Frame & Reference Podcast - 34: "Lakewood" DP John Brawley, ACS

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast, Kenny talks with cinematographer John Brawley, ACS about LAKEWOOD staring Naomi Watts. In this episode, John goes into his journey to becoming a DP as well as shooting LAKEWOOD with the BlackMagic 12k. John built a reputation as one of Australia’s most talented, innovative and collaborative Directors of Photography before relocating to the US where he’s continued to build on that reputation, working nonstop on projects including Apple’s critically acclaimed hit series THE MORNING SHOW starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell; the highly praised Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult led period dramedy THE GREAT for Hulu/MRC, and NBC’s upcoming true-crime limited series THE THING ABOUT PAM starring Renée Zellweger. In 2017, John arrived in the US to shoot the USA drama series QUEEN OF THE SOUTH starring Alice Braga. Fox’s first year medical drama THE RESIDENT immediately followed – he also shot Season 2 and made his directorial debut on the series. Other recent credits include the Fox pilot GONE BABY GONE for director Phillip Noyce; the Syfy/UCP series HUNTERS for producer Gale Anne Hurd and Matchbox Pictures; and THE BEAUTIFUL LIE, a contemporary retelling of ANNA KARENINA, starring Sarah Snook, for ABC Television (now on Hulu), which received considerable critical and audience acclaim and earned him an AACTA nomination for Best Cinematography in Television. John began his career shooting many of Australia’s most beloved series including PUBERTY BLUES, where he used a ground breaking mix of cutting edge technology and period lenses to achieve the 70’s era look; the first six seasons of the award winning dramedy OFFSPRING; the well-known UNDERBELLY series; political drama PARTY TRICKS; and THE WARRIORS for acclaimed Australian producer Robert Connolly, amongst many others. Other feature credits include 100 BLOODY ACRES starring Angus Sampson and Damon Herriman, cult favorite LAKE MUNGO and THE PERFECT HOST, starring David Hyde Pierce, which premiered at Sundance prior to its US release. John graduated with an MA from the prestigious Australian Film Television and Radio School and received his ACS (Australian Cinematographers Society) Accreditation earlier this year. He is a dual Australian/US citizen. His website is available here: https://johnbrawley.com/ 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 John Brawley, ACS, the DP of the new film Lakewood, with Naomi Watts. John was fantastic to talk to, you know, just kind of up my alley in regards to the right balance of technical and artistic. So we had a really great chat. He's very generous with his knowledge and time. One thing at the head that I think maybe people will be interested in as he shot this film on the Blackmagic 12K.

And, you know, people kind of expect most films to be shot on Ari or. uh red or sony with the venice these days but um you know you don't see a lot of black magic necessarily although we had down with a cane i suppose that counts but um yeah so he talks about that a little bit as well so if you're a black magic fan you'll uh want to stay tuned for that but uh that's all for the intro as always i will now be quiet until two seconds from now when i continue talking from the past and anyway uh enjoy this conversation with john brawley aces How did you get started in cinematography? Were you always like a visual guy or, you know, growing up,

were you kind of in the movies? Or was it something you kind of came to later? Yeah, I mean, from a very young age, I was very into photography. I love taking photos. I was always interested in lots of things. I had a little electronics kit. I had a chemistry kit.

But photography was like the first kind of hobby as a kid or interest that I had where I didn't get bored. You know, and I found there was always kind of new things. us to try, a new approaches to have. And I also really liked the power that having a camera gave. I mean, I think that it was the first Gulf War was happening. There was all these kind of protests happening back in Australia. I remember having this camera and being able, it sort of gave me, it was like a passport. It gave me permission to approach people. It gave me permission to photograph people. And also at the time, I was doing a lot of live music photography. I mean,

I was actually underage, but still somehow getting into all of these venues and photographing musicians as well. And then from there, actually, I started doing a dabbling a bit with lighting and stuff. So, you know, in making images was always something I was very into. And then when I left high school, I was going to start a degree that was a kind of a general media degree. In the end, you would have a teaching qualification that no one has ever heard of for the Bachelor of Education. Not that I want to be a teacher, but the first three years was essentially a media degree. And And then while I was doing that degree, they had a filmmaking component and I shot my first role of 16 mil film and I was just booked.

I mean, you know, it was reversal. So the film that went through the cameras, what was projected, there was no editing, just had a 100 foot roll, which is three minutes. And you had to shoot this little sequence with some rules and parameters. And I just loved it, you know, seeing that image projected, sitting in a classroom and there's about 40 students and watching it and feeling the audience be affected by it. was addictive. So I really got into the idea of cinematography. And also, photography is a very solitary endeavor. Often you're by yourself or you're doing it all by yourself. And I really like

the fact that film or television, narrative drama, even event stuff, everything, it all involves collaboration with a lot of people. So I think I really got into that. So yeah, that was it. I didn't even complete that degree. I started, I was about 18 months into my degree. And I was like, I've got to offer the job as a best boy on a TV show. And I thought, well, why would I go to college, to university, to study what I'm already getting a job? I'm going to go and do that. So that's what I did.

I left and started my career that way. And then weirdly, many, like 12 years later, I actually went back to school when I did my master's without having even done an undergraduate degree. I went back and did my master's at AFTERS, which is the premier sort of Australian film school. So I sort of did it do it all backwards. Yeah, that's fucking cool.

Yeah, I went to this thing called New York Film Academy for a summer program, like six months, six weeks. Yeah, right between high school. We've got a campus, I think a couple of campuses in Australia too now. Oh, word. Yeah, this one was the Universal Studios one. So that was awesome. It's like an 18 year old being on the Universal Studios back lot, shooting 16 millimeter, you know, you have free reign. It was incredible.

But then I went to Arizona State. I feel like I've brought this up every interview. and learned almost nothing. Apparently the film school is a lot better now, but when we started it, the program had just started. So, I mean, in six weeks at New York Film Academy, I learned more about collaboration and lighting

and just all of it than I did at the four years at ASU. Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag with film school. And whenever people ask me about it, I always think the most, the best thing about it is usually the peers that you have, the other people that learn to work with, the friendships that you'll make for life, potentially people that you're going to have an ongoing working relationship with.

And that's where you mean. 12 years later, I'm still friends with all those people. Yeah. And I bet you still make films and do stuff with them. And, you know, that becomes a career, which every day. One part of it. And you've got that history of a relationship. That's what's great about it.

Well, and the nice thing for me, too, was, so, well, the one note about film school that just for anyone listening is, like, if you're going to go to film school, you have to make it work. know that don't rely on the professors to teach you anything use that time to like get some people together like you were saying and like start making things and learn on your own on your off time and don't sort of get distracted by how fun colleges i think it's practice i mean when i ended up going back and doing my master's we had a great course because it was very practical you know we were literally making exercises but you're kind of making a film every week um yeah and just

the the practice of doing that of making mistakes and when you're in an academic environment too i think you think differently to when you're being paid to do something, you don't take the same kind of risk. So I really did actually enjoy it. I didn't think I would enjoy it, but I actually really did enjoy that. And as somebody, as one of the lectures, they said to me, you know, people don't just get in a plane and fly a plane. You go and do 100 hours in a simulator and then you do some tandem flying with an instructor sitting next to you. And it's only after you do a thousand hours or 500 hours or whatever that you're allowed to fly the plane by yourself. And it's filmmaking is a little bit like that.

