Frame & Reference Podcast - 29: "Down with the King" Director Diego Ongaro & DP Danny Vecchione

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference podcast, Kenny talks with director Diego Ongaro & cinematographer Danny Vecchione about the Cannes Film Festival select "Down with the King." In "Down with the King", a famous rapper (played by Freddie Gibbs), disillusioned with the music industry and the pressures of being a celebrity, leaves the city and his career behind to find himself in a small-town farming community. Diego Ongaro is a French director living in rural Connecticut. After directing children’s programs for French television in his early 20’s, he wrote and directed four acclaimed short films. "Bob and the Trees", his first feature film, had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, won the top prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic and screened in more than 20 international festivals. "Down with the King" is his second feature film. Danny Vecchione is a Brooklyn, NY based cinematographer, "Down with the King" is the second feature collaboration between Ongaro and Vecchione, the first being "Bob and the Trees." Other projects Vecchione has shot are "Amira and Sam", released by Drafthouse Pictures (with a Mondo poster!), "Kinyarwanda", the Audience Award Winner at Sundance, and the documentary series "Raw Craft", sponsored by Balvenie, featuring Anthony Bourdain. He has an MFA from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a focus in cinematography. Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we're talking with Danny Vecione and Diego Ongaro, DP and director, respectively, of the new film Down with the King, which just premiered at Khan, Cannes, the French Festival. This was a fantastic conversation. They shot this film. The movie is about a sort of top of his career rapper, who kind of becomes disillusioned with his career trajectory or the rap game in general, however you want to say it,

and goes to a sort of lives in a farm, at a farm to kind of just figure his own his shit out. And it's super fascinating film. It is acted by Freddie Gibbs is the main character who does a fantastic job. It's his first film.

And they shot the whole thing on two Black Magic Pocket 6Ks, which you would not guess by the quality of the film. Not to say that the black magic cameras aren't good, but it looks like any film you would see in the cinema. And they didn't light it. Well, they did. I mean,

it's lit in the sense that they placed lights but they didn't it was all naturally lit you know they used practicals they used the sun very rarely would they use um you know cinema lights at all which i'll let them talk about um but so it's it's a great uh this is a great episode to listen to if you're the kind of person who's been waiting to hear how something could be made with minimal gear um and so this fantastic film was made um very simply but very elegantly And we talk about that and all kinds of other things and really had a great conversation with Danny and Diego. So, yeah, I've thoroughly enjoyed this one. And I think you will too.

So instead of taking up all your time, I will let you get to listening. So here it is my interview with the DP and director of Down with the King. How did you come up with the story and how did you decide on how? having it be primarily a sort of character study that is improvved. And by the way, Freddie Gibbs is dope. Way to find a great, great guy to act. Yeah. Yeah, he's amazing.

Yeah, he's amazing. Quite a surprise. It all started about 10 years ago. I read an article about a French rapper, young rapper, who was about to come out with his second album and he was talking in an interview about how difficult it had been for him to write a new album. He was only 18 years old. He felt like he had talked about everything that happened in his life.

You know, he was barely 18 in the first album. And it was extremely successful in France. And he felt so much pressure at such a young age to, you know, come up with something new. And he was lacking the experience. He was becoming suicidal. And it was really interesting to hear that from rappers, which usually they don't show themselves as vulnerable. you know you always see the tough side so that stuck with me for years and then I I made my first feature which Danny was one of the DP they he co-DPed the film with Chris Teague it was called Bob in the

Trees and it was a character study of an older lager in western Massachusetts who struggles to keep his business afloat we shot that with a very documentary approach a lot of improv, a lot of characters playing their real self sort of, you know, within like fictional, within a fictional canvas. And after we finished that film, I felt like I wanted to tell another story set in that same community, blue collar farmers, loggers in western Massachusetts. It's a pretty rural part of the state. And that's where I've been living for 15 years. So I know that community really well. And I wanted to tell this. another story but from an outsider perspective this time and I had that story about the rapper and

he would be the outside character the outsider in the story and I wanted it I wanted that story to be told from his perspective you know sort of a rapper meet career at the end at the end of his rope doubting and being there totally fished out of the water um writing a new album and then falling in love with this, um, this countryside, the people around farming and all that, uh, you know, something you wouldn't expect, uh, to see in a film about rap, uh, where it's usually, it's about the business, it's about the grind, like climbing to the top here. We're like, we're, start from the top and, and it's kind of a downfall from there. Um, you know, and, and I've always been interested in, in that process of working with non-actors, uh, the way I did.

in Bobner Trees in the first film and working was in that same documentary approach. And working, in this case, really wanted to work with a real rapper who hadn't necessarily done films and then work, you know, used his character, his persona and personality and his words and therefore the improv. So my screenwriter, Shabby, Moliath, he's French, I'm French myself too, we wrote together a treatment, a 30-page treatment, you know, it's a breakdown of scenes by scenes with like a bunch of paragraphs like detailing, like what happens in the scenes. But we threw a few words in there, but it was not scripted. I mean, the idea was for the main characters like Freddie, who plays

a rapper and Bob, who plays a farmer, they're going to be using their own words within a given situation. And we're going to have to adapt to that, from that, meaning, you know, Danny, a lot of handheld, being sort of a lot of it in a documentary setting, you know, that we kind of work with. And sometimes when it's more scripted, we have a better idea of,

you know, and we can fine tune more things. But Danny, maybe you want to take it from there and talk about that aspect. Yeah, it's a, well, and the two films to Bob in the Trees and Down with the King

are, characters that show up like Bob in Bob in The Tree's is Bob in Down with the King so there's Bob's great Bob is kind of the best I love he's amazing and and his farm it's his you know a lot of it is taken from the real life's like that's farm like that's Bob's farm like he lives on that farm and it's a family farm and and you know supports I think probably six families or something like that and it's like a really magical place to shoot too I mean it's an incredible location I think the, uh, that was really cool. But, but the, you know, from bomb on the trees, we kind of developed it's just a very, it's a very unique way to shoot because it is like a doc narrative hybrid that

you're, you're looking at and stuff like that too. But you don't want it to feel, we never wanted to feel, uh, messy and like just the cameras finding stuff all that. We wanted to kind of lock into, you know, direct cinema type veritas stuff. We didn't want to be like shaky handheld everywhere, all that stuff. It's not, uh, real housewives of Massachusetts. It's not really. We just got past that, which is good. But yeah, and it's fun. And I love shooting doc stuff too.

So it's a really cool way to shoot because there is no script, but you do have the story. Like Diego knows where the whole thing is going. And they'll be kind of like lines in there. But it was really weird because when we shot Bob in the T's, my friend, Chris Teague, he shot the short, actually. There's also a short of Bob in the Trees. It was made prior to the feature.

And then, and he's explaining to me, he's like, there's not a script, it's an outline, we're just going to kind of follow around. I was like, this sounds kind of stride. I'd just never done it before. But then after we kind of got in the swing of it, I was like, I really kind of got into that way of shooting. Because you're shooting really like, in my mind for both movies, and particularly with Down the King, I think we kind of had some new ideas that we're able to bring to that film.

But I was just in my mind shooting a documentary the whole time. Right. So it's kind of like, it's kind of a. different way. It's a very, it's a very interesting workflow and stuff like that, too. And I think the way the, the, the, the, the day goes to kind of reflects, I think, uh, Diego's personality too and things like that. It's like, it's like, you know, the crew's like, he wanted super small cameras and super small crew. So it's like very condensed on. It's not like a huge production. You know, it's like a really skeleton type, you know, as few people as possible, smallest rigs as possible.

