from that very accessible point that I think many of, us also did or are doing? I think the quirk to my career is I didn't know I wanted to be a DP until my 20s. I grew up an absolute lover of film in the most sort of pure form where there was no, nothing to be gained from loving it other than the love of it. And I never saw it as a career at all.

It was this magical thing that was just other, and I loved it. Kind of like video games are for me now. Like, it's just a thing I love and it's just pure. And I got to my 20s and then had to figure out what to sort of do with my life, you know, from a financial aspect. And started to look at, okay, well, I love film, but I don't know anything about making films. So maybe I could own a cinema one day. Or maybe I could get into marketing or sales or PR or whatever. And I kind of went down all these little rabbit.

holes of what can I do with my love of film and at the same time had been taking photographs and had I don't know the whole life story but was living in Japan for random reasons and had a 5D in my hand when that firmware update came out and started shooting stuff in Japan and you know inherently Japan is incredibly beautiful very difficult to shoot outly so I I suddenly had all this footage that look good. And, you know, it was, I kind of started to kind of realize I had an inherent understanding of composition and I knew like shots from films. And I just started to kind of join these things together in the most kind of dumb way.

It was like, why haven't I figured this out before? And figured out what a cinematographer was and kind of just realized that was my kind of dream job. And then it became, once I realized that you're not sort of born with the ability to be a DP, it's a thing you learn, and it's a thing that's subjective, and someone can like this, and someone can like that, and who's right, who's wrong. And once I kind of realized that there's a genuine way this could happen, I just started shooting and shot everything I could. And I think the advantage of my path was I had done the homework. I had 20, 30 years of 20 years. a film absolute love and knowledge and had become a nerd of films before I started thinking

about cinematography. If I had this sort of like back catalogue of references, I knew how to talk to directors, I knew how to talk shots, I knew how to do all of that stuff. I then just had to sort of learn the things I'm supposed to know as a cinematographer and then try to kind of listen to my inherent taste and my inherent, you know, reflexes to what I like and what I don't like and just kind of join these things up. So it gave me this kind of back catalogue of references

and it also gave me a massive imposter syndrome where I felt like a kind of phony DP which I think really made me feel like I had to kind of pay my dues to what I should know. And so I was really studying how things that I loved from the past were done and filling in all the blanks of my knowledge of fear of being found out, to be honest. So it wasn't like I was like, you know, F all of that.

Let's form a let's just, I'm just the future. It was more like, oh God, when if I end up on a set and a director wants to shoot on film, how do I shoot on film? I think I need to get, I need to shoot some film. I need a commercial. I need a music video. We need to shoot 16. We need to shoot 35.

Oh, God, I've never shot anamorphic before. I need to shoot. All of these insecurities kind of led to me filling in all the blanks in the past. And so I don't know. I mean, I'm obviously still very much on whatever this path is and figuring out who I am as a DP, who I want to be as a DP, who I could be as a DP, all of that.

I feel like I'm in the kind of hopefully still early to midpoint of my career and I'm still figuring out what the future of this job looks like. But I really, weirdly now, whereas at the beginning of my career, I could use the advantage of not being scared of digital as a kind of, perk. I could be like one of these new young guys who shoots digital and I'm not scared of an Alexa and I can kind of that was my USP. I'm now that everybody isn't scared of digital. I'm a bit more like for something like Cape Fear. I'm like what can we apply from the past? How can I do more hard lighting? How can I kind of do the stuff the way the things used to be done and take some of the advantage of the digital? And like that's starting to become more of who I am which is weird. No, you know, it's something that I So I very similar but

knew I wanted to get in the film like as a child Like I was picking up cameras at like five for whatever reason Yeah, just but to your point though I've always thought it's really important to think about Your sort of lineage as a DP You know like what part of the tree What branch are you coming off of? You know, you have your influences and then you it

because something I learned from obviously reading like the books, you know, the cinematographer interview books that are around, you know, Masters of Light, all that shit, watching behind the scenes featureettes, DVDs and stuff was they would always talk about DPs that came before them

and what they were basically stealing from. And so I was like, all right, well, who are my cinematography grandparents? You know, I want to carry that on. No one's special,

you know, it's just, it's, and I think that's really important for like students to learn is like steal when you're a kid like no one cares they're going to be impressed that you even figured it out you know and it also gives you know the sort of famous to me Adam Savage quote of like having branches hacked off your decision tree is really helpful and if you kind of have yourself in a little bit

yeah it makes your life easier you know yeah I also think like you know you don't always hit the target in every sense of it say you're trying to okay I'm going to rip off Blade Runner or I'm going to rip off Raiders or whatever it is the way in which you fail to do that creates something new that's born out of that

and that ultimately is the thing and I think that just applies at every level and even on it like take whatever one of my jobs at the beginning it's like well it's a little bit this it's a little bit that I'm coming at it from this angle, the director's coming it from this angle, we're all kind of pushing it towards what we think it's going to be. And then you look at what it is and you're like, ah, actually it was that.

And we kind of got there for a few reasons. And that's more interesting than had it been, you know, made in a lab and been this sort of perfect emulation of all those references. It's kind of something other. So you just kind of like none of this is exact. That's what I feel like. there's a real mystery to filmmaking that you really don't know what you're making

and honestly sometimes until it's released. You're there on day one and it's like, okay, we've done all our testing, we've done all our homework, let's shoot the show, bang, that's that shot, that's that shot. And at certain points it can just start to shift or an actor can be like, okay, my process is going to be this.

And then suddenly your whole plan for how you're going to shoot it can shift or locations or weather. or studio influence or a million things can happen. And eventually the thing comes out. And sometimes the audience tell you what it is. And you're like, huh, we made that. Okay. Yeah, I guess we made that.

And it's all true, you know? It's an ever-changing, evolving thing, I think. Yeah, I just came off of two documentary, well, a handful of documentaries, but it's two specifically where, you know, you're there for the doc, you're shooting tens of hours of, you know, dozens of hours of interviews and stuff,

of tons of different people. And then one of them, I got to color grade because it was relatively low budget. Yeah. And so I get the timeline. And I'm like, there's like 70% of what we shot not in here. Yeah. And I had no idea. Like, I didn't realize this is what it was going to be.