I think you've got to learn the craft. You've got to, you know, do some logs and hours essentially on set just to understand how it works. I mean, of course there's going to be people that are naturally gifted that can just do it straight away. But frankly, you know, that's like 0.01%. Most of us have to have to learn that stuff as we go. And I think the more you practice in a way, the better. And I think film school can be great for that and those kind of relationships as well. It's only as good as what you invest in at yourself.

Yeah. And for us, like, you know, being at Arizona State, it was, I don't know if you know the the type of school it is, but it's known as one of the premier party schools in America. So it was easy to get to strengthen. You learn how to do some things, just not maybe not the filmmaking part. You know what? My girlfriend marvels at how I'm able to make friends with anybody within seconds. And that is something that actually was very valuable.

But even so, like, like one thing that helped move into Los Angeles was, me and all my friends who came from the film school all moved here so there's the hardest thing in the world in L.A. is just to meet people and make friends especially in a working environment in the creative space and it's just we all kind of spread off and did our own thing and then we'll come back to meet up you know yesterday I was hanging out with four or five of them and we're just talking about you know one of them is a podcast producer who works at Sony and other ones you know an AD on big commercials and stuff and so we're always just kind of like sharing the sort of wealth there because it's you know you know that this person isn't full of shit you're like I've

seen you at your worst you know like we're this is this is chill um the one thing I did want to say though that you mentioned that I thought was actually kind of stuck with me that is I also love photography and I like that I didn't realize it until you said it but I do like the fact that if I'm in a certain mood I can be collaborative and make films and if I'm in a different mood or I need to you know, maybe study or think or, or, um, kind of re-evaluate how I'm looking at light or whatever, take it over to photography, same muscle. Yeah. It does keep you in practice and, you know, that, that's what I really enjoyed was the

process of composition of choosing what to point the camera at. You know, I love, I mean, we could have this discussion, but, you know, as technology changes, you know, iPhones are shooting pro res and so on and people, there's always a kind of fear about technology changing your job or changing the business. It's usually people that are invested in a lot of equipment and I understand it, but it's never going to be able to replace you making that kind of those subjective choices about where to point a camera, what to put a frame around, how to expose that, and all of those choices that go into, you know, making that image.

And photography is a great way to exercise that muscle without all the other infrastructure of cinematography that goes with that. We thought with being a huge crew and a bunch of people and so on. So, yeah, I mean, it's always a really great. exercise. And you know, the funny thing is, when I started out, I was, I was in, it started off, it was mostly film. Like digital was sort of coming in, but I trained in my early days of cinematography on film. And I had this ritual or routine of taking photographs still. Firstly, with polaroids, right? So you would take a polaroid of the image to check your lighting

ratios and just kind of look at how things are looking on film. And then that became the early digital cameras, so we're still shooting on motion picture film, but you'd take a digital still, you could sort of get a preview of things. So for me, even now, I still take a lot of photos as part of my kind of lighting process. So before I roll on the first take, I usually go in, take some photos. And it's a great kind of ritual or practice to continue. And it's always stayed with me. And of course, I really enjoy photography when I'm not on set as well, but it's still gives me a lot of pleasure and still kind of exercise of that muscle. And even, even too, from a grading and post point of view so I'll often take some photos when I'm test and right now I'm in pre-production

for a new series I'm taking photos in some of our proposed sets and locations I'm playing around with grades and starting to get an idea of how things can look and how things might work and you know it's a great process for that and it's very very accessible and very you know simple simple way to keep things um keep things kind of fresh in your head yeah are you still uh like using meters a lot or you kind of just stick into the monitor maybe taking some test photos and yeah i mean i don't i used to do that have that process so the digital camera would be a became a light meter for me um when i was shooting on film but these days um with the the the exposure tools in the cameras now are so good i mean i might take a reading if i take a reading it's more about

measuring the ratio of a key to fill it's not really what do i set my camera at you know that kind of stuff better determine i think with other other tools you know i i love using false color a lot oh yeah but i'm to trust that because you know the The other problem that you have generally on set is a lot of monitors lie to you, you know, and especially if you're trying to monitor a HDR image, a lot of them have a HDR badge. It just means that they're really bright. They're not a particularly good monitor usually for critically assessing anything on set, especially because you're moving them around and the sun comes out and, you know, it's just impossible.

So, you know, I trust the false colors because that kind of works no matter what, like any viewing conditions you can kind of see how it is. that's one of the great things actually I've taken from shooting on film is that discipline of knowing that if you get you if you middle your exposure if you have you done if you've done your work in prep and you know the camera and you know the range that you can get away with you don't have to sweat that images on set and try and adjust and great you know that you can fix it or address those issues later on often or what you need to adjust in terms of lighting on set so i actually often treat it just like film i don't really do it i don't often use

a lot of grading time on set. I don't often use actually a DOT. I'll just kind of treat it like film. I do all my work in three. I do a bunch of different sequences of tests. Get to a look that I really like that is for the dailies. That's kind of 80% of the final grade, depending on what the situation is.

And then we apply that to the dailies. And maybe I'll do some little adjustments here and there as we go. But once you're up and running, I would rather shoot it on set, take the card out of the camera. And it's like a roll of film. You send it to the lab. And that happens off set.

and if the Daily's colorist has any issues or if editorial or worried about something, you know, you can go and address it. But I'd prefer that routine because you're just spending a lot more time where you should, which is with the director, with the cast, doing another setup rather than fudson around inside this tent trying to grade a shot where it's irrelevant anyway because, you know, you don't have the context of an edit, you don't have the best monitoring setup and you're not sitting with your final colorist. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

in that kind of workflow sense to mess around with a bunch on set. Yeah, the, the, so I'm kind of the same way where I'll just meter the light to kind of like figure out. And also it's just nice because you can get an idea of what you're doing before without having to set up the camera and like look and then run back and for it. If you go to get there, you know, if you put the lights out and the camera's not out yet, you know, you can roughly see what's going on and go from there. And it's good for those kind of situations too. Yeah, the tool that I've really like I recently got maybe like a year ago. eight months ago, was the C-800, the Ciconic color meter. And I've just been, I am the biggest nerd on the planet, man.

I have been metering every possible, I wrote an article where I metered every light bulb that I could buy at Rouse just to see, you know, could you light with these? And the answer is not really. But also LED panels, right? Like just LED lighting in general are so variable. And I'm not a fan of most. LED panels. I mean, I own the same light meter and you only have to start, I mean, you can photograph them and in them and by themselves. They can look fine. It's only when you compare them to other light sources that you start going, oh, there's some shortcomings. And the meter does tell you that as well once you learn how to read it. It says if you invested the time there. And I'm the same. I spent a lot of time in pre-metering different lights. I'll check all of, especially the Prack lights or work with the production design department. Because of course, most lights these days come with LED bulbs. usually standard.

So you're usually either trying to change them out for LEDs that you can accept that are okay or, you know, ultimately put in some old-fashioned tungsten bulbs there as well. Well, that's the problem with living in Los Angeles is in California, you're not allowed to buy regular tungsten. The one you can get that I found is. I know, you got this ridiculous. But you have to, like I get it, we got to save the environment. But the only one you can get is the oven bulb because the oven bulb.

because the oven bulb can't be plastic. So you can buy oven bulbs. But I'll tell you. I'd be making a panel of, you know, get 48 oven bulb bulb. I want to see that way. You can build the oven bulbs. The deacons ring, but it's just a box of oven bulbs. Yeah.