I, you know, all that. I literally have my second note. See, I'm, sometimes I'm bad at taking notes. I got home from an event last night. So I was like, oh, shit, let's go. All I put was Freddie opening pig scene. That's a great note, bud. That's a good note. But then the second one is just, it's a dock. And it true, that that comes across. But in a way that, in the sense that it very, it feels very real and like you're just suddenly dropped into this person's life in a way that is, that is relatively compelling. Right. That was, That was the goal, really, you know, that it feels real, that we have the real deal. We have people like Freddie Gibbs, who's like the extremely talented rapper, people like Bob,

who's just like this bigger-than-life guy, you know, who's this real farmer and Lager. And then we have a supporting cast, too, which is Jamie Newman and, and David Cromholtz, who were also able to bring a lot of that improv and their skill as actors. having this like authenticity was like crucial I think to be so you so you're in it you believe it you believe it and then and then working on the on the craft and the storytelling and the editing to make it you know not boring basically what you said and to be to be able to be immersed in that world like quickly believe it and be compelled by the characters and wanting to be to stay with them really well that method I suppose was sort of, I guess, co-signed by Nomad Land earlier this year, you know, getting non-actors to be. Because how many of the people in that film are like non-actors? Well, there's, well, Bob is. Freddie was not a professional actor, but that was his first film.

So I don't know, but it's kind of in the middle. And then Jamie Newman and Dave in Crumholtz are not. Obviously, Sharon Washington was not. And then the rest of the cast was kind of mostly non-actors, you know, for like the small roles. Yeah, like in the hardware store and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. So Daniel, talk to me about how, how did you approach lighting all these scenes? Because it looks very unlit, which I know is kind of the best thing in the world.

It is totally not lit, I would say. So zero lighting package. Well, I only lit stuff when I absolutely had to light it, basically. So we were trying to go with it. Yeah, the stuff at night. Well, there's a party scene that kind of goes off the rails in the movie. And we had a bunch of like Christmas lights strung up everywhere and all that stuff. So we, we, I had to put like a light mat four up overhead because it was just nothing in the middle of the room.

That was just like, I just could, we just couldn't shoot in there. So just up top? Yeah. there was these like beams that I kind of like cartilineed off and just hung a on a light met four got it to the right you know the right color temp you know probably around 2,800 or something like that dimmed it down a little bit put that little magic cloth on there and then also in the there's a very short scene in uh Jamie's kitchen uh Jamie Newman like where he comes over after after he can drive store house and the I just I did the same thing I just used the same kind of

technique in a kind of a different way with the light met four um because there was just exposure. I just couldn't, I couldn't do that. We did have the benefit of, we had the main hero house, which is in real life down the block from Bob's farm, strangely, in Sandus Fields, in the Berkshires. So we had a really close, you know, like all our, I guess we wouldn't, maybe 90% Diego's of the locations were within two miles of shooting. Great for company moves. Boom. Yeah. So it was amazing. And then, and then, well, the concert scene, we actually shot at mass mocha and that was all like we had to like that like a concert so that's that was an actually fairly you know sizable you know concert kind of thing that we had to we had to make

look like a concert so we had that wasn't a real concert no that we had we had to do it during COVID too it was a mess well we we had stock footage and then we had so the large the big bit it looks huge it looks enormous yeah it looks just like like there's this stock stuff that's just like massive and it's just like the chanting and the sound design helps out obviously too but we had um six we had like 16 extras and we shot everything on like long lenses with like real active kinetic cameras just and just like and then we're on stage with freddie too but we there was a lot of discussion that was and that was the only other we had a storyboard that scene out too because it was just like how are we going to make this look like a like a show with like no people right right so so that

was that was way more that that scene out of the whole movie was the most traditional movie scene even though it feels I think similar to the rest of the film too yeah the I actually didn't put together that you guys did that did this film so recently because I've definitely seen a few let's call them COVID films that right are very apparently like oh we can't do anything well let's get one actor and have them stand outside, you know? Not that they're bad films, but it's just kind of apparent that that's the case, you know?

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I didn't put that together. Which is, when it's also, we shot at, like, last October, November, because we really wanted to get that past, like another thing, like the passing of seasons and, like, thematically tying into Freddy's characters, like, you know, from autumn into winter kind of thing.

But, yeah, it was challenging. But we were kind of also sort of, we were so it's very deep in the country there too like you're in the woods so you're kind of potted together too and we were also doing like getting tested all you know like we were trying to follow as many safety protocols as we could you know for for everyone's safety but it's like you're you're not coming into contact with that many other people and the testing was up you know you know at least three times a week I think if I remember right whatever the yeah three times I mean we were following the protocol like the stack protocol like being tested three times a week

we had medic uh COVID supervisor on set I mean it was a big logistic you know for a small movie like ours uh I was definitely a big chunk of a big chunk of a budget and slow as slowing us down too it was it was really tricky I mean and really being scared every day you just you just wonder if someone's going to test positive or even like even like a false positive would take us down like really so that was I was really worried about that but how did you how did you guys approach sort of audio and lensing. So you did this on two, what was it, two pocket six Ks? So yeah, we had two pocket camera 6Ks from Black Magic, two video assist seven inch monitors. And then we had two, and the, there was two cameras. Anytime there was dialogue happening,

there was two cameras. So Connor Lawson, who's did additional cinematography and B. Cam on the film. He's been my AC forever. And I think he did a, he did a great job. He kind of stepped in and did this great stuff. We just kind of synced up together and we kind of moved around the room, sort of mismatched lenses.

But we shot on the Atlas Orion anamorphic lenses on the pocket, which I just listened to your podcast, which was super cool. He was great. He was really cool. And I didn't know he did Perilinks too. I know. What he told me that? I was like, what?

I used those things. forever ago. I know. The tomahawks were super cool. And I was like, this guy's obviously a bright guy. So, but anyway, we, I wanted to have the, and Diego can talk more about this too, but there's this two worlds meeting. And I wanted the lenses. Diego really wanted the stuff small. Because on bobbing the trees, it was like, Chris Teague and I and one assistant with backpacks tromping around in the snow. And that was it. There was no camera cart. There was no, Diego didn't have a monitor. it was just like we're he was just with the actors and just like very present and and he and he want to keep the same vibe but we had we did have a lot of discussions in in pre pro uh diego and i about

how to how to approach it and i and we kind of landed on this thing with freddie's character being like you know we're kind of talking about like where he is in the in the hip hop world and he's saying he's like maybe one of the top 10 rappers like bottom half of the top 10 rappers in the world right and i was like i wanted the the the the that high end you know kind of hip hop lifestyle reflected in some way and then also this farming lifestyle and the the joining of the two worlds like the black magic six ks that then bump down to three point two they have an amorphic setting on it so you get you get you three three point two k anamorphic setting and then i didn't realize initially even that the atlas orions have an eF mount option oh were you adapting no so i took we took the adapter

off and because to get the PL mount in the in the black magic's a whole operation that I think kind of semi almost destroyed a camera in the camera test but then I didn't realize that because it's a lot like you have to go into the thing and and you know it's a it's like an hour and a half for me to kind to do so it's not built for it it's not well you can build it yourself for it but it's a you know I was I was like it's like the little tiny pins that are it's a it's a it's a it's a not my, no, it took me a while, but we ended up doing that. But then they have the EF mounts. So the camera and the lenses were able to go together. And they were still a little big, but I was like, I think if I can approach it still in the small way, we'll get this