Or even this other one we did about Spud Webb, famous basketball player. Yeah. We thought it was going to be kind of serious. Like a lot of the, you know, he's getting up there in age. And this was kind of like a retrospect. I see the first cut and it's funny as hell. And I was like, when did we shoot at comedy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, you know, everyone brings, everyone brings, I think that's the other thing that you're getting to too, right? Is like, as a director, DP, you have this thing. But then there's 100 other people working on it and they're all going to give their own little flavor that you didn't have that exact conversation with, maybe. Yep. And also, you know, yeah, the process of getting somewhere that you're trying to get creatively does rely on a lot of other people

and they're all going to bring their magic or not and you're going to have to influence that or take the benefit of that to try and get where you're trying to get. And I think a lot of the time as a DP particularly on like bigger jobs, you really have to be a politician, a business person.

You've got to be like, okay, so to get that sequence, we're going to need this. To enable us to get this, we're going to have to forego that. or I'm going to need extra time or extra equipment or, you know, maybe it's a designer who's coming at a project from a completely different, you know, angle. And it's like, how do I kind of get what I feel like I need from this person who's kind of coming at it from another angle? How do we kind of, you know, rectify that difference, whatever it is?

And it's constantly, I feel like, yeah, like 50% of the job is, is, is, not cinematography to put you in a situation where you can create the cinematography you wanted. But tons of that's happening in a room or on the phone or, you know, conversations to kind of get you to that position.

I think that made sense. No, 100. I mean, that's unfortunately, I learned that on the job. They don't teach you that in film school. No. Right? And I don't I also don't think students want to hear that. When you're, when you're, you're,

You're starting, you're very like, ooh, I'm going to make art. And then you're like, well, you're also going to make a lot of phone calls and emails. There's going to be email chains that you can't manage, you know. That's the one thing that I have enjoyed about AI things getting into like too much stuff. There's a lot I dislike. But like summarizing a big ass email chain, I'm like, thank Christ, I can't like I've tried so many different tools. Well, unfortunately, none of them really do a good job. So I shouldn't say I like it.

It's never worked. But, yeah, stuff like that you don't realize. Yeah. Kind of in the same vein, you shot like what, like 100, 150 shorts trying to like learn and not get that. Yeah. That was part of my journey. Big time. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I, yeah, once I realized I could potentially be a DP, I was already shooting short films. And I was kind of like, well, I'm doing it. So I might be doing it badly. be doing it the worst in the world, but I'm doing it, and I'm going to get a little bit better on every job. So I just kind of went crazy on, you know, film and TV pro and whatever, mandi.com and all those other kind of websites, anyone looking for a DP, I'd be like, sure, you know, let's shoot. And I shot all kinds of junk and, you know, just bad short films and little commercials and tests and feature, you know, trying to raise funding stuff. And along the way, you just, you make your little

mistakes on these little projects and some of them come out great and others don't and you just figure it out and figure out and I just kind of yeah kept going honestly like I feel like I'm still doing that just on bigger stuff I'm just sort of applying all these little lessons I've learned along the way and still totally figuring out like what I'm doing but then in a way I think everyone is because you know the industry changes the world changes the technology changes what audiences want change, the format changes. You know, there's so much talk around aspirations right now because of, you know, IMAX and everything else. It's fascinating how you just have to go where it's going and try to kind of keep true to yourself. It's

just ever evolving. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, well, two things. One, I've got a friend who just won an Oscar for the short film that I went to college with. And then my other friend who's a producer and director. He was nominated for an Emmy for a documentary. And I asked both of them separately, what does that change? And they were both like, really cool photo. You know? Yeah. Like it opens door. It makes conversations easier. People will trust you faster, but it doesn't, jobs don't just start fall, you know. Yeah. It's just that people trust you now to pitch them on something. So it's to your point, like it's just, it's always. Yeah. It's always, you never finish.

No. No, my God. And it's funny, the awards thing, because I think, like, we're always asking ourselves, are we good at this? And awards are a way to kind of legitimize yourself and say, well, I must be okay, because I got nominated or I got this shiny award.

And that one is, well, yeah, you know, yeah, that's a, that was an amazing moment for me. But I actually shot a documentary myself about Ian McKellen. It was a feature documentary about, about Serea McEllen. And we spent a week out of his house with him telling us his life story, basically. And I was operating. I wanted to operate on the extreme close-up lens.

So I was living on Ian's face like this for a week. It was incredible. And one of his stories, he was talking about Mr. Holmes, the show at Holmes thing that he played. And he was really happy with his performance. And he had always wanted to win a SAG Award, because he was like, that's the award that, like, my peers have recognized me.

So I'd love to win a SAG Award. and he was really hopeful he was going to get this SAG nomination for Gister Holmes, and he didn't, and he was really frustrated and gutted. So he went onto the SAG website, and he was looking through, you know, previous winners and Bo-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-N he's scrolling down, and then he saw his name, and he had forgotten that he had won one already. And he was like, if I can forget that myself that I had won, the rest of the industry has no idea.

And it's just this little brief, lovely little moment in time that is obviously a magnificent, but it's amazing how quickly, like you say, the page turns and everyone moves on. Yeah. You know, they didn't give me screeners for slow horses, but, you know, looking at the trailer and stuff and seeing other interviews you've done and stuff.

Looks great. also I had read, you know, large Finchirian influences on you growing up. Yeah. Same. Were those sort of techniques applied to the show? Because it does give a mild Fincher bent as opposed to Cape Fear, which we can get to it a minute. But that's a completely different one. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, there's tons of talk about. I mean, I, the one interesting thing is I rule is I went from. Slow Horses Season 6 to Cape Fear with one day in between. And I shot every single, like, Slow Horses, the full thing about Slow Horses is each season is essentially a movie. It's one director, one D.P, one crew, one giant block of 110 days shooting. So you have to prep this thing like it's a Bond film.

And there's no, like, showrunner. There's no real studio, I don't want to say, interference. I mean, there's obviously execs and there is a studio and, you know, there's great writers and all of that is true. But you end up, me and the director did exactly what we wanted. And we didn't have to be loyal to any kind of established anything. It was just shoot the show how you want to shoot it and you've got complete control. So I watched the first five seasons of Slow Bosses, you know, as a viewer, as a fan, and they change as well.

There's two DPs across those five seasons and things change here and there. And I just kind of thought, okay, let's just sort of start right back at the beginning. This is a detective show set in the UK. And so, you know, let's look at other police and detective dramas. And so my mind kind of went to Finch's Seven and South Korean cinema,

Memories of Murder, Mother, Bong Joon Ho, Park Chen work. And I was kind of like, why can't we do the British version of that? Why can't we apply kind of bleach bypass, rain, you know, dark noir styling to the Slow Borses world? And we just kind of ran with those concepts on Slow Horses and did all of the above.