I'll tell you, I haven't told anyone this, but I'm actually in the tail, well, middle to tail end of launching a website slash app because my buddy is smart. that. I just wanted to make a web page where so you know a pro video coalition that releases this podcast is part of a company movieola and then they own film tools. I went over to film tools and just metered every single LED panel they had with the with the thing. I'm going to kick out all those or I already did kick out all of those graphs that you can save with the chart. And the website is going to be where people can compare lights, various lights with that. that information and make more informed decisions on whether or not they're purchasing or renting. And it's shocking, dude. The sky panels are not that good. I know. I mean, I hate to say

it publicly, but yeah, I mean, I would never use sky panels for any kind of keywork on someone's face because once you compare them, even to other LEDs, but to other lights types, like tungsten, for example, is always beautiful in skin tones. Yeah, they're great for other things, but they're not very nice as a key on a person's place it's the spectral output is is surprisingly bad and then you've got like newcomers like nan light and those are actually quite I mean uh you know some of them are just like they they don't have bi-color variability or anything but some of those are really you know TLCI is really high TM 30s like dead you know super circle um yeah it's just super surprising how the big dogs are not like Kino actually Kino has some really good lights too

Pino are very underrated, but I think they're very late to the party. I've used a lot of their stuff. I actually really like the Roscoe DMG. They have very good pilots as well. They're probably the best, actually. I mean, I haven't tried any of the new new stuff, but as of like a year ago when I was trying them out, the DMGs were very, very good, and the canos were also very good. SkyPanel was like, but you know, you got to remember that it's generational too.

I mean, there's sky panels are a few years old now, so they're like, it changes so quickly with updates of everything. I think the new DMG stuff now has six colors, six color LEDs in there. So, you know, they're adding and tweaking things all the time as well. Yeah. The one, the one, you're 100% right. The one thing that I think people need to sort of check themselves on is when they're like, oh, I don't need to gel anymore because I just dial it in on the thing.

And it's like, but that changes the look of, if you're going to use it as a key light, even as a environment light or something, It really does affect the look of any color if you're not doing white light through a gel. The ultimate test, too, is actually a poor color, sodium. Like, if you try and, I've never met an LED light yet that can replicate how awful a sodium light is. Sometimes you need to match that color because you're shooting in an environment where those colors exist. If you go to Home Depot and buy some of those lights, they're 20 bucks or whatever, like, I don't know if you ever meted them or put them into your app. I recommend that you do this because a lot of the LED lights will have a preset for it.

It'll never look like it. I mean, nothing looks like as terrible as a true sodium. There's a kind of strange combination of yellow and green that seems to be unreplicatable in any light. And also, a lot of the gels, you know, there's some pretty cool gels, like urban vapor is very nice color, but it's not what sodium is. It's a kind of theatrical interpretation of sodium. But if you're trying to match that color on set on location, someone who's in foreground and you've got sodium in the background, it's actually quite hard to do. So the last few shows, I've been telling the gaff, listen, you need to go and buy

half a dozen of these sodium lights and we're going to use them. And I have used them like as the key, you know, because there's nothing that kind of matches that color. I find it's just unique. And also the way the camera sees that color too, of course, is another complication in all of this, which, you know, the meter tells you a lot, but then there's this extra layer of difficulty as well. Yeah, I was literally a half hour ago talking to Kramer Morgan Tho about his work on the Many Saints in Newark. And we were talking about the outdoor scenes in that film because I got to see a screener. And he said they replaced all the street lights with coverheads, but then he put park hands there. And I was like, why didn't you go with the vapor? And he's like,

yeah, the vapor looks like the way we remember it. But in my head, like old black and white films from the 60s, 70s, the streetlights were white. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that checks out. Well, I mean, now a lot of those, the public lighting is going to LEDs anyway. So even sodium is not what, what is used anymore. Right now it's this kind of weird, anemic, horrible looking white, but sort of not very nice looking light.

So, you know, I think 10 or 15 years for now, it's going to be quaint using their sodium light because nobody would be kind of as used to that anymore because it'll be more like more likely to be LED base. Yeah, I really wish they would like LA is is absolutely full of those bright 6,500K LEDs to the point where you drive around at night and you forget that your car's headlights aren't on because it's just so right everywhere. Yeah. But it's like impossible to sleep now.

And it's just ugly. And apparently like the light pollution has gotten nuts. But I like, why won't they just do tungsten colored? Why do they have to be? I guess efficiency maybe or something. but yeah i don't know maybe they're taking a theatrical leap some lighting designer there in the public works it'd be a lot easier for all the filmmakers if you just shot at 6500 so go ahead and just the whole city

going back to the idea of photography are you uh do you have like a photo camera that you're really into are you still shooting a film uh i do a lot you know i i'm just going to pull out what's here in front of me i've got yep I've got this little pointer shoot film camera oh lovely Is that a Lika? It is, yes. It's a little of me off. I've got this, this guy, a different day of the week. My main camera of choice is probably one of these guys, one of the M likers.

Nice. I love doing, I mean, every day I'll take a different camera to work. But for some reason, I still keep on returning to the range finders. I think just because they're discreet, I can operate a shot and still have it on my shoulder and it's not going to get in the way. And it's funny, too, actually. there's a different kind of relationship that seems to happen with the subject

when you, I find when you use a range finder I don't know if you've done much range finder versus SLR or DSLR and you have this big camera in front of your face it changes things with a rangefinder I think because you because you know the view finders here

your face isn't covered up when you take the picture and the shutter doesn't black out either so you also see the moment that gets photographed I think it's different you know there's just a different energy and a different chemistry and it's literally reflected in the photos that you take so become more and more aware of process you know and how much process on set and this affects the cinematography

as well the way that you approach the way that you do the job it's not just the job it's the way you work on set and the kind of environment you create and same with photography I think I think of this kind of range finder photography is kind of like the photographic equivalent of slow food you know, it sort of forces you to slow down, take a moment, you have to focus it, you have to expose it, you have to take a picture, and it kind of just changes the dynamic and how you work and also changes the relationship you have with the subject. So it sort of came, you know, I've tried lots and lots of different cameras and I keep on returning to range finders because I find it get the most satisfaction from those

images. And I really think it's actually, it's not the technicality of the cameras. I mean, it's the process that it imposes on you in terms of craft. And I think with cinematography, it's the same. You know, your job as a DP in a way, once you get to a certain level, like 10 cinematographers are going to do a great job on a movie. It becomes then, what are the interpersonal relationships? How do you conduct yourself on set? What are the kinds of conversations you have behind the monitors with the director and with

your crew? Those are the things that actually make the movie. I think you get to a certain point from a technical. you know, competency from an image making point of view, everyone's kind of on an equal footing in that regard creatively. It actually becomes about the logistics and the interpersonal relationships and the process that you establish on set. You know, one of the things I like to do every new show that I do is try and come up with a manifesto or an idea of some rules. And the rules can also not so much be about lighting or image making, although obviously it's related,

but it's often about process. You know, I really love, for example, starting with close-ups before you do the wide shot, which is like never ever what the textbooks say you're supposed to do. You're supposed to shoot the wide shots, establish the lighting, let the actors rehearse and get on their game and work out what they're doing, and then you go in and do close-ups.