animorphic, this kind of like this meeting of the two worlds that we're looking for this and reflect Freddy's character as well, basically. And it is big. We'll use basically like easy rig vario fives and like that combo and just kind of, just kind of was able to kind of get this hopefully steady can't you know steady handheld vibe plus we the sticks and stuff like that too but it was um i don't know i think it worked out well the way and we also wanted to shoot when we have the anamorphics like the you know you can't open up to all the way on really any anamorphic i mean you can but it's not going to give you the best results so we're trying to shoot too cool it's a little too much yeah and the atlases which i love the atlas the orions but they if you open them up

it starts getting the shaved kind of boca thing that like gets cut off as it looks kind of strange because I mean you're supposed you're not supposed to shoot him wide open so we're trying to shoot it like like a four like around a four usually four or five six split sometimes two eight four in that range though we were we were kind of hitting that F stop basically through the whole through the whole film so we were able to kind of do that with the black magic too because it goes it has that dual ISO thing too so you can jack it up to 3200 which does introduce noise but like we added a bunch of grain in in uh post anyway so it's like we knew it was going to be kind of dirtied up and you know natural as possible looking uh so were you just pulling focus

by hand or did you have um aces with you we did we had uh betts wilkins and marina king with the two aces and they were great so they marina's a b cam betts was on a cam and they had basically we had this time Diego had a monitor which is kind of wild for him but he's he's uh But the Marine and Betts would just be, you know, remote focusing. And then Diego had two images up on a seven-inch monitor all the time. And that was all the monitors. We had three seven-inch monitors, two for Aces and one for Diego. But so we basically did that.

So we would just be operating. Focus was being done by them. And then, but that was it really for crew. We didn't have like a G&E crew or anything. It was just like, you know, that was about it. How are you handling wireless out of the, black magic because they don't have an SDI right it there was a lot of and the first two and a half days was kind of crazy because the cameras just came out and I couldn't find I only found

one video of some guy in England who had done this combo so it was kind of a beta it worked in the camera tests because we tested a bunch of different cameras basically in in New York but then when we got it on set you know you really try it and I was trying to make it super small. I was trying to really shrink it down, but you still have the anamorphics and you have to, like, we basically ended up having Terodeck, you know, uh, bolts. Like, and everything's kind of just Velcroed onto everything because there's not that much surface area of a camera to, right, to put it on too. But, um, yeah, we basically ended up doing, doing that. It was basically a turdick bolt 3,000s that we would, would kick out to, to the monitors and stuff like that.

Gotcha. But the first, the first, the first. Three days was dice because I had it was like we were also recording out to a Samsung SSD drive. Yeah. And the ACAM that USB C cable was faulty which I did not know and took a second to figure out plus the power distribution that I originally had was not good and my camera kept on crashing and stuff like that but it was after we figured it out it was fine and then we were like smooth sailing after that but there's just it's weird because it's like you're just making up this camera build as you go. You know, it's like, you know, it's not like a thing.

So it took a little bit of time. And then afterwards, it just started, we just started, got, I got into a groove. And it was like really, really smooth after that, which was, which was cool. I, I shot a music video on that exact same combo. Oh, really? Yeah. And, and, and, except I was pulling focus by hand. Oh, wow.

On the, on the Orion's? Yeah. Oh, God. It was fun. And I, it's called. blacked out, if anyone, by Alexa Vann and the blackouts. But one thing that that was random to me was I was recording to the T5 and that same thing, that USBC cable.

I think we should all go to USBC in general, but you need a locking connector. I think we in the film industry need to just decide on maybe a news, maybe like locking, that we don't have to change the protocols, but just something that is built to a camera that locks H.D.MI and USBC. into place. I was just going to mention the HDMI thing. Yes. I am. Yes. You want to start a club on this. I'll sign a petition. I'm ready. Yeah. It's every time I had the thing on a tripod and or a monopod and anytime, fun random fact, if this happens to anyone, I would, if I went down to the ground too hard, it would reset the camera.

Right. Right. random right right yeah yeah it's a lot of stuff how did you do the power how did you do the power did you have any like taradex stuff happening or was it no no so it was just the camera so I was just swapping batteries like a motherfucker yeah okay I use the internal battery yeah I got you yeah it was it was caged up just for it was literally just caged up so that I could put the T5 on it honestly right which is funny because the T5 gets a nice little clamp but there's no I Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Well, we got like, I mean, Bets and Marine and Connor and I were like just,

it was like a little tinker toy thing at the, because I was staying with Rob, the producer and Connor, the, uh, B-CAMOP and additional scenario, we were staying at the hero location, the whole time. And like the lower floor, which is never shot was like the camera layer and had like a, you know, like a wood burning oven and a pool table and just like a bunch of camera stuff that was just kind of always ready to like, you know, we never really broke the cameras down. They were just always kind of built ready to go and they were just kind of

be in that room basically but it was like a little like the first little bit was just like you know mad scientist laboratory getting these cameras going but it was uh it was fun to do i mean in hindsight it's stressful but but they they definitely you know we're asking a lot of the cameras too to to i mean it's like it's a lot to ask of these these things because they're amazing they're like two thousand dollar bodies and you're trying to you know i have to give black magic like credit like the for for any like problems anyone's ever had with their gear yeah you you can't you can't you can't complain like you're getting such a great image out of what is almost a free camera like they yeah you can buy resolve and they're just like here have a camera right it is great

i mean they do a lot too i mean like we also had to do like a lot because we're not lighting it and we have windows and freddie gibbs who's like uh you know he's like somewhat uh darker a complexion kind of guy. So it's like we have to kind of keep that in mind with no lights. Like you're, it's a really like your toe in the line of a lot of stuff because you're trying to keep highlights outside and not light him and just to have him wander wherever you want to go in the house.

And like, you know, and there's like, I mean, there's one scene that I was like, oh, God, I thought I had it. But it's like, it's like him talking to the, um, uh, uh, uh, what's his name? Beatmaker. Oh, Michael's a fair. The beat maker. Yes.

Um, where to the faith. I was like super under and I thought I had it, but like you were shooting it and the light just like went down in that scene and I was like, I think it's the I can, I think I could pull this up in post but it's like, I don't know, it's emotionally the scenes there too, which is good, but that was the one that I was like, I was like, you can't really stop

the, you know, this is going, like the scene's going. It's like, you know, you got to keep, you know, kind of ride it out, I think. And you were shooting raw for the whole thing? Yeah, be raw for the whole the whole thing. At what compress, just like maxed out compression? What do we shoot? I think we shot

eight to one. Yeah. Because the data just gets insane. Yeah. How are you wrangling that without a DIT with you? Originally, originally Marina was doing it and it was just taking so long that it was kind of getting not fair for her to do it.

And she was, but it's just like taking like two and a half extra hours at night. So we ended up bringing in a downloader to come in and deal with that. I probably like, I don't know, after the first week and a half or two weeks or something like that. Yeah. And it was like a 20-day shoot, too, which is like a nice, you know, a nice somewhat comfortable shooting schedule, which is cool.