But the interesting. Interesting contrast for me was I then after Slabors did Cape Fear. And for various reasons, I ended up shooting both of them on the Alexa 35 and the Atlas Mercury animorphic lenses. Shout out Dan Cates. Yeah. And yet the two are so different visually. It's one of those things that people are so interested in cameras and lenses and what did you shoot it on. And it's kind of like, for me, it was a really nice way to kind of use the same tools to do something completely different. Because the two, are almost completely opposite. Like Slow Wars to Six is constant rain, winter, darkness, sort of, you know, lack of colour. It's a heavy bleached bypass emulation that we did

to really take the colour out of it. And then Cape Fear is rich, vibrant, warm, sweaty summer. It was this really great exercise for me, just personally doing both to kind of explore both things, which was I think both appropriate for their stories. And yeah, it's one D.P doing both. It was a really interesting kind of like thing to play with over a couple years. Yeah.

Yeah. How do you, with one day in between, what was that transition like? Because obviously it was just one physical day. Mentally, I'm sure there was like when you were getting to the end of horses, you're kind of starting to shift gear. Like what was that experience like for you? And how did you kind of make sure you weren't letting the two bleed into each other.

Yeah, one definitely inform the other. I mean, it's funny because you get to 110 days, the end of 110 days of shooting, and you are just so tired, physically tired, because, you know, you never really recover. And particularly on a run that long, we are not handing over to another DP and kind of, you know, on Cape Fear, I could tag out.

It would be prep, shoot, prep, shoot, prep, shoot. And I alternated with another DP, which gives you that little buffer, that recovery. you can kind of prep and you can know what you're going to do. I think 110 days of television is sort of impossible to prep the whole thing. So from about 60 days onwards, you are kind of making it up day by day. And maybe you've been to the location half a year ago and you're kind of getting there and going, like, what are we going to do here? You know, really, you're, I mean, only the advantage, of course, is you're completely in the zone.

You're, you know, you're, you've been shooting for 60 days. So you are at match fitness and you know what everything is going to do. And you know how to shoot. And you're kind of the best version of yourself, I think, as a DP because you're, you know, okay, get that light at 20% over there and that over there and do that. And this is going to do that. And you can kind of almost shoot it without seeing it. You're so kind of in the zone.

So you can just rock up on the day and make it up and it be okay. But, yeah. So I got to the end of this run and I was kind of desperate to just have a week off. And I got the phone call and got the job. And it was like, yeah, they want you to start Monday. And this is on a Sunday. And it was like, well, can I have the one day to get my life together and I'll fly on the Tuesday? And that's what I ended up doing.

And the thing that was really an advantage was I went from a beach in England in the winter, freezing cold, big coats, you know, shooting this kind of shootout on a beach. to then being in Savannah, Georgia, and it's, you know. Visible. You know, well, yeah, it was. It was thunderstorms every day. It was just like a rainforest to me. It was like it was so hot, so close.

And, you know, just everything was wet. That was my overwhelming thing. I just felt wet all the whole time. And so what was great about that is I really, it's that thing when you go on holiday and you go to a foreign country and everything's new. I had that. I was so acutely aware of everything that made Savannah feel like Savannah,

but I think it gave me a real advantage in terms of knowing or knowing how important it would be to try and get that across the audience visually. So that was actually really useful. And I think, again, like I was really kind of in the pocket of shooting. So I was like, these are all the things I was doing on horses that worked for that. This should be different. And, you know, that thing that we did on horses isn't. Cape Fear. And it actually

really was helpful to just go from one to the other to kind of go, this is this one and this is this one and this is this one. And you know, I think Cape Fear in particular, based on the source material and, you know, the Scorsese film in particular, it's such a sandbox of just go have

fun with the camera, go have fun with lighting. You can be really big. It's over the top in the best possible way. So all of the that I was just acutely aware of because of the direct comparison to what I'd done before. So it was helpful. It was fun. Yeah.

Yeah. What's the physical method by which you maintain the stamina of shooting 110 days? Because that was something I was, I've never thought about it because all of my shoots are like a week. You know, maybe a few weeks in a row. And that's still kind of fun, especially like what I'm thinking of is like I was in three different countries. in one month. And it was like, we,

you know. Yeah. But I was talking to Larry Fong about shooting 300. That was his first, first feature. And he thought, and he straight up was like, I didn't think I was going to make it.

And then about halfway three, he's like, I'm good. But, you know, 110 days nonstop, six hour film. It's a different beast.

And you're not always in a studio, you know. So what are you doing physically to keep that up? Well, it's funny. Shoes. I'm, yeah, yeah,

I'm coming to. you now on day 53 of an 106 day shoot. So I am right at the halfway line like today. Yeah, I go back Monday and yeah. There's no secret.

I do think it's a marathon, not a sprint. I think you have to protect yourself early. The first week is very, very important for what is the show. Once you've got that, once you've done all your prep, you've done all the hard work, you work, you work really hard that first week.

I think there is a part of me now that knows that on the second week or the third week, you do have to give yourself a little bit of slack. You've got to not stay late if you don't need to, not get there too early if you don't need to go to bed early. You've got to just look after yourself because it's a marathon and you've got to keep your match fitness up. I think I actually, I equate filmmaking a lot to sports. Bear with me on this.

It's weird. Same. I do think film making is a verb. It's a thing you do. And I think you have to do it to get better on it. And a lot of the principles of sport apply in terms of fitness and keeping that fitness up and doing whatever it is you can do to give you the best chance of success. And again, like sport, you know, you can't just talk about it for a year. You can't talk about playing tennis for a year. You've got to pick up a ratchet, you know? You've got to stay in the game. Even if, you know, that's just going out and shooting photographs, even if it's, you know, making your own work just to stay sharp, just to keep looking at light, just to keep experimenting, trying new things. It's a difficult thing to do if work isn't coming to you, but you've got to pick up your iPhone and take an interesting shot.

You've just got to do it, I think, because it's an ever-active thing. So, yeah, for me, it's, you know, I try to be, I try to basically severance myself a little, bit and be like, I'm working, I'm going to work as hard as I can, but now I'm resting and let's rest. Let's not do a whole day of prep at my computer and reading scripts and let's just rest because that's important too. And I'm going to be a better DP on Monday morning if I've had a restful weekend than if I've been extra, you know? So, yeah. Yeah. Well, just like the, just like the sports analogy, like, you know, working out or any, like they, they, every,

always says, like, recovery is where muscles built, not in the gym. Yeah, right. Yeah. In the gym, you're beating yourself up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

And I think another thing as well is, like, part of the kind of gym of filmmaking is watching. And that's such an amazing thing that you can sit there on a Friday night and watch a movie. And that's the gym. And that's amazing. Because it's entertaining. It's fun. You learn from it. But it's taste.