I'm like, let's go the other way. Let's start with the drama first. Let's go, these are the close-ups, which are the shots you're going to use? Because it breaks my heart. A lot of time actors, they can't help themselves. they'll come out from take one and they're crying and whatever they're emoting and they're acting and by the time you get to take six it's you know they're spent you know so i i've found over the years like that's a it's a really good idea to start with closest but not always but like you know

it's often often a really interesting way to go and that's a process right that's just the sequence of what the way you do things you know don't tell anyone but you know i really quite like cross shooting which again cinematographers are meant to hate it's meant to be harder to light. But I love enabling actors to be able to overlap each other with their dialogue. I think that's really important, especially I tend to do a lot of comedy over the years. And for comic performance, especially too, because a lot of times when you're doing comedy, by the time they're done three or four takes, it starts to wear out. You know, you almost don't want them to rehearse or even run the lines in the blocking because you hear it the first time, it's always the funniest. And

you're trying to preserve that. And so by cross-shooting, doing close-ups first, for example, with comic work, you can try and, you know, make something happen there. And the actors, you know, usually get into that routine as well. And they know that they're going to come out of the gate really hard. Not all actors are great at it, but, you know, a lot of, you know, some prefer to go later and, you know, you have a conversation about it and you try and structure it. But I just, in terms of process, I've realized that it's actually really important, the way that we approach the job in terms of those workflow kind of things where you're literally talking about the sequence of shots

and the order that you shoot things and that has a huge influence. Yeah, the process thing, like even drawing an analogy with photography again is like, so my favorite like carry it around everywhere cameras, the Fuji film, the XT3. Love that camera. They also have like the range finders,

the X-Pro and the X-100. And those, and there's awesome. And I found, like you were saying, with the range finder, people, A, they think those cameras are filmed. So I've noticed that there's this weird, because everything's so immediate now, and everyone's under surveillance, which I could go into a big, long thing about that, people get nervous when cameras are around because it's like, oh, this is going to be on the internet, this second.

But when you've got film or a camera that looks like it's film, although that could be ethically dubious, depending on what you're doing. But if you're shooting film, people relax. Yeah. And they just kind of like, like at a party or something. be snapping photos and people are more like, ah, and let's like,

get a fuck away from me, you know. Well, that's what I'm saying. I mean, literally the mechanics of what you've got in front of your face is affecting and it's reflecting back at you with the subject because really all that photograph is a record of how they feel about you and what you're doing in that

moment, right? So you can make them uncomfortable or you can make them more comfortable. And I always find those, as I say, those kind of range finder cameras are just less either threatening or less intimidating or people just have a different. kind of reaction to it. They just aren't going to be in the same way. And I think, too, because they usually don't have super telephoto lenses. It's not like with some paparazzi

100 miles away. You've got to be close. You've got to be at kind of talking conversational distance. And that's a different kind of thing as well. Like all of these things affect, you know, what happens when you put a camera up to your face and they become aware that you're taking a photo, you know, all of those kind of things. I mean, a lot of the time it's fun to, you know, if you do three or four in a row, you get the first one where if it's someone you haven't photographed before you get the first one where they're like suspicious and then they have the fake smile oh i'm supposed to smile now and then they kind of don't know what to do or they'll kind of keep on amping it up so it's funny to sort of look at the

sequence of emotions and those emotional beats and then i find usually after a while when you've been doing it um you know one thing i like to do is part of my ritual is when i'm on a show every week i'll send out a bunch of photos at the end of the week as a way of saying hey remember what we did this week i'll usually send it to the producers and the heads of department and some of the crew and it's just like a little reminder of the scenes that you did and those moments and of course you start to become more comfortable once you see the photos and you get this kind of feedback loop I guess where people start to become more relaxed because they know what the what the what the what the nature of those photos and images are too so it's really interesting again

to talk about the process and having a rhythm and having a routine and you know people then know what you expect and you know I think it's really important I mean that's what slating is half the time. It's like, you know, the acting equivalent of the 100 meter dash when they say on your marks, get set, go. It's that all of those kind of rituals are triggers or moments. You know, we've all seen actors drop into character when that happens because that's the sequence. That's the routine. Yeah. Well, and those on set photos are oftentimes, A, super valuable for people trying to learn, like, you know, if they know where that shot was taken, they can look at the lighting and go, oh, okay, I got it. But also, like,

I have Jeff Bridges wide luck, no, was it the wide box, his coffee table book. And it's like fascinating, those moments in between, especially taken by either a department head such as yourself or an actor, like, versus the onset publicity photographer who's. Yeah, well, they're there for different reasons. And I mean, some of them are great, but a lot of them time, they're mostly focused on what is the poster image. What can I, you know, I've got to get 120 images at the end of the day of the actor. and, you know, they're not that interested and nor should they be of us behind the scenes and so on. So I usually find

my photos are useless from a publicity point of view because they're usually actors are in their warming coats or they're not in character or it's a period show but there's a PA in the background. So I never care about any of that stuff. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to make or do publicity images. It's a little bit more spontaneous. But, yeah, I mean, they're different kind of purposes or outcomes that they're looking for there.

Yeah. It occurs to me that I've interviewed a couple Australian DPs. And it does seem to be that Australia is incredibly workman-like when it comes to their artists. It's very much like just buckle down and do the thing and maybe not a nonchalance, but like an ease. There's not a lot of stress with y'all. And I was wondering how maybe growing up in Australia changed you or shaped you as a, as a, deep here as an artist. Well, it's hard to make generalizations because I, of course,

haven't grown up in the U.S. to compare it to either. But I feel like in the Australian filmmaking world, we have a lot less resources. So we're much more used to making things work without the proper equipment or without the proper resources. And there's a lot more of a like problem solving mentality. You know, it's like, okay, we don't. I mean, the first time I work with a technocrine was in the U.S.

I'm pretty sure. like they are there, but you know, no one can afford to, you know, rent a techno routinely like here, it's almost like, you know, it's just expected. You're going to have a few days on every episode, whereas I never really thought that I'd ever get to use one when I was working in Australia. So you just didn't find other ways to do those kinds of shots. So I think there's always this kind of problem solving mentality. And honestly, the light is really different as well.

So you're dealing with a different set of conditions. and the Australian light is really tricky and brutal, it's really harsh and hard. And so I think I find I have a much more simplified approach, you know, and I think, too, the pace that we tend to work at is usually a little bit faster or has been. I mean, nowadays it's different, but certainly when I first came over, I was used to a very fast pace and it was quite a difference of a slowdown because I think everyone's used to a lot more equipment, a lot more hardware coming out. And so I'd kind of come up, you know, using less stuff and still trying to, you obviously

still going for a great result, but finding that simplification was usually the best way to get the best result in the fast, the least amount of time. So, you know, I'm quite happy to, you know, a lot of the time I rarely will bring lights out on a day exterior, whereas, you know, on a big show, you've got all these 18Ks. You could do it if you needed to, but it's like, I never feel the need to. You know, I always just do grip lighting and pull out some bounce. And that's another big difference, by the way, too. I mean, grips only tend to do camera moves and camera-related stuff.