So how much data were you generating per day? It was a lot. Because they eat up, like the B-Raws files are like at 8 to 1. I think we shot 8-1. I can't remember. All these tests. From my test, yeah, so I, writing for ProVee. Video Coalition, which sort of sponsors this podcast and sponsors, they only listen to the first five

minutes. They won't know what I'm talking about. But yeah, I did a review of the pocket six. Oh, I did that review for the rental house anyway, so who cares? But strange, for anyone in Los Angeles. But the thing I noticed was like eight to one compression functionally looked identical to even the better version, even nicer cameras like. That was kind of the butter zone. Yeah, that's what we did. I mean, is it the third setting, 8 to 1? On the thing, we used that.

Yeah, there's like the big one and then the two little ones. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, that's the one we used. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could remember, I think it's, I mean, it's been like a year, almost a year since we shot us. I was like trying to remember, but it is, we did a camera tests out. I think I paid my daughter in Robux to go do a camera tests on my sidewalk with me.

But we tested all the compressions. and we and Rob is just telling me that we did in fact shoot eight to one uh for the stuff but I can't remember how many how many terabytes we eventually ended up with even because it would depend on day to day because it's like the nature of the shooting was like right you know like real like we're saying like really documentary style so it's like you know for stuff like the dinner scene like you know that's like a two hour thing where you're just like two cameras just like you know, you're just rolling for two hours and wandering around

getting stuff basically. Yeah, don't quote me, but we had two 14 terabytes drives and we used basically less than one and a half. So we were around 18, 19, 19 terra, maybe for the whole film.

Okay, well, that's not, that's not horrifically terrible for hard drive space necessarily. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty good. Yeah, the 8 to 1 made a big difference on that for sure yeah much bigger um it's wild i was just talking to another dp of just a friend of mine about how like we spent so many years obsessing about cameras and now it feels like just pick one they're all good like you can't can't go wrong with the image

your storage isn't going to be horrific unless you're you know even even red raw isn't like huge you know um shooting raw on my c 500 not that I mean it's a little big but it's not like horrific it's just cameras are so cool now we can focus we can focus on story now which they told us we should do it is boring yeah how are you handling and these because I know the 6k doesn't have a UV filter yeah what do you call it the yeah it doesn't have internal NDs or any you know or any like you know so we did What we ended up going with was a variable ND. So we had like a LMB map boxes.

And we would, and we instead of like, because it would have just been so much time. And like just with the weather changes and stuff too. Um, I was like, let's just do variable ND. Keep it super simple.

And like Connor and I would kind of like team up, you know, head over kind of look at our stuff. Be like, okay, this is, this is good. And go separate out. And, um,

And shoot that way. And we hit, we hit almost all of it pretty good, though, together. There was one scene like we had, there was like a little bit tricky stuff in, in post. We did the, um, the post, Alex Berman did the color correct at Goldcrest in the York. And it was like amazing by way. Shout to him. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks. It was, Alex is great too. It's, and it's kind of cool because it's the color, it's such a naturalistic movie, but the color is not entirely rooted in, in realism. Sure. You know, like, it's a little like. you know it's a little bumped out of total reality which I kind of like but it was I mean Diego and I were talking about that Diego's like I don't want like an Instagram vibe either but

it's like finding that like where you know how do you deal with you know such a such a I don't know something like like Diego styles like kind of aggressively naturalistic aggressive realism what enhanced what do you what do they call it uh enhanced realism or hyper realism I don't know David Fincher has a word for that and I've stolen it a bunch, but it's escaping here right now. But yeah, we had a fun. It was a fun color crack thing. We just kind of finished it too.

Like we went to can and it was like we had to have the thing colored and they were like, it was down to the hours of like the download and uploads that they needed in France. It was like that week. It was like that day that they needed it. And it was like we finished like, you know, right then, which is kind of cool. They didn't, uh, they didn't ask. for a DCP, they were cool with just like a file? No, no, no, we sent two DCPs, but we sent the DCP over, it was an early screening

for distributors in France before the festival, like 10 days before, and we needed to, it was in a theater. We needed to send out that one over the internet, and it was pretty stressful. There's nothing was working, obviously. I was thinking about the role of the DP. You can go forever doing corporate work. you can go forever doing these things that are more formulaic, but you potentially won't be fulfilled creatively.

And it feels like in the film, that was kind of Freddie's thing, is he wasn't feeling creatively fulfilled. He felt like he was kind of going through the motions. And I was wondering if you kind of have experienced that in your life as a DP, you know, maybe in your day-to-day job, if you even have one of those shooting or anything like that.

I guess in a weird way I was really attracted to this well I mean I really like working with Diego just in in general I think he's like a very interesting the way he thinks about movies is very interesting kind of not a traditional movie making thing and I'm really drawn to that sort of out of the box kind of you know it's new it feels new and exciting each time right You know, because it's not like, I don't shoot like this with anybody else. You know, I shoot a lot of documentary stuff and everything. But, I mean, I think as far as the story goes and stuff like that, too, it's also like Freddie in the movie is having basically a midlife crisis and is feeling

unfulfilled creatively, even though he's really at the top of his game in the movie. He's just not doing it for him anymore. But I feel like there was a period where I was like just banging out features like one after. It's just like, I was shot like 12 features back to back and I just like burned out. I was like, I'm exhausted. It's exhausting, you know, so much to shoot a feature, you know, and some did well. Some did, you know, didn't go anywhere. You know, it just depends.

You know, they had, you know, ups and downs and everything. But, but I was like just burned, I just burned out on shooting. I was like, I cannot shoot. I can't fathom shooting another one of these and just like giving that much, you know, and like not seeing my daughters, being away, you know, and stuff like that. So I ended up doing more, you know, some corporate stuff, but do a lot of documentary, like just a ton of documentary work for a bit too. And like this movie, I was like, this is super interesting, like to do. And I was like, I could totally relate to that.

I could like really dive into this character as a guy who's like, you know, at this stage in his life too. And I just, I just really enjoyed it. I like, I think out of everything I've shot, I related to this on a personal level more than I related to any other movie. and like you know and i guess i just tried as hard as i could you know like you just i just tried to give in as much as i could too for and and uh you know do as much prep and as much thinking and you know was was talking with diego a ton and we were talking about this for like years too actually because it's like he was trying to get money it's really hard for him to get money for it and finally like it just sort of came up and dago can talk much more about this with

breaker and all that stuff too because he said the script i read the first script i don't know three four years ago we wrote we wrote the script we started riding in 2015 and we were kind of done was it halfway through 2016 and yeah it took years of finding the right person for the cast to play that role and trying to find the right partners you know who can back us financially and it was it was hard it was so hard and you know banging on so many doors and getting a lot of nose and you know kudos to Breaker Studio who stepped in and then produced that film with us. I mean, they were really amazing.

But yeah, it came after I gave up for this on this movie for a little bit and started working on construction and, you know, was a contractor and decide to revive it and give it like one last go. And so Freddie and was like totally fell in love with his character and his persona. And as soon as COVID hit, I was like, this is it. I'm going to get in touch with this guy. His story is canceled. He is stuck home with his kids.

And this is the moment. If he's going to look at it out of script, at a different proposition from what he usually gets, this is the time to do it. And it worked. You know, a month later, we were talking with him and his manager. And he was really into the character. and really relating to what the character go through and also had a big desire for acting. So he came on board pretty quickly. And then Breaker Studio came in after that.

And we were able to make it happen. It was in five weeks in the middle of COVID in the fall. Yeah, that's how to kind of, that's how it happened. But yeah, it was years of talking Danny and I about this thing and, you know, and checking in and there's something new. no, sorry, just checking in like three months later and like, but yeah, we definitely had time to think about it and to adjust and then, yeah, until we were able to make it. There's a phrase that I've stolen, there's plenty I've stolen, but, which is, you know, people say like, oh, fix it in post and it's like, no, fix it in pre.