You know, you've got a. you know, I do, there are DPs, young DPs, who have shadowed me or I've just sort of mentored a little bit. And I find myself really often saying,

I just think you need to watch more because the frames are referenced, they haven't, they're not as well read in film as maybe they should be a lot of the time. And it's like every night, watch a film, every night, watch films you don't want to watch,

watch films from other countries, watch films that you've disregarded on Facebook, value. And even if you hate it, figure out why you hate it? Because you're going to learn so much. And you've just got to keep those muscles flexing, I think, every day. I try. I have three young kids. It's difficult. But I try to watch a film every single day, even now. Even when I'm shooting, it'll be kind of get home, have dinner, take care of whatever I need to take care of and put a film on. Even if I'm only going to watch 30 minutes of a film I've seen before, it's on. And I'm participating, you know?

Yeah, I tried doing that a few years ago. And my girlfriend works insane hours, like literally 12 hour days. Because she's a dance. She works at a dance competition or a convention and then also teaches. So it's like it's not a full like 12 hour day, but it takes up 12 hours every day. And she would come home and just want to like relax. And I'm sitting, I had like, you know, my little notebook out. And I'm like film, you know, 48 of 365.

And at one point she was like, can I. can I watch something? Can I have TV? And I'm like, all right. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. I could have done this earlier in the day. It's true.

It's true. It's a bit of that hit too. I think it is important to your point about like watching stuff that you wouldn't be. That's a hard barrier to get past because you don't know what you don't know. So it's like where do you find on Netflix or whatever, you know, Apple TV is actually better at this. I think Apple TV does a good job of. curating what they make, but they're terrible at advertising. They need to, like, I've only seen billboards for Widows Bay and that's it.

And it's like, Soul Horses is amazing. How come I'm not, give me more billboards. Idiots. Yeah. Love you guys, I guess. But I don't think I know anyone there. But, you know, like Criterion especially. Like just the streamer, the criterion streamer.

Like just go and they do an amazing job of curating like monthly. Like, ooh, it's October. It's horror month. And you're just like, go pick something there. the Blu-ray distribution company. Like, find, you know, when they have a sale, just buy whatever looks, whatever you like the poster of. And yeah, it can get expensive, but it's like, this is your job.

Write it off. Yeah, totally. Exactly. And for me, I've talked to other movies about this. It's about actually, it's really useful to daisy chain, like see the progression of a career. So like a favorite director, a favorite actor, a favorite DP, like start at the beginning of their work and go down that path with them and see how it evolves.

You know, I did that with Conrad Hall, once I figured out who Conrad Hall was and how much I loved his work. I did that with Vinceicassell, the actor, and it took me on this adventure of French films that I didn't seen before. And Korean cinema really was the thing when I was sort of at university

and I saw an old boy. And it's just my head exploded. And it was like, what is this? You know, and then I went down a part-chan work rabbit hole and then went down the DP rabbit holes. And you just find yourself venturing into places you wouldn't normally go.

And even now, like, I'll think of a shot. I'm like, oh, there's this shot in this Korean film I saw that's so random, but it was such a cool idea. There's even one that came to mind just now. Like, in Simply for Lady Vengeance, which was the sort of third of the vengeance films the Part of Trenwick did after Old Boy, he did a version of that movie that started in colour. And it's, I think, a two-hour movie,

and it has a two-hour dissolved black and white. over that two-hour period. So it just ever so subtly and softly is just dropping color, dropping color to the last frame is completely black and white. And I've been, you know, I think about that all the time. And I always think like there's going to be a project at some point where that would be a really cool thing to try and do. And it's all that stuff.

You just need to know those things are out there. So that when the opportunity arises, you've got it to kind of grab onto, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a quick one that everyone kind of steals, but I think applies to what you're saying is like, you know,

everyone just glazes Roger Deacons, you know, as they should. But I think he, I think he's unique in that whatever happened, my theory that made him like the internet darling is whatever move. I think it might have been no, um,

not no country, maybe that, but, uh, just James maybe or something, something around there is like when, yeah, everyone was on forums,

not just nerds. and I think it's just he was the first like person that was being very open you know he had his own web forum and stuff but in any case he's talked about his influences and what movies he likes and I'm like you not you but you know we should do that if you really like Roger Deacons or whoever

or Finch or whatever find interviews where they talk about what inspired them and then go watch those and then go on those little journeys you're talking about with those ones that you wouldn't otherwise have picked especially because those films tend to be a little older and those are harder to either find or know that you should watch.

Totally. Tarkovsky. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And Fincher, you know, I think, I don't remember if it was seven or Fight Club, honestly, burst, but probably seven. And I think that took me down to Darius Conji, you know, rabbit hole. And it's just a great. And sometimes that can even lead you to commercials and stuff like that where you see DPs who've come out of that world. And I don't think Finch's commercials really were on my radar at all. around that time when I was just sort of learning to do that. Also his music videos.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember what it was. I felt very proud of myself. But I think my girlfriend was watching the music video for Vogue or something like that, something along those guidelines.

And I was like, did Fincher fucking make this? And she's like, no. And then I Google it. I was like, he did. I was really proud of myself. I was like, I saw the touches. I saw the, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which you kind of weirdly see in like Alien 3, like the same, you know, like that era of, that thing. Actually, to the point of bleach bypass, I did have a question about, you know, you make the, the Lut for Slow Horses. How does that affect? Because I think everyone kind of with digital has a different approach to monitoring. You know, you've got live grading, you've got one Lut, you got 100 Luts, you shoot 709 and then color later, whatever. I assume you were shooting with that designed Lut.

Oh, yeah, big time. How did that affect your lighting and in what ways were you trying or were you trying to protect yourself or were you just like, this is a film stock. If it goes to black, it goes to black. Because some people will build in like a one stop or like a lower or a higher contrast thing each so that they light a certain way and then they have room. What was your approach? Yeah. Yeah, I've been through lots of versions of myself to where I am now. So my philosophy today and on season six of Slavourses was I'm trying to, particularly in television, because I hadn't worked on Slavis before, I didn't know what the politics were going to be.