They don't tend to work in the same way the US grips do. So that's taken me a long time to get used to because now I have to have two conversations about lighting as opposed to in Australia. I'd have one conversation with the gaffer about what lights and what was going to be in front of it and what the end result was going to be. And the grips at most would put a tower up or they'd, you know, do some, a very big, you know, negative if you had to tent, build a tent, but otherwise they don't have anything to do with lighting, you know, it's all with the, with the gaffer. So now I have two departments

I've got to kind of manage. So in a way, it's good, like especially if you have a great team, but sometimes that relationship, you know, gets complicated by being, you know, it's like you're in a this kind of strange threesome all of a sudden as opposed to just being in a normal one-on-one kind of relationship. So, you know, it can work out and sometimes it's, it blows up as well. Yeah. When, when dealing with that risk, harsh light or even here or there, do you have kind of like a, maybe not a set lighting pattern because there's no such thing, but like the way that you approach diffusion and bounce and negative, especially now with more sensitive cameras and stuff, because this is something

that I've noticed a lot of DPs that all have different approaches to, like exterior sunlight, basically. Yeah, I mean, I usually am trying to go a little bit for continuity. Obviously, you always want to obey the rules of physics, but I'm also not too beholden to it either. So, you know, I'll usually, I don't know, I mean, it depends on, it depends on the, the, what the scene requires and what it, what it looks for, who you've got in front, you know, who needs a little bit more help versus who doesn't need a bit more help. That's going to affect the staging and the blocking. So usually you're trying to affect, you've done a location scout, you're trying to choose the time of day that you're there. You're trying to find the aspects that will work

for that time of day with the cast that you want to put in that particular location. These are all kind of choices that you're making before you even get to that lighting to set yourself up to succeed if you can. And of course, the actors get up, get there, and then they want to do it some other way and over this way and you're set up to go this way, which is another thing. But, you know, I think for day, I mean, honestly, most of the lighting I do now, I tend to be more, I think, I don't want to say naturalistic, but more truthful and more genuine. I don't tend to do stuff that's as polished as I used to try and do when I was

younger. I'm not making sort of Chanel commercials. And it's been interesting because some of the shows I've been on recently are very polished shows with very A-list actors who come with a huge set of expectations. And I've literally had to be like, you know, you show you got the right guy here because, you know, this is what I'm known for over here. And, you know, but you know, I think there's a way to kind of work between pictorialism, that kind of highly stylized work and doing something that's a bit more authentically, naturalistically done and driven. Most of the time these days I'm tending to light the space.

I try and stage, whether that's outdoors or indoors, and I try and stage with the director to take advantage of what that space is, with what's going on lighting-wise and what's going on with background and aspects. And then, you know, if you need to help things, then you step in and adjust or modify it. augment, but not fighting what the natural location is and what it wants to do. So that's kind of been my go-to, I guess. It's always fun to step outside of that and challenge yourself.

And just to bring it back to the process, you know, think, okay, well, I'm in a routine and a pattern here. What can I do to shake that up? You know, as I said, I love having a manifesto. And in a way, that can be a great way to shake up your own rules. And I kind of got the idea from, if you've ever watched the Lars von Trier docker, the five obstructions, Lys Matria. It's a great example of creative process.

You know, I don't know if you know the film, but, you know, he kind of challenges his old film school university lecturer to remake a short film five times over. And each time he remakes the film, he's going to give him a different set of, he calls them obstructions, but kind of rules, you know, what I think the first set of obstructions, he says, okay, you have to make it in Cuba. You know, he's a Danish guy.

He's never left the country. you're going to make it in Cuba and no shot can be longer than half a second, 12 frames, which is quick because the film is all these very long, languid, single shots. And it seems impossible and yet he finds this great solution. So I think, you know, having those kind of self-imposed rules, the ridiculous ones even, forces you to kind of go, okay, what is the difference? What is the other way I can get around this and problem-solve this? And, you know, you can find great solutions if you throw away there.

you know, you can get into a routine and a kind of stagnation if you just do what worked last time and if it worked well, then why wouldn't you change it? So you've got to, I think, you know, it's an interesting part of the kind of creative process is to always examine those critically and think, how can I do this differently? What am I doing here as wrote and what do I, what do I need to kind of change up or alter here to see what's new? And you're of course always feeding in the new technology and some new LED light that's come out and you know, and you're always kind of trying to smashing it in together to try and, you know, use all of those tools for some kind of creative outcome. So, yeah, and this is why I'm still not bored of cinematography,

you know, I haven't really, a lot of people like, oh, you know, you should go into directing. I'm like, yeah, I really like making images. It's actually really fun. It's something that's incredibly engaging to me. Yeah, I, there's two things. One, I always try to, on any project, kind of sort of what you're saying is like, I always try, sounds dangerous, but I always just try to test something out you know like i'll pick one thing that wouldn't necessarily like ruin the project if it goes wrong and just tries whether it be a piece of gear or a new technique or something like i just try it out uh and especially if you're doing gigs that are like you know for me it could just be like an interview yeah i'm like maybe i'll set up just some wacky uh you know establishing shot

for this interview and just see if they like it and then if they don't you're like all right whatever back up but um do what yeah you do you do you have to test the waters and and and and try those, try to kind of shake it up a bit and see, see what you're kind of just resting on your laurels and, you know, where you can kind of improve. And I think, you know, you don't always have to know the answers to everything, like going into a show. It's like, it's good to be scared and uncertain. And half the time I think, you know, you make a risky choice and you're really terrified about it. And then at the end, it's like, I could have done it twice as much. And, you know, I should have done it twice as much. I should have done more of it. Like,

I always feel like I regret not doing, not doing more of some kind of. a risky choice that you take on doing something so you know i think it's it's great to do that yeah well and then the the notes something you had said earlier reminded me of a an adam savage quote the guy from myth busters where he said uh you know i think he was referring to time crunch but um you know when when when things are getting tight you know it just it just hacks a bunch of branches off your decision tree yeah and and that makes things a lot easier people could get stressed out by having restrictions put on them. But it, for me, it's like, oh, excellent. I think of it as the trivial pursuit response. You know, nine times out of ten, like, you know the answer straight

away when you have that trivial pursuit, trivia question. And then it's only when you have time to think about it, you talk yourself out of the right answer. I think it's the same thing, like most the time. And it's, you know, honestly, when I first started my career, I aspired to shoot movies. I love cinema. I still love going to cinemas. I still love watching movies. But, you know, as I started my career was when TV was really starting to take off and you had movie actors and movie directors doing big television, starting to do these big shows just at the time that larger sensors were becoming available for digital cameras and, you know, all of this was happening. And now I've made this career that's been more or less in television. But I still

find that, you know, a new way of approaching those things or different ways of approaching that kind of storytelling environment is kind of what's what's exciting and what's kind of what drives that that interest and now it's like you know TV is its own kind of form people have kind of come to rely come to view it as its own medium and and I think stream is has had a lot to do with that as well because because you don't have the ads interrupting the rhythm and the flow and so the visual language of television people have got bigger televisions it's 4k televisions now so it's all kind of doing its own thing. So yeah, it's very kind of interesting to me to kind of keep on examining those processes and seeing what it is that you can do to alter that. Yeah, a little earlier

you had said that, you know, talking to maybe the higher ups, like, are you sure you have the right guy? Do you, do you or did you find that you were like making one thing and then you were trying to get to a different maybe part of your career? or you had like a goal in mind. And how did you navigate that? How did you, how did you? Yeah. I mean,

trust you to do something you hadn't proved. Yeah. When I was, I mean, before I went and did my master's, you know, I was doing a lot of commercials and things, but there was always,

I'd never get car ads. And there was a guy in the city that I was working in. And he got all the car ads. And there's another guy who got all the food ads, you know. And it's funny how people get this idea. It's like, well,

you know, have they done cars? Do they know how to shoot a car? And I feel like, you know, as a cinematographer, you should be able to shoot anything, right? You should be able to put your mind to doing something in a way that's kind of interesting.