Absolutely. You know, fix it in pre. I think it's, pre-production is super undervalued, especially for how inexpensive it is. you know exactly yeah I mean that scene of the concert is a good example we talked about it earlier and we knew we didn't have the people we didn't have the extras because of COVID we had that big beautiful stage but that was empty really so we really planned it out because it's it's a scene towards the end of the movie and if you mess that scene up the whole movie is going to collapse So it was really important to nail it and to prep it as much as we could looking ahead of time at, you know, stock footage that's going to match the lighting we want to do, you know, thinking about storyboarding and doing all of these camera angles ahead of time and thinking about the feeling of the scene and really getting closer to the character as we go into that scene and really we talked a lot about that scene because we really wanted to nail it.

When we actually shot it, it was so easy, right? I mean, it was, it was crazy how quick we were able to film it. Yeah. Yeah, we just, we were like banging out take after take. We had the, we had all the, I mean, it was the only time we shot listed, shot listed. Yeah. In the whole, the whole thing, too. But, but we were like, and we were very stressed.

I think we were both wrapped up and very stressed about the extras and the size of the scale that wasn't going to be there. So we're like, maybe we can get 30 people and then it's like maybe 20. And it ended up, I think it was like 15, 16 or whatever. But like, how does that work? And it's just like, it's really just kind of accumulating the footage. And then we're also decided, like, after a wild day, and we're like, it's not about the crowd. It's like you just have to kind of sell it as a crowd. And then you're, it's really about Freddie in this one moment.

So it's like you want to be more with him than with the crowd anyway. So it's a lot of it, like after you sell the crowd, you're just with him in various, you know, like, were like right next to him on stage, kind of like dancing around with the easy rig kind of getting stuff and things like that too. But it was like similar like to the, I mean,

that scene versus the, but we did, but as far as the, not that we didn't shot list though, but we, Diego and I sat down, what was cool was like staying in that hero house, which is like,

I think maybe the best naturally lit location I've ever shot in. I have to say, that house was incredible to shoot in. I genuinely thought that you had way more lighting than just a light mat. I love the light mat, but holy shit.

Yeah. That, that sun is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But yeah, I mean, we, yeah, we, and also every single light in that house was on a dimmer. And anything that was not, everything was not on a dimmer, we put on a dimmer. So like at the night scenes, and it's like firelight, it's just cool, like the house had all this great stuff going on. They were like flip on and off that, you know, kind of. And we would like shape the light a little bit. Like I'd put like some like light.

There was like little candelabras that I would like diaper with like grid or something. And this couple of scenes I had a blackout, like when he's rapping in the, we sort of doing his work in the study, you know, we had to shoot that during the day. So like there's like blackout stuff happening, but and then using practicals. But it was like just deciding where practicals were and which ones were turned on, you know, kind of was the sort of the thing. But like just from coming from like doc style background, like thinking into that, but like making it, you know, you know, this is like really unintrusive lighting and just kind of like go into it sort of thing. But we were able to like sit, since I was like staying there too. But Diego and I would like just kind of sit in the living room for hours and like not shot list. But I think we kind of like just talked.

I don't know I explain. It was sort of a rough shop list. Yeah, we, we had like a list of shots that we wanted to do and then sort of like. But it was like we talked about the scenes, but it wasn't like, you know, okay, you know, he, he enters here and blah, blah, blah. We were talking about like the feeling of stuff more than like specifics. We'd like really get into the nitty gritty of like what. the scene had to kind of like feel like and like, you know, kind of like maybe where we could be and stuff like that.

But we started getting into like, you know, zeroing in on like, you know, the longest lens possible in any kind of scene and stuff like that too, which was like, we was like, we had the Orion's. We had the 32 to 100, but we like, we barely use. I think we said 32 in the hardware store once because we were jammed in a corner and we just didn't have, we had to use it, I think. Maybe a couple landscapes, but we were trying to shoot 50 to 100. most of the most of the movie that 65 they have is is a really nice looking lens I love that

lens yeah yeah I love the hundred I like the hundred too but it's like the hundred handheld is like you can't you know you got it you can't breathe yeah like I was Connor I was I was a conner I was like if you're you're you know you have too much oxygen you're doing the shot wrong like if to really just sink into that type of you know stationary type thing which is good yeah going back to the the using practicals and doing blackouts I'm pretty sure sure every DP on this podcast has mentioned that with digital cinematography, it's more about taking away light than it is adding it at this point. You know, everyone's using a lot more negative fill than, um, yeah, back in the day, I suppose. But, um, recently I wrote an article

about I literally took my color meter because I'm this kind of nerd and I just, I have, I have maybe 20 bulbs over here on the couch and you see them. Oh, you can see them. There's, these are all light bulbs and these are all boxes of light bulbs. And, uh, I just, metered, I color metered all of them and I just saved out the spectral output and I just wanted to see if you went to a hardware store and technically I went to a ralphs, but could you just grab bulbs off the shelf and would they be good for practicals? And I found that generally no. Were you, if you wanted to like perfectly match traditional tungsten, were you using just kind of the bulbs in the house? Did you swap them out? Did you have sort of a ethos there or anything like

that we did switch a lot of the bulbs out um especially the candelabra ones the candelabras were the clear ones and i just got frost i just got everything frosted candelabras and then anything that was not and then basically i have just dimmable bulbs and i i kind of go for the reveals a lot um oh so you're using real tungsten yeah yeah oh so i was specifically i was talking about LED because in California you can't actually buy tungsten bulbs they're all oh right you guys are super green yes yeah which is probably which is probably better yeah fucking rad dude we got LA style yeah yeah so we were we were doing that and then it was hard to get them though actually because they're not they're not that

around that much either did you find some cool stuff out with the the color meters it's like you had different brands and stuff basically you're testing yeah so uh this is this is great for everyone listening um so i got what these random phillips they're all dimmable because that's important uh phillips didn't really do well um kree the brand kree did all right um uh i i metered um these l a department of water and power sent everyone in la like a couple bulbs to put in the house and um fuck them man those bulbs suck they're horrible they're horrible like it they massive green shift like just no spectral output yeah just making everyone feel sick in their own homes the move for anyone listening or yourself is these uh g-e sunfilled g-e sun-filled yes they're they're

11 bucks a pop so they're expensive but like they're they're um tlci of like 99 cri of like 99, TM30, just like a perfect circle, if anyone's, that kind of nerd knows what the fuck I'm talking about. But yeah, really, really good spectral output almost hit. I think, I think it was off by like 40 Kelvin or 14 Kelvin, I think. Like, it was dead on what it said on the box. 14 Kelvin, you got to be super nerd now to really get upset about that, I think. Yeah, that's all right.

Yeah. That's good to know, actually. That's kind of, that's some really good information. Yeah, especially because I was able to get a sort of a chandelier almost. It's like a seven bulb grouping. And so if you were to put seven of these sunfilled bulbs in there, you get a pretty decent, you know, you could use it as a fill, use it as a key for like a closeup or something like that. And it would be really accurate to either daylight or tungsten matching any kind of scene you're in. That's cool.

Yeah, so the sunfilled bulbs were my, I want to go back and. test a bunch more, but like, I'd end up spending $1,000 at Home Depot just by single bulbs. Nice. For right now, it's sunfilled. But yeah, it's good that you were able to use traditional tungsten because it does, first of all, legally, it has a spectrum that no other bulbs have yet to replicate. So it does give a look that is much better. It's prettier.