And so I think you're always trying to protect yourself by saying, here's the show, any notes. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying as early as possible to shoot some tests that are really relevant, not charts in a room. but we had the advantage of while season five were finishing up shooting season five we were able to go into sets I was able to light them I was even able to get some of the returning cast to sit in for me

and we would just experiment and it would be like okay this is this is Ho's office and here's the character of Ho in his chair what are we going to do differently to what they've done before so you know I could think about that

conceptually get the Gaffer to sort of change a few things just for me and then I could come in and do it my way shoot it on what I thought the camera and lenses would be, light it the way I thought it would be. And at this point, I'm just probably using 709, just to, you know, Ari viewing lot, just to sort of be vanilla and do what I think I'm going to be with the base.

And then I'm taking that to the colourist, who was Adam Glasman at Goldcrest in the UK, who's amazing. And he had done Nosferatu around the same time. So he's good at playing with his luck of colour. And he's good. He's good. And so talk to him about what I was thinking and the coldness and the contrast and the bleach bypass and just starting to experiment.

And, you know, I think he did a Kodak, stage 5 emulation as a starting point. And he applied, you know, some sort of built-in bleach bypass. I don't even know if that's the beautiful thing, a filter. And we were playing with grain and we were playing with contrast. And you just play and play and play and play and end up with a couple versions, I think three versions of potential. lots. And then I basically did the process again, back to that same set. Let's pick up where we left off. Here's the lot. Here's probably the best guess of the lot at this point. And now let's light it for night and see how that works. And now let's go back today again and see how that works.

And just playing with it and playing with it. And then going back in again to Adam. And by the way, going outside into the car park and looking at daylight and looking at it sunny and looking at it cloudy and just seeing how this thing is flexing and what pros and cons and whatever. Honestly, just tweaking that and tweaking that during prep and then ending up on the last day of prep with a kind of show and tell, pre-light, costume makeup test, whatever you want to call it, and kind of going, here is the show. Look at this, you know, I monitor in 4K or ultra HD HDR. And I'm like, this is what it's going to look like on Apple TV. and what do we all think?

Is it too dark? Is it too bright? Is it like color? And, you know, not asking the question to, you know, it's not, you're not putting people in a position where they feel they have to give a note to give a note. But it's kind of saying, this is the show, this is what we're going to be providing you. And then if anyone has any concerns, you can talk about it up front. And you're all kind of saying the same thing.

You're not pushing the problem down the road. Because in the past, you know, I've been all different situations where sometimes I'm not there for the grade. Sometimes there barely is a grade. Sometimes the grade, there's an assumption that, oh, we thought you were just messing around. And you know what I mean? We're going to find it. And I want to know that worst case scenario, the show's going to look like that. And if the show is going to wander off somewhere and I'm going to lose control of it,

I'm always going to have that reference to refer to to say, this is where we were. and everyone was happy, and me and the director were happy, and this is where you've taken it. And sometimes it kind of takes that evidence or that, you know, confidence or whatever in what you did to kind of, I don't know, like people can get kind of lost, I think, sometimes in post. They get bored of it. They've been looking at it for so long.

They're like, let's try something new. And it's like, no one's seen this. Only you've seen this for a year now. No one else has seen it. think of this as day one and it's brand new. And none of those negative things applied to slave horses, I should say at all, but my workflow is a ways to protect for that just in case.

So that's kind of what I've become, is a load to testing, really put a lot of work into that lot, and then treat that lot as sacred. And as you're saying about sort of protecting the highlights or shadows, it's more of whatever this is, is this what we want it to be? It's not thinking about changing our mind later.

I'm not really protecting for anything. If I'm losing detail, I've lost detail, and do we like that or not? Is that a problem? Let's talk about it. Are we a low-con look? Are we a high-con look? Yeah, and that's what it is.

So now, here I am shooting another show right now with a different lot, and I've learned to light and worked what that does. And that's who I am right now. And it's a slight tweak of what I was doing on, say, K, theater. But it's still me and it's still relevant to what the project is. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing that's nice, I think, is the show Horses has a sort of, I don't want to say vintage. Bleach bypassed me now feels vintage, right? Because it's not really used anymore. My old trick back in the day, because that was like, you know, we didn't have color grading tools was I learned you, if you black and white the footage, move it. I think this is what they did on 300. Larry showed me they're like how they made the look document. And it was like, they did it in Photoshop, dog.

Just insane work. But if you black and white the footage, duplicate it, put it on top and then set that to overlay. That is sort of a bleach bypass look that you can set the opacity. Anyway, that was complete. Yeah. But looks sort of vintage, but in a very, like, modern way. It's a very clean. It didn't look like overly stepped on, which I thought was.

You still had your film grain. You still had your bleach by the has the colors and everything. But it still has like a modern, not sharp, but modern, yeah, modern look. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. I mean, another thing of horses that's interesting is there's such a, these are imperfect people in an imperfect world and there's a groundedness

to it that I was always trying to maintain so kind of this is a very abstract comparison but bear with me I did the last bus as well and on the last of us we had a very high concept world that we tried to ground, tried to make it as tangible

as real and believable as possible by the way your episode was phenomenal thank you thank you Park of the town for months yeah I I mean, how lucky was I to get that script and that, I mean, unbelievable. It's crazy.

It's crazy to me that I did that. It's crazy. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Thank you. But the concept for that was lighter room in a way where it feels effortlessly cinematic, but also believable. Like you've walked into this rubbled thing and the lights coming through in a pretty way

and catching the dust. And it's doing all these things. like happens in life all the time. You look at a field at sunset and you're like, wow, that's beautiful or a church or whatever. And we just try to create those sort of cinematic, beautiful situations and then let the characters work through them and be imperfect in that space. So you're kind of getting beauty, you're getting cinematic, but you're also getting imperfection. And that was something I tried to do in slow horses in a slightly different way.

but I, you know, if I'm top lighting and light coming through a window and I'm mixing sources and I'm messing around with imperfection again, I'm not kind of going, okay, let's soften that and let's beautify that and let's take off that nose shadow and let's be perfect because that suddenly feels baked and sterile and too overproduced. So it was a similar thing, is that coming up with a formula of kind of color mixing and contrast that was our kind of bass and then letting the actors,

you know, even sometimes cross-shooting to kind of force myself to not be too perfect and particularly in Sly horses where you've got like Gary Oldman, Jack Loudon, who when they perform together, there's just kind of a magic is happening. And I just don't want to get in the way of that. I want to capture it and allow them to just do what's important.