But there's a lot of conservatism for all of the fact that we love to think that we're edgy and that we take chances. Most producers do not. They think they do, but they don't. And it's even more so. I mean, the funny thing is, is that actually as budgets go up, there's even more conservatism and more concern about whether you're going to be able to do the right job or, you know, be the right person.

And actually, even though you've got more money, it's actually comes with even more expectations. So, you know, it doesn't really change that coming from low budget. In fact, it's really nice and refreshing to sometimes be on a low budget film like I was just recently, where you don't have the same kind of degree of oversight because you've only got a couple million bucks. And it's like more people aren't as kind of nervous about it. You know, I mean, honestly, most of the TV that I'm doing these days, it's five million plus per episode, and it's only sort of 45 minutes. So, you know, going back to what your question was, yeah, I mean, originally I always thought

I would kind of end up doing films, and that's where I wanted to go, and it gradually morphed into really loving, doing television, and I love the form itself, I love the complexity of it. I love that it can be multi-seasons. I think of, you know, a good movie is like reading some kind of in-depth vanity fair article, and it's glossy and it's great and a TV series is like a novel you know you've got these chapters you've got this extra complexity I mean they're different enjoyable for different reasons but you know I love the amount of story art you can get and it doesn't have to be this idea

of a hero's journey of a single character I think television can be multi-character and it can be more complex and I think those are really interesting um storytelling like you know modes to to deal with and I mean I still obviously enjoyed doing movies but yeah I've really come to love the form of television and also what it takes to make that in terms of the pace and the complexity, especially when you're looking after multiple units and multiple episodes and working with other cinematographers as well. And it becomes this kind of huge machine. I think, again, that's where that process kind of thing comes into it as well. Yeah. I feel like recently I was kind of bemoaning the fact that escapism was undervalued,

that people were trying too hard to make things that like people want to feel. feel, I can't, I can't attribute this quote to anyone, but someone was saying, I can't remember who it was, but someone was saying, uh, everyone wants to talk about, um, being, uh, not involved, but like, uh, being engrossed. What was the correct word? Basically just, just being sucked into a film, uh, like suspension of disbelief. And it's like, you don't, you don't want that. Because if, if you were there, if someone got murdered on screen, you would be horrified. You don't want to be completely immersed. We're not looking for immersion. We're looking for, you know, it's not distraction, but like, like fantasy. You know, you know you're watching a film. And I think

television is actually starting coming around and starting to be that because people want to live in these fantastical places on, you know, show, uh, example being like Mandalorian or going farther back, you know, Sopranos or Breaking Bad or whatever, even though those are terrifying shows, uh, people want to live with those characters for much longer than film. And film is, And, you know, it's funny, I feel like, you know, having done shows, like I've come in, I've done shows over a couple of seasons. I've come in on a later season of a show that's already established. It's like, you know, most people have a favorite restaurant. And at their favorite restaurant, they usually have a favorite meal.

And they go to the restaurant and every now and then they'll try the other thing. But they like the lasagna at that restaurant. They want to go there every few weeks or every month or two, and they want to have the lasagna. I think good television is kind of the same. you have an expectation of what you're going to get and what you want. You don't mind it if they mess around with a little bit. Maybe there's a different chef that week. They season the video.

But you don't want to take it off the menu. You don't want to change things too much. And that's always something to be cognizant of when you're doing multi-seasons of a show. It's like, you don't want to totally depart and go somewhere else because people will be like, you know, this restaurant's gone downhill. Like since that guy left last year, the season's just terrible. So, you know, I think fine dining is a great experience. and maybe that's what the, again, that's the analogy of what feature film movies are

but when you're actually going somewhere regularly, it's okay to have the same thing and in fact it's almost a kind of a lesson to like be okay with doing you know, it's funny like sometimes you're on a long running show and they're like what directors will come in

like which angle haven't you shot yet and it's like it's okay to go back to those angles it's okay to do that because you know it's a different mode of storytelling. And I do think that expectation of what you know that when Kramer comes through the door, he's always going to do that thing. Like, it becomes something that is expected, and that's, it's okay to have that happen. And I think that's, that's one of the differences between television, even in a streaming cinematic form that it is now and, you know,

cinema-going movies. So, you know, I think that just be aware of it and then, you know, lean into it. It's fun to play with that, too. Yeah. Well, and something that I don't think anyone really talks about because you know we're well past the whole like you're either a dp for movies or you're a dp for television now it's you know completely cross-contaminated or cross-contaminated cross-mogenated I guess but uh the job security's got to be nice yeah you know you're on a project for longer than it is it it isn't it can be hard slog you know some of those longest shows that you know it's 10 months and you feel like I mean on some of those shows you're there you're there I mean, the directors are coming every three weeks.

The ADs are switching out every three weeks. You're, aside from number one on the call sheet, maybe, you're the one that's there every day, you know, depending on the show. But it can be a lot. You know, and it's hard, like, when you're being asked to return to a show and to do a second season, that's one of the questions. It's like, can I go back for 10 months and give it my all into something I've already kind of done?

Is it worth the investment of a year of my life by the time you sort of, you know, factor in having some time off? you know, in between, like, it's a year. You know, that's what you're talking about, investing in something. And if you've already done a season, it's like, I'm like, what am I going to get? Am I going to get frustrated? Am I going to be able to find enough to get out of this? So, you know, those are really pertinent kind of questions, I think, too.

Yeah. And so you were saying that Lakewood is a, it was a lower budget film? Yeah, so they probably won't like me talking about it. But, I mean, like, it's a low budget film. And you do have Philip Noyes directing it. You've got Naomi Watts acting in it. So on the surface, it would seem like a kind of a big movie, but it's truly an indie movie, you know,

in terms of the way it was finance. And at the time that we made it, it was also the height of COVID, you know, it was I think, I'm trying to remember when we showed, it was like July or August. I mean, they literally just figured out the whole COVID protocols. And it seemed like a perfect script because the premise is about a woman who essentially is jogging in a forest. She starts off the day, leaving her son. and you think he's as a brooding teenager

and you find out it's the anniversary of the father or her husband's death and passing and you're not really sure of the circumstances but maybe that's why the son's angry. She's on the phone a lot and then eventually there's a like a school shooting that happens. She gets an anger alert but it's all fine because the son's at home

except she finds out that the son isn't at home and that his cars at the school, maybe he's involved and then she's trying to, it's kind of a thrill, you know, she's trying to work out where she should be But the interesting thing is it's actually written by the same writer of the film, Barry, Chris Spalling, who's had that film where you had a character who was in a coffin, wakes up in a coffin and he's got a lighter on her phone and the whole movie's inside a coffin. It's similar kind of DNA you can see here because you've got a woman who's running in a forest alone for most of the movie and she's on the phone. You hear the other side of the calls, but you never leave her in that moment. So we had more or less one actor each day.