Yeah, it's just the rest of them have that kind of zingy kind of, you know, that electric feeling where it's like doesn't have the softness. It's like it's sort of like that, that it's like we, I don't know, weirdly like HMI's always feel a little, have that hard zingy hit and it has the same vibe with those kind of bulbs, if that makes sense too, you know, as opposed to like just tungsten sore stuff, the old school tungsten sort stuff and the bulbs.

But yeah, it's, I think they're getting there. They are getting much better than they were, like, five years ago, like they were really, it was really rough, I think. But it is, it's a weird thing. It's like a transitionary kind of, you know, thing for light bulbs right now. Yeah. They're developing, I guess, every day. It's funny.

My girlfriend makes fun of me all the time for like, why are you, you're literally, like, writing an article about light bulbs and I'm like, it's important to my job. It is funny, though, because like, I never, I never understood what people meant when they were saying, like, oh, it looks electric. but it truly is like a you know people like we were saying earlier like people focus so much about cameras it's like

really focus it doesn't matter the fixture you know but it does matter the quality of the light yeah so much like oh we we can just throw up a sky panel like the sky panels don't even fun fact everyone the sky panels aren't even that great

of a light spectrally yeah they don't do BB and S I think probably has a more accurate but no one's ever heard of them But there is, it is like we're kind of all using the easy fixtures, you know, these LED panels, the, even the COB hard lights. But it is pretty dramatically taking away a large amount of quality to the image. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the sky panels are great just because they're so versatile. And I think, you know, and they have a lot, you know, they just do a lot. in many different situations. So it's kind of like a, you know, the leatherman of lighting units or something too, where you could just put like an S-60, be like, all right, this is a little, you know, book like this and everything's, you know, you'll be fine.

You know, it's kind of a general kind of thing or put the shimer on it or, you know, whatever you're going to use. But yeah, it was, uh, yeah, it was weird. It was weird to not have a non-lit feature, which is, which is, because I did have a Joker 800, a Light Mat 4, or a goat dolly for like, there's like one dolly shot in the movie.

Like he's up on top of the, mountain. You brought it and you're going to use it. I had to use it. I didn't use the Joker. I thought the Joker was going to come out. I think Diego at some point, he's like,

are you going to light anything on this? I was like, no, no, I'm just going to do this. But it was cool because we were like, as we were planning, it's like, I sent so much time in the house. Like, and you see the sun, this path every day in overcast in sunshine and like as it's changing.

So you kind of know each part of the day. Like I know at 3 p.m. It's going to look good here. like going to look at you know it like in the morning this is the way to shoot this way so it's like it's just putting freddie and kind of cornering him in with the cameras and like maybe he can sort of adjust into stuff in this spot and stuff so we kind of do do stuff like that which is which is cool we didn't have a really tricky stuff though because there's so many windows in the house and it snowed like so we had that transition or you know that seasonal transition but the snow

was awesome because i was like you know able to get a bunch of like run out in the morning before the crew got there and just bang out like 20 snow shots just like running around the property but then we had a shoot and it wasn't supposed to be snowing in the movie so we have to still shoot out the windows and not see snow so it's like there's some shots in the movies if you're like really look super hard at the out of focus background maybe you can tell but it's like we're scraping along you know paneled windows and just kind of like see you see it's daylight but it got really tricky like because we had to do like how many how many days did we do that Diego was like the snow no snow there was one day it was one day of snow but we

we we definitely have to step away from the windows a little bit or avoid seeing through because the snow was piling up yeah it was like one day before the weekend yeah yeah yeah maybe just one day that's a little tricky yeah do you did you prefer because again like for people listening like it doesn't look not lit like it looks not lit in this in the sense of like complimenting a cinematographer but it does it does i didn't think there was no fucking lights you know you did a really good job finding the exact like right place to right place to place people um yeah and all that is thank you i think that's and i think it's also like just knowing the like really harnessing the natural light like just like just because there's an

exposure don't put them there you know kind of like it's like it's like they're you know like going in the space and like taking a minute and being like okay this can really really work, you know, in this way. And I don't think, you know, I didn't want to feel like a lit, lit thing. But, you know, I didn't want it to feel like a garbagey, you know, you're just running gun, you know, bad doc style stuff that I dislike to and stuff. You know, I wanted to have a certain amount of beauty and, and, and poised to the shots and not, not just like so rough, even though, you know, I think the certain roughness and rawness to it adds to it. But, but I want to, it's still to be like, you know, I mean, ultimately it's like a, you know, you know, it's a fun movie

but I feel it's an accessible art film and it's an enjoyable kind of like you know kind of it's not it's not a pretentious kind of art film I think it's kind of something that people can enjoy watching but you know it's trying to try to you know best to do some art yeah well and it

it's a Diego maybe you can speak to this a little bit but it had there are certain movies that that I've been caught up doing this I'm a really easy like movie goer like I like movies in general pick a film and I'm I had never seen any of the like DC movies and then I watched the four hour Snyder cut Justice League and I was just like all right man let's do you know like I had no skin in the game but I'm still there for four hours like all right cool um but this

this film had something that other movies have done to me which is about like 30 minutes in I was like wait when did we start like it just felt it felt like I just was I had been here the whole time was that like a creative choice like how did it was the yeah Because it genuinely just feels like you're suddenly there and you've been there the whole time. I don't know how better to explain that. Yeah, I think it crept up on you and that's, I think that's the best that I can hope that happens to, you know, someone that watches the film. I really wanted to get the feeling of you're just being dropped out of the plane in this guy's life, you know, and he's already in the countryside, supposedly working on his album and already knows. a bunch of the characters and interacting with them.

So I wanted to get that feeling and at the same time, get a sense of that he's a new routine and building a bond with the farmer who he ends up helping throughout the film. And the bond was the girl that he has a story with, who's the niece of the farmer. So yeah, it was really. sort of a, you know, little touches. You know, if you think of an impressionistic painting, impressionist painting, you know, it's little dots, little touches that if you step away,

it just draws a whole picture. So that's how I like to make films and that's usually the type of films I relate to. You know, you spoke about Chloe's air or before. I really, you know, that's someone I feel close to and and I love her work and the writer or or the last one who's name is escaping me. No Madeline. You know, yeah, it's all these little touches that, you know, some are pretty mundane, some are important for the narrative, but they draw, they draw a picture, which ultimately I hope you're, you know, you're getting involved with emotionally. I actually sort of in that light touches, I don't know why this came up, but a logistical question, there's a scene sort of, I guess, I don't know if it's in the top floor.

It feels like it's in sort of the top floor of the place, but it's like the game room, I suppose. Yeah, right. And everyone is fucked up. What is it? Do you literally just go like, all right, guys, here's the liquor, here's the weed, have fun. We're going to film this guy. Or was that like just excellent acting? yeah that's good acting

no no really you know yeah yeah yeah that's fantastic may have had a few a few drinks but yeah it was it was prop drinks prop weed and yeah they you know and they were doing what they what they know how to do like it was like a party scene so it wasn't really hard to get drawing from life experience yeah yeah that was because I genuinely thought like oh man they just really sent this because I that's man that's the mark of a

really good sort of veritate film is like I legitimately just went like, oh, there you go, man. That's college, that's college filmmaking right there. Yeah, there's, well, it's kind of a weird. I think Diego also has an approach. It's like a very, he's, Diego's like very calm and quiet in general. And I'm pretty quiet on it. But it's like a very kind of like easing into, it's a kind of interesting way to do it.