And yeah, I did draw on my kind of last, of us muscle for slow horses in a sort of not obvious way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then that's a good dovetail into Cape Fear because that's far more theatrical. A lot more colors, a lot more hard light, a lot more. Yeah. Was that a fun?

I imagine that was like, all right, now I get to break out a little bit because you'd do it way. Kind of the same thing for a few years. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, no, absolutely. Cape Fear was like almost, it became. sort of, I don't want to say absurd, but like, it was like, what can't we do? I mean, in a way, it was like any idea was humoured, at least. It would be, okay, we want to start upside down

in a mirror and twists out of it and then go through the heat haze and wrap around and land on his ear or whatever. And it would be like, great. You know, it was that kind of a show. So it was a real, because I set the show up, because I did episode one, I had to, I had to sort of tease of what was to come, but I didn't want to kind of do the whole thing all at once up front. So we worked hard on references and where this could go and how crazy the story was going to get. And so it was kind of like we want to end up over here. How do we get there? So particularly in the pilot, we worked really hard to hint at what was to come without going too crazy. And then it was a case of gradually sort of amping all of that up, amping it up and amping it up and amping it.

up. But from a lighting perspective in particular, I got to work with a guff of Bob Bate, who I nearly worked with a couple times in the States, and it worked out on this one. And he had a kind of shared love of more old-fashioned theatrical hard lighting. And for both of us, it was just such a kind of treat to look at a set and be like, where's the shape, where's the hard light? Where can we dapple? Where can we cut, where can we do some, you know, noiry shapes? Where can we bounce into water? All of the, like, playfulness. Like, hard light is so playful. That's what I love about it. You can use one hard light to, you know, backlight somebody and be bouncing into the floor, which is giving them soft light back. And as they move through it, and as they block it and reveal it, the whole room is moving and

breathing and you know you apply rain to that or you apply a wind a curtain moving it just it just creates movement and excitement um and it was so fun to sort of see how far we could push that basically yeah um and every scene became like what do we do now how do we make this different how do we you know you're trying you're being loyal to the world you're being loyal to the story you're trying to you know do all the things you're supposed to do but also we really were playing It was like, what can we get away with? Or can we, what's acceptable in television right now? And it was kind of like anything.

To be honest, that's pretty felt like. It was like, you know, we're getting away with this. Let's just keep playing. It's fun. Yeah. I'm certainly trying to find ways to, I like, it sucks to say, but I've kind of, you know, in film school, all we had was hard light. Unless you had kinos, I got some kinos early on and that was a big deal back then.

But I've forgotten how to work with hard light. So I'm like now really trying to. to force myself to remember. And also, like, I remember a trick that everyone uses that I completely forgot about, which was, I think it was Annie Lee, with someone like that who was like, oh, they'd get the big soft flash and they'd put another hard flash right in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yes, just for the edges. Yeah, it's lovely.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, we could do that. It's so easy now with LED. The, oh, shit, I was going to say something about, well, I guess I'll skip for it. Oh, no, it was the TV. Like, you know, what can you do in? TV. I read something or maybe it was an interview you did. I think we have the same theory about,

I'm sure you've seen people discussing, oh, what they call the Netflix look, which I think is ridiculous, because A, that's not Netflix as Dick Tat. And secondly, no one, I did a, I asked, read it on a cinematography server. I was like, show me examples of what you're talking about. Like, I need a screenshot. And no one gave examples. And, and, and, and, Every fourth person had a different opinion of like if it was good, if it was bad, whatever. But I think we share the same theory, which is that it's what the, what audiences are responding to who have a cinematic eye is that the floor is really high now. Competent images can be made very easily. And whereas before it was like 16mm with bad lighting, you're like, oh, that's an indie film.

And your brain just kind of goes, any film, okay. But now it's on the same platform as Cape Fear is some. you know, basically indie film, but it looks pretty good. And then everyone goes, well, how come they all, quote unquote, bad? I don't agree they look bad, but saney. And I think it's the, and I had heard that you had the same thing. I was like, good, I'm not crazy.

No, not at all. I mean, particularly in TV, what's so hard as well is basically the idea that the DP is solely responsible for something when it doesn't look good. because I think occasionally all is perceived to not look good. Because occasionally, maybe the DP agrees because you can lose control. Like you can shoot. Like I've been lucky, I think. With most stuff I've shot, I've maintained quite a lot of control or got lucky with, you know, whatever.

I've ended up with work I've done. Yeah, that's the show. With Cape Fear, with slow horses, with my last few movies, with The Last of Us, I can say that's what we were trying to do. But I hear all of these stories of people shooting it a certain way and the studios say it's too dark and they just lift the whole thing up and they ditch the lot. And I don't know, maybe occasionally this sort of perceived Netflix look is a studio or somebody somewhere getting nervous

and playing it too safe and it's feeling a little nothing, a little wishy-washy, little whatever. I can't think of an example of that. I think it's a sort of derogatory internet. that thing where people are just trying to find a way to say they don't like something, I think. I think that's what sucks for me is like this oftentimes the people commenting are do not work in film and they don't understand how many moving parts there are.

And exactly as you said, it might not be the DPs thing. It might, you know, it could have been anything, but also you go make a fucking movie. And then tell me, you know, a lot of us would be real happy to get that result. based on certain external forces. You know, you're like, God, I got away with murder on that one. You know? And that murder makes people go, which is honestly, going back to the Fincher thing, is something that I've had to really drill into my head is like him, him.

You know, I'm editorializing, but I do think that it seems that Alien 3, that experience for him made him go like, all right, well, then I'm going to control fucking everything. If I'm going to get in trouble for this, I need it to be my choice. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, none of us are able to do that. But having that mindset should a little bit. You know, like make sure what you're doing is intentional. Make sure that, like, if you're going to get a note,

it's because you did it, not because you phoned it in that day or whatever it may be, you know. Totally. Yeah, exactly. And I think, yeah, the situation, like, that's the other thing is that it's not, like, you can't be idealistic about the industry and creating art. It's not like you're picking. This is the job. want to do next to do this great work and here is my art. A lot of the time most people are just

trying to pay their mortgage and work their way up the budget ladder and you get offered a job and you go, well, we've got to eat sometimes, sometimes, you know, and often, yeah. And, you know, if I, if I, I don't want to, this is the thing. I don't want to say anything, anything about anything, really, because if I got offered a studio comedy that I didn't like the script, but I was in a situation where I needed to work, I needed the money, whatever. And I ended up on this job. And I'm thinking, I don't really like this. And the studio want me to play it very safe.