We're in a forest. We shot it in northern Ontario, which I think when we were there, they'd had six cases of COVID total. So it was a pretty good place in a good way to work because we were outdoors and so on with all of the masking. We all had the face shields and all of that, which we were all kind of dealing with for the first time. So in some ways it was a little bit of a pilot or a test run of the kind of COVID protocol. Paul's. It was a low budget film. We had a very small crew, mostly daylight dependent. And actually, the film had a lot of challenges because you've got a character who's jogging, running, walking fast at the least, most of the film. She starts off on a road, then she's on a dirt road, then she's onto tracks, and then she's onto little goat trails in the woods, and then she's literally in the forest in the middle of with no tracks, you know. And so the film kind of plays as real time. So when you start thinking about how to shoot that, it really is challenging because, like, what are you going to use to be able to keep up with her when some of the takes are 15 minutes long and she's

going to run a few miles? What are you going to use that can keep up with her that isn't going to make sound? So you can record her acting and doing all the sound because you're not going to be able to cut away to, you know, what the other. So, you know, it starts becoming a real challenge and especially in the environment, you know, it was really kind of interesting from that. So it was sort of deceptively complicated and also ambitious, really considering it's a low budget indie movie, you know, that we were trying to do. We actually shot it in a very short amount of time.

It was shot in 13 work days. And remember, with Canada, we went there, we had to quarantine for 14 days. So it actually was shot in one day less than a quarantine that the director and I and Naomi were in to do the movie as well. So, yeah, I mean, it was a very tight schedule. And Naomi was amazing because she was in training before this and she ran us all into the ground. You know, I had some grips and some electrics trying to keep up with her holding dances and lights

and, you know, she would run them all off without a problem. Every now and then you'd be filming. We'd be on the back of a tracking vehicle or something and you'd sort of see a grip dive into the bushes because they just could put up with the jogging after a while. And, you know, I think she was doing like, I think she got, I'm trying to remember, but she got down to like almost you know she could go to the master's games and be a metal contender kind of times on her on her miles so she she was super fit and she showed us all up as well that's for sure we were all needing physio and therapy after after doing it but yeah it was a very very challenging film in that regard but a lot of fun to try and come up with those kind of solutions you know to be able to work that out yeah what sort of like um sort of bigger budget tools or techniques were you

you having to augment to use on a lower budget sort of indie film? Well, you know, there were lots of differences in terms of drama with what we wanted. So, you know, Philip, he loves some handheld, he loves Steadicam. We used a combination of all of those tools. I found some great local crew and great local operators. And also we came up with some pretty unique sort of solution. So the Ari had just come out with the stabilized remote head at the time. I don't know if you know that.

It's like a Trinity? It's like a Trinity, yeah, but they made a kind of remote head version of the Trinity that you could mount. So we came up with a way of rigging that on an electric motorcycle, and we just so happened to have a grip who was a very experienced motocross. Like he'd won awards and medals and stuff for the motocross. So he was a very good off-road motorcyclist. We had this electric bike, and on the back of it,

we were able to mount the Ari, SRH, which is a very inexpensive, techless head. Like, it doesn't really require the same degree of support. Like, a lot of remote heads have a full-time tech, and it was a very simple sort of head. But the great thing I love about it is very small and lightweight. So, you know, when we're trying to, like, literally weave in and out of trees and so on, when you have a small head and a small camera package, we used them.

We actually tested the Alexa Mini at the beginning, but honestly, the budget was so low that we realized that we could get four, of the Blackmagic 12K bodies for the same price as one Alexa Mini. And because we knew that we couldn't, I mean, we're doing 10-hour days, but knew that Naomi wasn't going to be running the whole time. So we got a few picture doubles. We actually had three picture doubles that we could work with. So often what we do is a take with Naomi and then we'd let her rest

and we do a double that would maybe do shots that you can recognize us. It would be the follows and the details of feet and so on. And by having those multiple cameras meant that sometimes we could split those units off. They could go and do some drone work or they could go and do some insert work while we were shooting with Naomi as well. So that just gave us a lot more flexibility. And we also assumed that we probably need some stabilization. So the extra resolution helped a little bit there. And honestly, just the smaller size and being able to afford four of them for the kind of price of one Alexa, you know, was a big part of it.

And Philip was actually, you know, very interested in. And, you know, honestly, I usually do this for most shows. We did a blind test. I shot some stuff with the 12K. I shot some stuff with the Alexa. We actually screened it in the local cinema in North Bay, which is where we were shooting in northern Ontario. And had it up on the big screen with the producers and the director.

And everyone actually liked what the 12K looked like the most. That was what was actually people responded to the most. so it was a it was pretty easy and we also knew that with the extra resolution we could do some you know punchings if we could either stabilize or maybe we could you know reframe if we're not going to get a lot of takes out of Naomi because just jogging maybe you could kind of resize and you know have a kind of a longer shot turned into a more of a medium shot I'm never much of a fan of doing that to be honest I've been burned by that something but you know at least it was a potential option if you had to and in the end actually I don't think we ended up needing to do that too much

But, you know, that was another thought that was in our head. So there was lots of reasons to choose that camera. But, you know, principally, we could have four for the price of one. It gave us the extra resolution we might need for some stabilizing and shot resizing. It was physically smaller than an Alexa mini, especially for a long handheld takes for me. That's what I preferred as well. It also meant going on the head. It was a lighterweight camera on the head and made everything just a little bit easier to kind of work with.

So, you know, there are lots of reasons. So, yeah, I mean, it was, it worked there really well. And, you know, I actually haven't seen the final, final result on the big screen, but Philip was at the premiere at TIF at Toronto International Film Festival. He said, looked amazing. You know, it was on a giant screen there was a big audience and said it went down very well. So what was your, so I assume if you were planning on stabilization and stuff, you were maybe shooting a little wider than you expected?

A little bit. I mean, in the end, actually what happens is, of course, is it's quite hard to stabilize a shot that's moving all the time, you know, especially if it's forest and things like that. So you're actually not tending to be able to use it as much as you think you can once you start actually being in that environment. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we really changed the framing mentality. It wasn't like we were expecting it to happen, but we thought, well, maybe it'll help

us if we really up against it for a certain moment, if we had a big bump or something that goes through, which did happen, you know, sometimes you get little potholes in the roads or bumps and jerks and things. And it sort of helps smooth a lot of those things out. But, I mean, I was actually so amazed. And the crew were really good. Like, none of them had really worked with any of those Black Magic cameras before. But they, in good faith, took them on.

And they worked, you know, very well and very reliably. And we got some really, really pretty results. I'm really hopeful that they'll do a trailer soon. I think the film actually has sold now. So hopefully we'll see a trailer for it soon. Yeah. What was your lens package there? because even with such a high resolution sensor,

it's still a super 35 sensor, but that's a lot of detail. So were you trying to combat that with the lens choices or are you trying to keep it pretty clean? It's funny. I mean, when the camera first came out, I mean, my first instinct as well was like, oh my gosh, like what kind of lens do you need to use with this?