So it's not like, you know, like on a normal movie. It's like there's a lot, since we haven't, we had no ID too. So it's there's no one central person being, you know, Rob was there and I was there and a day, but it's a very calm way to go into it. It's like they get in the morning, get breakfast, kind of ease on. But like as the scenes go, it's like, you know, you're getting the cameras on. Somebody, like, will have a slate, but it's like the slate comes in and kind of like goes out. We're still kind of rolling and we're just kind of ease into scenes, basically.

And it's not like this. Yeah, okay, God. There's not like a yelling going. It's just this way of kind of going into it that feels very, very calm and very kind of controlled. and it's a nice environment, too. It's like it's a non-aggressive type environment. There's no, like, you know, normal films yelling everywhere and people are running.

You know, it just feels very, very common. I think that kind of environment also, like, helps out with the naturalism, too. That just like the way we shone is. And also the casting, I mean, you know, when you look at, all right, Freddie's sidekick in that scene, it was really important that we get people that he knows that he feels comfortable with

and you know that that you feel that chemistry right away we're not they're not just actors that we brought out on the shoot they were like uh his pals that happened to be real good actors also but they already know each other here so you have that that that back story that that's already there and you know and they do the rest um and it's it's yeah that that's make it make it real too yeah and also pulling the old uh knives out move of living in the house they you're shooting and must have really helped was it hard to uh sort of separate you know shooting and and living like you know certainly with work from home you know we've all been like answering emails at midnight or editing way later than you should where were you able to have like

a definitive like all right it's you know 8 p.m. let's wrap we're done now or did you kind of just go until you felt like you had the day well i think we would shoot the shoot day would be over but But then it was like Rob and Diego and then also Matt Gallagher who's like just a cool guy. He's like Bob's son-in-law, but he, you know, we kind of just hang out and he was like helping out tremendously with just like farm locations. And he's like, you know, just this extreme, you know, outdoorsy dude who just knows how to do, you know, bow hunting and all. You know, he's just a, he's just a dude, dude. He's really cool. But we're just going to like hang out and talk about, you know, the day and so like that.

But I mean, Connor and I would end up shooting. I would, there's a ton of B-roll in the film, too. but on the weekends we were just kind of there and I mean I would just do it for fun like and I think the Berkshires is like one of the most beautiful places in America and the leaves were going down so I was like I'm just need to get as much

footage of these the seasonal change as possible so I would just kind of go out with Connor and we would just kind of mess around on the weekends and you know go just shoot stuff basically too which is which is super fun so and I did it like more out of fun I don't really do that I guess on any other thing but I was just kind of do it for this

to this movie for sure. Yeah. Well, and it's a lot of easier, like we're saying with those small, you know, if you had three full-sized

RELFs, you wouldn't be like, let me just go grab this and shoot some leaves. Right, right. Yeah, and it's kind of cool because it's like,

not ever breaking down the camera is kind of huge because it's just sitting there and it's just like, okay, look, you know, it's the sun setting. Let's just,

you know, let's just go bang out hour and a half, you know, hour and a half until sunset and all that stuff too. Which was kind of cool. And just getting like the right,

light and stuff and everything. Also in the movie too, we also got, I got, I started starting getting like slightly obsessed with, we called it the dog wolf, but I can't remember the phrase, Diego. What is it for? It's dusk. I mean, it's the word we created for dusk. It's a, in French, there's a term called between dog and wolf, entre chien and loo, which, which means the magic hour, basically, you know, that time between the night and day. And yeah, We called it Dog Wolf because of that, and that's when things became crazy. Then he would transform into a werewolf. Working fast as hell.

Oh, yeah. Putting a lot of pressure on everyone because we had 10 minutes to get their shot. It was fun. And for some reason, every day we found a scene to shoot at dusk at Dog Wolf. I'm hoping that enters the lexicon. That's a great phrase. The dog wolf. Yeah.

Because it was also like not the magic hour, the orange, not the sun. It was like after the sunset, that blue light, that indigo light that, that lasts super. I mean, that's a super short window. It legitimately is like 15 minutes. It's 15. I mean, if you're lucky on a good day, it's like the last light, you know, but it's like, we try to shoot every day. You can't shoot that much stuff there, but we have a lot, like the opening shot of the movie where he's just like staring, breaking the fourth wall smoking a blunt. Like it starts off.

like that time a day. And then there's like, the scene is when she'll gets cracked. We had to shoot that over two days because it was just like, it was a lot of coordination. There's like a car that's headlights turn on. It has come up.

And, you know, there was a lot of stuff. And I'm like sprinting down the driveway after Freddie where he's like, and he can run too. Freddy's like super in shape. And like, and he's a runner. And I was like, this like, you know,

with a camera running after Freddy's like, no joke. He was like full on sprint. With the easy rig? I just, I just, I did the handle. And I was like, you know, I just because, yeah, I don't do the easy rig. I don't do if, if I'm walking with somebody or running.

Running is like, I don't want to fall with that thing either. It'll be just like a nightmare. But like if I, if I'm like walking, I feel the easier it gets kind of bumpy and weird. So I do it on the shoulder if anybody's like moving, moving. And then if I'm if I'm like doing like more of like, you know, using my body is like a dolly or just adjusts and I'm trying to like just hang out. I use the easy rig a ton. Um, but yeah, but yeah, that was, uh, but those are fun though. I did sort of like, I guess I was just saying it was a very calm shoot.

And I guess I, I guess maybe every day at dusk, it was not calm for half an hour. One thing that I, that I, that I don't know, you know, if you're shooting with small cameras again, is, um, small rig makes like a little shoulder pad. It's like probably this big. But what I'll do is you can move the, um, rail block. and so I'll put that so it's if the shoulder pad is vertical you put the the rail holder here and I'll put that into my chest and so I'll have the two handles and I'll just jam it right into my chest and with a smaller kind of even my C500 I'll have it right about here and that and you can like you're saying use your body is kind of the you got three points of contact and you can use your

body as a sort of a dolly or a tripod even especially with certain lenses that are like stabilized yeah yeah I think it like that trick of like the three point contact wherever and also like moving your body so you like you don't just you know your body doesn't disintegrate as well after a while but it's like having the three point like the various three points of contact and like going at the right moment you know having the patience of of doing that but it's it's a lot of I mean I think just doc shooting helps yeah with that stuff too yeah I've pretty much asked every doc DP this I'll ask you shoe shoe preference oh yeah we can get to the shoes I can go big into the shoe stuff right now let's go let's go I have a lot

lot of shoe things. But I do, now I do hiking shoes, the Adidas Terrix. I use a lot. But Diego, for this movie, I needed waterproof shoes that I did not have. And Diego introduced me to these things called Las Fortivas that I don't know if you've heard of, but they're like an Italian, they're for like rock climbing, but they also make trail running shoes that were waterproof. that Diego, I think initially was like, he showed me his site and they were like $20 less than any of the shoe, but and I was like, okay, I'm going to get them. And they're amazing. But like I was, we were like shoe twins, the whole shoot and he was just making fun of me the whole shoot. But we had this whole like, I mean, the sportivas are are kind of amazing though too. But yeah. So we were sort of, uh, uh, shoe brothers for the whole shoe. But now that I still have them. They're amazing. You can go like running and trail. You know, they're kind of like basically really good hiking shoes too for like for the waterproof stuff. Yeah. Uh, But we wanted to, we wanted to look at ad campaign tie-in to the, to the movie, which we had a lot of good ideas for, uh, Las Portiva to as branding. It's like, not on-screen branding, but I think they'd be, that'd be kind of good. Yeah, we have lots of ideas. I hope they're listening to us. Clip it. Someone clip it. Uh, yeah, I recently got into the blunt stones, but, um, I've found they're super comfortable with it, but I have found that you at about, at about eight hours, suddenly your heels really hurt. And I'm like, that's, these are supposed to be like, like, these are supposed to be like, the, shoes and I don't still yeah Jenna Rocher and um I think Dan Stoloff both had the same