I would probably end up with images that people would say derogatory things about. But that is a situational reality, I think, a lot of the time for, you know, a kind of capitalist world where people need a job sometimes. And people don't want that to look like seven. You know, they want that to look. funny. It's a different thing. That's also the thing with the internet I've noticed is the internet wants everything to look like seven.

If it doesn't look like seven, then it's bad. And I'm just like, give me a break. But to the earlier point about like watching films that you weren't, maybe you don't like or you didn't know about, I feel like that can apply to the way you work too. Like, all right, now you've got the gig. You know, it can be handy to be like, all right, now I'm making the Princess Switch 5. Yeah. How do I do that?

Like, because I have a hot take, which is that if you can't do it, then you're actually not a good DP. Yeah. Well, you know, if you just go, oh, fuck, I'm doing this to pay the bills, you know, I don't care. You know, then it's like, all right, buddy, well, we're plumbers. Yeah, we're plumbers. Yeah. We are not, you know, magical beings. We're not artists in that regard, you know, we're like, oh, I'm an artiste.

You know. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to do it the record. I've, my version of that, I got the poster right there, is Avenue 5. I did Avenue 5 for HBO, because it was Armando Ionucci. It was my first HBO job. Armanda.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was great. But it was, but there was a million reasons for me to do that job, and I did that job. And the fundamental thing about comedy that makes the DP's job so hard is if it's funny, it's good. if it looked great and isn't funny, it's bad, you know? So you are inherently built in as less important. But what I chose to do was, I sort of thought, well, if it's funny, it's good, et cetera. Like, I can kind of do whatever.

Is it actually in a weird way, it doesn't matter what it looks like. So why not let's just sort of try some stuff? And on Avenue 5, the try some stuff that I was doing was it's sci-fi, it's comedy, it's set in space and let's shoot four cameras at all times. And let's see if I can do that. Let's kind of riddley scot the coverage. And can I light a space to cross shoot and do a two shot and do another angle at the same type?

And it was a real baptism of fire for how difficult that is. And yeah, it taught me like so many lessons about shooting television, big budgets. cross-shooting, coverage, and all of these things that have helped me, honestly, on every job since. So it's a job I think about all the time. And it is in no way a job where I'd go, look at the cinematography of this as me. It almost feels alien to me. It's not really me, but it was me. And I learned probably more on that job than any job that I've done.

And so I really sort of think fondly of that job in a way that I think someone on Reddit talking about cinematography wouldn't be thinking about. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, speaking of learning, I imagine with Cape Fear, I read about the God Notes from Scorsese-Eas, Spielberg. Walk me through that experience and what you learn from them. I mean, it's the funny, like, it's a typical filmmaker great is the studio set. You know what I mean?

Like, you as filmmakers on set are this kind of punk, rebellious group trying to make this thing and the studio is like the man or whatever and you know it's it's too dark or something will come down and it's like ah you know when it's spillberg or scorsese it's like anything they say is going to gazump anything you think because it's like i am formed from you you know it's like if you think this then it must be this and so yeah i i did have one instance on the pilot where me and someone else thought it should be this, and we were informed that Spielberg thought it should be that. And it was genuinely, it was truly like, oh, okay, well, it's that. And there's no, yeah, I mean, really, because there's no,

and I mean that very, like, honestly, purely positively. There was no malice. There was no resentment. It was just like, oh, well, I guess we're wrong. You know, true. it's like that he must see he sees things from such a perspective it's almost like you know yeah we're the kind of ants on the ground and he's the you know i don't know the farmer like it's just different um and so he was right and i think you know i i don't think i should say what that thing was but what that thing was he was right and it is in the show as he said it should be and it's better for it so i don't know that's the thing and i think You've got to eat that humility.

As filmmaking, because you're constantly making decisions. Is it red, is it blue? More or less. All of these things. And you're just kind of making your best estimate of what's going to be best. But I think we're all open to, well, that didn't work. We tried it. It didn't work.

And if someone like Spielweig or Scorsese can guide you, like my God, why wouldn't you take it? It's, it was great. It's, again, surreal. I was in that situation. Yeah. So was most of their notes like spot check type, like, kind of that type of shit? Or was there ever

a moment of sort of education? I didn't have direct enough contact. You know, most of this was coming through the showrun. Yeah, like most of it's through the showrunner or through producers or

you know, like it would be tone things. It would be, it would be, you know, you know, I don't want to misquote. But it would be, you know, they love it when you're doing this kind of thing. Or they said it genuinely, someone at one point said, you know, Spielberg said it looks great. That was it. And it was like, well, I'm done. That's, you know, how, yeah, it'll never get better than right now.

And yeah, it would just be, it would just be, particularly from the show run. The showrunner would be, would say Nick would say, you know, know, Stephen likes it when we're doing this kind of thing. Or Stephen thought, you know, and usually that's to do with tone. Usually that was to do with darkness or not literal darkness, but like the horror aspects or how dynamic we're being with the camera. And they encouraged us to be more dynamic. So, yeah, I don't have any sort of big specific thing because it was so indirect,

but it just was this kind of biding hand. And we knew from Spielberg and Scorsese that they were going to, going to lean into the original score a lot. And that was very beneficial just for tone, just to know you're going to have that backbone of that score. And so we honestly played it on set quite a lot. Like if we were pre-lighting a stage, we would just blast the Cape Fear soundtrack. And it does give you an atmosphere that informs something about the tone and just keeps you in check, I think. Yeah. One thing my Emmy nominated director-producer friend, we shot this short doc in Westbury. Virginia about coal miners.

And he put together a little, it comes out this month. I'll send it to you when it's done. I'm kind of proud of it. Yeah, yeah, please. But he put together a little Spotify playlist of what he wanted for the tone. And I was like, I'm going to ask for this now from everyone. It is such a valuable little tool.

As much as shot deck is useful. Like a good Spotify playlist can really help you figure out what this film's going to be. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, that perfectly takes me back to Slow Horses, because Adam Randall, who directed season six, he is one of my oldest and best collaborators. We've done three movies together and now two seasons of Slow Horses. And Adam's process as a director is the playlist.

Like, the music is everything. And so he has tracks for songs, tracks for scenes so specifically. And they're not always going to be in it. They're just informative of what it is. And he sends me a playlist for every job that we do, particularly with movies. He can lay out, this is the film. This scene is this. So if we're pre-lighting or if we're shot-listing or if we're rehearsing sometimes, he'll play the song.