But here's, and let me tell you about a conversation I had with Naomi's hair and makeup people because when they heard the 12K number, yeah, you know, if you get like, wait, you're going to put this camera at one foot from her face and, you know, she's a beautiful woman, but, you know, she's of a certain vintage and a force. Everyone wants them, wants to look the best they can for the circumstances of the show and the film. And we wanted to be able to look after her.

And that was going to be a challenge as well. I mean, for a while I was looking at maybe I can have like, just an inflatable cloud. You know, it's like maybe I can attach to those. Yeah, exactly. I can have an air mattress attached to the vehicle and drive along and use. that to protect her, but it's like, that's pretty bad when you get into a forest of trees and it's, you know, so you're kind of going through all these different sides. But anyway, the funny thing is, is that when you, when you have that kind of resolution, and actually

the opposite happens, it's almost like the structure or the, or the pixels disappear and it becomes, in a way more flattering, especially because, I think because they're quite small and there's so many of them, it's sort of, it's interesting, you know, like I've never seen a lens with resolution because it doesn't really work that way. Yes, you can use vintage lenses. What I found is it's not that they soften things. All that happens with the 12K camera, if you put vintage lenses on there is you can sort of see the faults more obviously.

It becomes more transparent. The camera sort of sees more detail. So therefore it tends to see more of the aberrations that disappear maybe on a lower resolution format. So I personally think it does look better with a better performing lens and more modern lens. I mean, I'm a big fan of using vintage objects. I love it, but I think for this particular camera, it performs its best with modern lenses. So we end up using Zeiss Supremes.

And funny, I just recently, for the show I'm doing now, I just did a test where I compared Zyce Supremes and the newer Panavision Panas speeds, which are their kind of large format lenses that are quite new. They're post-Primo-70s. They've just sort of been shipping those recently. And they're both very different lenses, very pretty lenses in their own way. But I noticed with the Zai Supremes,

they do fall off very quickly. I realized that when I was first shooting with the 12K and the Supremes, that I thought it was the sensor because it sort of has this almost a large format look is how I would describe it. But I actually think that's more to do with the lenses. Now that I've compared them with the pan of speeds,

even at the same focal length, same aperture, I would have thought they would kind of be the same in terms of how they fall off. But actually, the Supremes are beautiful in the way they fall off and they fall off quite quickly. And I feel like that lends a bit of a large format look. So I feel like the Supremes are a very good match for the 12K. I've shot them a few times and they work really well.

So, yeah, so we principally shot with the 12K camera with the Zy Supremes. There's a few shots in there where we had an Optimo 24 to 290 as well for some very long lens shots as well, which worked out. But yeah, probably 80% of the film is Zysoframes. I 100% agree with you. So I have the large format camera, and I primarily will shoot Nikor primes on it because I have a Nikon F2. So I was like, oh, here we go, easy enough.

And yeah, same thing, you know, a really nice, you know, like a Sigma 35, really sharp, pretty lenses, pop it down to a 1-8. and it looks great, but the Nikor's just that falloff is a lot prettier and does tend to, I think you're 100% right, there are certain lenses that lend itself to that look that I think people ascribe to large format, even though anyone who's read or watched Steve Yedlin's diatribes on the subject should know that is a fallacy. It is in the lensing. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I recently, I just shot the second season of the morning show and we had an inherited choice there of the DXL too, which is kind of really,

really, I've tested large format. I really like the idea of it. But every time I've tested it, I haven't really seen enough of a visual difference for it to be worthwhile for me. Not that I think it's fattish or anything. I wouldn't say that. But it's never been a thing I wanted to, you know, really reach out and do. So it's interesting. At the moment, I'm starting a new series with René Zelliger, limited crime series here in Orleans. And I'm very interested in large format for this only because we're going to be in smaller locations. We're going to be in really tight spaces. And I do think one of the few times that you're going to see those kind of differences

with some of those wider focal links if you're trying to get separation and so on. It's the only time I think that lives format maybe starts to make sense. So, you know, I'm like, okay, okay, I'll give it to try now. So this will be my first time choosing to shoot large format. But I've kind of resisted. I mean, I think Super 35 was a great mix for most of the most. situations of kind of giving you nice focus separation and depth of field, but you also have the option of having more in focus. And actually, I prefer the lenses. Most of the time, Super 35 lenses are much smaller. There's a lot more variety in choice. Once you go to last format, it actually forces you to go to these big, giant, heavy, expensive, complicated lenses as well. So that hasn't been fun. I mean, zooms are still really, really lacking, you know, in large format, good cinema zooms as well. Not that I shoot much as I tend to be primed, but still, you know, it's one of those kind of main. Norm's on you get all these kind of expanded or converted zooms, but now they're like 5.8, you know, zooms. It's just they're, they're super slow and big. And yeah, I haven't really been that enthusiastic until now. I'm going to, I'm going to try, check back in with me in six months. Yeah. Well, you know, the, the, having your lenses narrowed down so much is something I've noticed as a problem. Like clients going like, oh, we want to shoot full frame. I'm like, great. Got that. And they're like, and we want to shoot cooks. And I'm like, no, you don't. That's, that's going to be more of them.

the camera. And also, there's giant lenses on the front. Like they're huge, you know. Yeah. But the one thing I will say that the large format has been nice is the few times I've been able to play around with animorphics. That extra height that you get on the sensor really lends you a lot more detail and it really pulls out the character of those lenses.

It's a very pretty image in that regard. We, I mean, that hour fucking flew by. We got to wrap it up. but I would love to have you back on maybe in six months when you're maybe in the middle of that or something. But yeah, but I like to end every interview with same two questions. First one being, do you recall maybe a piece of advice that you were given that has stuck with you maybe throughout your career? Maybe it was recent, but that you think would help others. And also, can you recommend a movie that you think people should check out besides obviously yours?

I would say I'm trying to remember the right way to phrases, but, you know, it goes to what we were saying before about that idea of having a manifest or making, making rules, you know, don't be afraid to make mistakes and try things out and test things out and make your own path and make your own choices, you know, back your own instincts, test those things out and try them out. you know, it's, it's, you don't have to, it's good to be informed about what others are doing and how other techniques are, but there's 10 different ways to get to the end results. So, you know, make your own and find your own. I think that's, that's what's interesting about what we do as a process and as a, as a creative kind of process. And sorry, what was the last one? Oh, they're a film. God, golly, you're putting me on the spot.

What have I seen recently that I really enjoyed? But it's funny looking at, you know, whenever you start a new project, you start going through old films to look at what might be relevant, you know, just doing kind of visual research. And I re-watched I-Tanya just recently. Oh. And it's such a good movie. It's not that old, but it's such a well-put-together.

It's such a good-looking movie for a film that is, you know, veering into kind of naturalism and documentary mentalities in terms of. the way it shot. And yet it has such a great cinematic and very well-crafted look. So I really appreciated that. Just recently, it was a big influence on what I'm about to start now. Well, like I said, this is a lot of fun. I would love to have you back on next time you're free. We have each other's email now. So if you have something new to say, please hit me up and we'll get it done. Feel free to check me again. And it's been very enjoyable. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Right on. Frame and Reference is an Owlbot 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 Ethad 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 ProVidiocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash Owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.