super cushy I'd have to send you the link but they're like massive thick sold like the hoax shoes yes I have I have hookas for jogging okay and they're incredible they're my favorite jogging shoes and I've been thinking about getting them on to the well I do all birds too like summer stuff like all birds but like the support is not they're really though it's just like clouds but there's no real support but I like shooting with those if it's not like an aggressive outside day you know it's like a studio day or something but the hokas are amazing as well those are really those are really good too yeah yeah you've like vans are good for about 30 minutes you know

shoe shoe selection man there's like there's a book that Magnum photos put out called it's literally like wear good shoes or something like that Like, it's so important. It's no one ever talks about it. I know. There's a lot of, I'm on a cinematography, you know, group on Facebook, but there's like my favorite thread on that, there's like a, there's a set footwear thread that is just like, like, I mean, it would take a day to read everyone's shoe and like the

shoe battles and stuff too, just get, get kind of amazing. I know another thing I like, do you have a favorite camera bag that you, that you carry around? So, no, that's actually something I'm currently trying to work on because my, I would just do the Pelican Air, you know, like the carry on size one. Right. Because my old camera would fit in that. My C500, after it's broken. I want, in a perfect world, I want a camera bag that I can disassemble the camera as little as possible. You know, I just want to be able to kind of yank it out.

And so I have the porter brace. I've used porter brace for like, you know, two decades now or whatever. But, yeah, I haven't found like the perfect bag that I'm fully in love with. Do you have more of like a straight-up camera? I have like the one that's more like, I use the peak design one that's incredible. But it's a back, it's a straight-up backpack. But it's like it's modular and it has like these side zippers and stuff. But you can have like all these lens configurations.

But you wouldn't be able to put like, well, I guess maybe you could put the whole camera in. But it's like it's like more like accessories. right back it's a backpack that like it's like you have the camera and I have that on my back on like a dock thing and you have all the stuff there but it it packs up you know perfectly for whatever my brain works I'm like this is the thing that I need to to do it all the every zipper pouch it's like it's kind of I don't know that that's is my favorite that's had recently that's actually a great recommendation because I'm kind of the same way like my gear bag that's aside from the camera is oftentimes just like a mess

I have a backpack that's it's like a I made a deal with not I didn't make a deal but like I was sort of friendly with this company called Condor they make like combat equipment so like Molly systems and stuff like that and so they gave me a backpack and because I had designed for doc style shooting stuff I was shooting a lot of concerts and so I had this combat vest because I wanted to have a bunch of pouches that I could swap out for various needs so I had like you can use a magazine dump pouch you know so it's like spent magazines go in this just sort of bag, but it folds up into like this big. So that would be back here.

And if I ever know it for water bottle or lenses or whatever, I just open it. And it would pop open and you could put like a full like cannon 24 to 70 would even fit in there. Okay. Or just like binocular pouch is really good for like light meter or, you know, that's, that's kind of like that big, you know, and then admin pouches. So I had that stuff kind of thing for my person, but not something for accessories, you know, to carry, not like a bag for it. So that's actually a great recommendation. I will wrap it up with the same question that I ask everyone. And I'm actually going to modify this question, starting with this podcast because I was trying to do it the same every day. And every time I've asked it slightly differently. So I'm going to just change it completely. It used to be what's one thing that appreciably changed your cinematography career. I'm now changing it to ask you today and everyone going forward, what's the one piece of advice that you received for?

from like a mentor or someone that you, that has stuck with you the longest. It wasn't like directly said to me, but I remember the, I, out of, I went to art school. Yeah, I went to like art school and like, I wasn't into film for undergrad. And in Virginia, I moved to LA. And the first, I like sent out like 200 resumes

and I got like hired only like two people called me back and one person and I got one job to originally PA on on Fantasin Four, but like long story short, I ended up, like, getting bumped up to an electrician on that show. And the DP was Chris Komen. And it was just, like, one of those things that, like, people kept dropping out of it. Whatever it was, like, I ended up, like, essentially gaffing this thing for, like, a week before, like, is a transitionary thing. And I didn't know what I was doing at all.

And I was just had no idea. I mean, it was so green. It was incredible. And I just out of college. But Chris Komen, who. who's now teaches at USC and he's, you know, he's at ASC. He's done a million things too. And whoever has him as a teacher is extremely lucky, too.

But I had no idea what I was doing. And Chris was so patient and so calm and so, like, cool with me. Even though I could tell underneath the stress level that he had to, like, deal with me as someone who had no idea what they were doing, it was incredible. and just the way he dealt with the situation and like just and the way he carried himself like that I was like I've just basically modeled tried to model set behavior after after like his approach to it basically and and you know whenever I have something that I'm like this I'm just want to murder this crew member I'm just losing my mind and like kind of looking looking back and see how Chris kind of I was able

to handle it in a sort of like such a professional way and just being so so helpful and so cool it's like really kind of, it just made a big impression on me as, as, you know, someone was working on their first movie who was like, you know, I was definitely trying hard, but I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah. Well, and for sure. That is, it's interesting to say that because one, that is something that you, you know, people say like, oh, do you need film school? And I actually do think you do, but not for like learning movies. It's more for the environment of failure that you're allowed to cultivate before you get out in the real world. But that, uh, onset etiquette is definitely something that you do not learn in film school. No, no, it's, you kind of come, I mean, I, I, I,

eventually did go to grad school at NYU and stuff like that. But, you know, that first experience, you're like, okay, I get, you know, this is, this is the way you should do it, you know. Well, and the other thing that's interesting about that is I've noticed now this is, I think this is podcast 30, 31, all the ASC members all kind of had the same advice, which was exactly as you said, like, just be just chill, just like, it's going to be hectic, relax, like take, you know, take a breath, be kind. Yeah, that advice over and over and over again from ASC members was just like, be kind, be gentle, get the work done, but don't freak

out. Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm going to get in touch with Chris. I haven't talked to him forever. He's a great guy. Deagle, I'll kick the same question to you while you're here. Any advice that you received from mentors or maybe something that you observed? I guess one thing that I learned, I don't think I can relate to a mentor, but just like what the film industry and my career has taken me through all the ups and downs and a lot of downs, you know, trying to make films that you really believe in. It's sometimes really hard. It's persistence and never give up and, you know, and sometimes it's a really windy road to get there. but if you persist and you'll eventually get there yeah especially with this film what'd you say

you've been working on it for yeah five years six years now yeah yeah great great case study there well thanks guys for especially spending the extra like a half hour with me that was um fantastic conversation i really i really enjoyed that thank you thank you so much man it's really it was a pleasure i'm a fan of the podcast too i've been listening it's it's cool it's a really fun one to check out it's man it's it's I'm glad we're at that point where someone can say that. Frame and reference is an Al-Bot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan,

and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F-At-Art Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Pro Video Coalition.com or YouTube.com slash Owobot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.