And when he rides to work every morning, he's playing that song for that day's work. And I have that information as well. So you can just kind of go, oh, it's that, that's the vibe. It's a bit cheeky. This is written as serious, but he's telling me it's actually a little bit cheeky or it's a little more. Or, you know, again, it's written as dry, but he's actually found the horror in it. And this song, this music, this score, whatever it is, is telling me the atmosphere he wants. It's so incredibly useful.

And that is genuinely his playlists are like, when I, when we know we're going to, going to be doing a new project together and he sends through the playlist. That is such an amazing moment for me of just like, here we go. We've got a new one. Here's our new thing. Yeah. It's great. I love it. When you're editing your own stuff, like the music is always what ties it together. So it just, it's, I feel stupid for not going like, I should have the music first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then obviously not the music you're going to end up using, but oftentimes. But yeah, yeah, such a great. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, Even without that, I guess if you shoot the same scene, you know, like one way, but apply, you know, light, airy music to it versus dark, heavy music, the perception of the visuals is going to change as well.

You know, that kind of, yeah, it's, I don't know, it's really interesting how it affects things, yeah. Yeah, as much as I'd like to dominate the rest of your evening, because I feel like to have for a while, I should let you go. Yeah. But I'd love to have you back on, you know, when this next show's done. I feel like I put in a request to talk to you when Last of Us came out. Oh, really? And that didn't happen. So it was cool that you finally.

Yeah. Well, that was a handful of years ago. I didn't. I feel like now I have a bit more cachet. Okay. Well, I didn't have press on that. I didn't really know what I was doing yet. To be honest.

Early on, I don't think it was. was you, but early, I only talked to PR people, but I think I was just scattershotting, like, does anyone have this? And, you know, if you're not on their roster, they're like, we've got other things to worry about. But, um, uh, well, you're actually the first person I've spoken to about slave horses six out of interest. Um, let's go. This is, this is the, this is, because usually, yeah, I'm still kind of figuring out what I'm going to be talking about and stuff. Um, and this has been like the, the perfect, um, you know, because we be talking about everything. Um, you know, because we were talking about everything.

everything. This doesn't been like a big cell, which is great. Yeah. I try not to. Also, I would get really bored if I did that to everyone. Yeah. I mean, and variety's going to do that, you know? Like, yeah, yeah. And also the weird thing about talking about this, this season of slow horses is I've been telling people for like a year and a half, nearly two years, just how great season six is, but it still isn't out yet. And so there's a weirdness to that. Like, you need the ultimate deep people to tell you it's great. Like, yeah, you, like, you have to, Hold on. I had it, imagine on The Last of Us.

Like, I had shot episode three of The Last of Us. And my agents are saying, so how did it go? And I'm like, like, I think it might be the best thing ever. But I don't know. Like, I just, it's kind of like, you've just got to wait because, like, maybe I'm completely deluded. It could, this could be trash. We could be mocked, whatever. And then, so when it does come out and people love it, it's really great.

It makes you feel not insane. And I have kind of got that season six of horses. And the early reviews were 100% run tomatoes. And it's the best season yet and all these nice things so far. But the show doesn't come out for another week. So yeah, I'm still a way thing to know for sure what we did. We'll see. Waiting for all the bad Reddit comments.

No, actually, they're probably going to be happy because it looks like seven. But also, aren't they like they're already working on? season eight or something. Yeah. I mean, whatever. Yeah. Yeah,

it's complicated the way they do. But yes, they're very good at staying ahead. Yeah. So this, then I'll let you go. I just need to commend the whole team. Yeah.

On making a show that we can stick with while it's still in our minds. Like what is a five, five years, six seasons. Phenomenal. What the hell, man? Like other shows,

it's like seven years. Between eight episode seasons? Like, I know there's a lot of moving parts, but come on, man. Like, we used to have 25 episode seasons of, you know, Stargate. They figured it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, each season is in 110-day shoot, which is a lot of prepping, a lot of shooting. And you've got Oscar-winning Gary Oldman.

You've got Jack Loudon. You've got Kristen Scott Thomas. There's an awful lot of producing to keep this thing going and going and going and going. because you've got to be prepping the next one while you're in post on the last one to keep that up. And they do it. It's an amazing thing to witness and be a part of, yeah.

It really is. And like, you know, the writing is so great. And seeing Gary Oldman land on set with thoughts about how he's going to play a scene, honestly. I like, you know, some of the best rehearsals I've ever been in. I sit there on a Monday morning and Gary has an idea and it's just like he's just remarkable. It's honestly such a privilege to see him approach a scene. It's amazing.

It's the same thing as the Spielberg note. He goes, I should do this. I guess you should. I don't, I'm not going to argue. Two things about Gary quickly. He knows his lines inside out. He has done so much homework and he always comes to set with one brilliant idea. idea. He'll just say, what if I, and whatever the, whatever the thing is, just gives the scene

and knew something, a new, like, it really becomes better than what was on the page, and it was already good on the page. So, yeah, he's kind of magic. And really other nice thing about Gary is he's very interested in cinematography. He's very interested in, he, you know, his wife, Giselle, as a photographer. And he's so he's very, like, visually minded. on Instagram. Yeah, she's amazing. She's there every day with him, taking great pictures. And he'll, he'll come into the DIT tent and sit with us and watch. And he, you know, Gary's the one who will say to me, I saw that thing you did on that scene with Jack with that little thing in the corner. I really like that. And it's like a DP thing. You know, he spots a D.P. thing, but no one else would. So that's, yeah, God,

I don't know. What privilege. Yeah. One of my ideas for the show is like, you know, doing this for almost, it's going to be seven years next year. I kind of wanted to have like either directors or actors who are like super DP nerds, like cinematography nerds and just have like a month of that. I've always thought like that would be, that would be really fun and informative because they're, you know, they're on the receiving end of it. All of our brains are on this side of the line, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Patrick Wilson was that on Cape Fair. He's a filmmaker.

He knows, okay, I've got to reset that thing quickly because you're not going to be able to use this because it wasn't like that on the other side. He's thinking he knows how to catch. He knows how to use the camera. He knows how to use light. He's got that kind of, I don't know, Tom Cruise thing that comes to mind where it's like

he just knows the thing that works for the camera in such an interesting way. Yeah. I wish I did. I look terrible in photos. I'm going to let you go because I know it's later over there but please stay in touch and yeah as soon as you can get back please please do

I'd love to thank you frame and reference is an Albot production produced and edited by me Kenny Macbillen 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 Thank you.