Frame & Reference Podcast - 40: "God's Country" DP Andrew Wheeler (Sundance Select)

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Welcome to another episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast. This week, Kenny talks with cinematographer Andrew Wheeler about the Sundance Film Festival film "God's Country." The film follows a grieving college professor (Thandiwe Newton) who confronts two hunters she catches trespassing on her property and is drawn into an escalating battle of wills with catastrophic consequences. Enjoy the episode! Follow Kenny on twitter @kwmcmillan 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've got a banger for you. We're speaking with Andrew Wheeler, the DP of the film currently playing at Sundance, God's Country. And the reason this is such a good one is because If you've listened to this podcast a lot, you have probably heard me mention that I have a hard time articulating the sort of similarities between making music and making films. And Andrew is actively in a band and his new album after a long hiatus is coming out in the future, in the near future, this year at some point. And so he was able to kind of articulate that for me. We spend a lot of time kind of digging into artistry.

On the whole, not just cinematography. And I think that's awesome. You know, actually, this conversation really kind of goes back to how this podcast initially first started, which was more me talking to cinematographers about almost anything besides cinematography. At least that was kind of my idea at first. And so, you know, because I think the artist who creates the film has a lot of influences that are not cinematic. And obviously, you get that sometimes in these conversations, and sometimes it's strictly down to film. But this one, just absolute true. I had, it was like hanging out with a buddy I'd known for a long time.

It was awesome. So really enjoyed this one. I am going to stop hyping it up and just let you hear it because it's a lot of fun. And I think anyone is going to learn a lot from listening to Andrew's perspective. So without any ado's to be furthered, here's my conversation with Andrew Wheeler. You know, the way that kind of we start all these podcasts is just like asking, how did you get into cinematography? Were you always a visual person or did it come to you later?

Like, what kind of brought you to the art form? Yeah. I think it's like not that unusual of a story. It's the classic. I got a video camera. my parents won a raffle ticket or you know they want a raffle in 1984 so still like before i think i was five so still before camcorders it was like this box uh that took a vhs tape and then it just had a long cable out of it with this like i don't know like weird camera looking thing

so so that's kind of where i started with my brothers we were making you know classic thing making little animations making little movies And then, but I didn't, it took a long time to realize, I've watched back some of that stuff and there's like videos of me being like, you need to stand there and you know, like that kind of thing. And it took me a long time to actually realize cinematography was like the direction, like, was the path that I was going to become a filmmaker through. But, you know, I took, I got out of high school and like my junior and senior year to go to Pittsburgh filmmakers in Pittsburgh. So that was that kind of started there and then I went to an art school in Philadelphia called University Arts but I was going like I didn't consider I wasn't like I'm an artist I was just like I want to make films or whatever and and when I was the only college I applied

to they're like where's your artwork and I was like what do you mean I'm not that's not what I do and they're like well you're going to have to take these summer courses if you like want to be accepted and like you need to take whatever art classes at your high school this last year of college or last year of high school to come here and I was like I don't know how to draw I don't know how to do any of that stuff so that that that led me to that school called University Arts in Philly where it's another thing where my appreciation for things always comes like way later it seems and I uh I went there for four years and I had a first year of this art classes There was like no video or film classes at all.

And I did have, I did have like one class actually. It was like, you're allowed to one elective. So I did take like this film class like once a week. And I just befriended that guy and would go to him to his edit studio. And like I was already just like trying to do stuff. And then the second, third, fourth years were, you know, a film. I didn't actually didn't want to be in Hollywood at all at first. Like, I come out of, like, a, like, a hardcore punk, like, anarchist, like, lefty background.

And, like, so, like, the big, the big movies was not what I was interested at all. That being said, like, I didn't know what wasn't that. So, and that's, that's kind of what I got out of going to that school in the end. Like, I remember getting out of, I had a great teacher. He's, like, a pretty well-known experimental filmmaker named Peter Rose. He was the head of the program then. And, you know, he introduced us to, like, the Stan Brackages and all of those kind of experimental filmmakers. And then, you know, feature film, like European film, just stuff I would have never seen, probably was bored with at the time and didn't realize to later that, you know, how to talk about art and film and kind of be influenced by those things was not something.

that I considered educational when it was happening. And I remember going on to my first film set and being like, I don't know what any of this stuff is. And kind of, I resented my education at that point, going on to an actual film set. I was like, I don't know what a C-stand is. I just went to four years of school. So, like, the resentment came back in.

And I felt like I wasted my time at college because I didn't recognize all the stuff that I actually did, learn there was going to help me a lot way later. And that didn't happen until I went to AFI. So I worked for like, I toured in a band, like, like, I went to like 50 countries playing like hardcore punk music. And that was training too for this business, to be honest. And, you know, you got to like, I was stuck in a van with like five or six people for like

months on end. You got to know how to get what you need. without stepping on toes. And that's pretty much like what being a cinematographer is. I mean, you are like, you are the line. It's like there's all the people above you and then there's all the people below you. And you got to know how to do that. So that was all good training for that amongst other things.

And eventually I went to, I worked in a film business like as that was happening, it's like a grip and electric. And it slowly kind of dawned on me once I started seeing people do these things. I was like, I want to be the camera. like I want to be at the camera. I still never, everyone just kind of thinks they want to be a director

and I was probably in the same boat and I probably wanted to make weird documentary art movies and it took me in on an actual film set to then start to realize that's what I wanted. And then I met at DP like on a movie in 2007 or 2008 that I was like a key grip on it. He's like, I'm in my first,

he was a little bit older, but he was like, I'm between my first and second year at AFI. And you should go. You're like exactly what they're looking for. I'll write a letter. And things lined up for me that like if I was ever leaving Philadelphia, which I'd been there for 11 years at that point, this was it. And I applied. Actually, didn't get in.

I got waitlisted. And then found out like two months before the semester started that I, like somebody else dropped out or whatever. and then I got into if I and uh that's that's like really where the career starts yeah in a lot of ways but uh yeah there's certainly a lot of things along the way pushing it in certain directions you know uh if you if you ever have a bunch of time you should you should listen to my podcast uh pretty much everything you described is is more or less how i came up that's that's i well i should say more in the like you know punk rock kid just wanted to kind of like make movies uh and and same thing like did did you

kind of approach it more of like workman like it sounds kind because that's what i did i was like i will film the thing i don't have i didn't have like an artistic stroke in me but i was like i know how to do that i can do that for you yeah plumber you know like i can fix that you know yes yeah yeah i mean in a lot of ways yeah at first it was it was very um you know you're just trying to do the the craft part of it, I suppose. And like, that is the goal for a while. As for me, I mean, I guess there's people that aren't like that. But. Oh, for sure. I went to NIFA, tons of like art kids who, I mean, I did like a summer program in NIFA, but there was a lot of kids. And they're way more successful than me. But who they like showed up at age, you know,

17, 18. And like, just had the fucking vision. And I was just like, I'll fucking expose it real good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it started that way in a sense. And like, I was shooting our tour stuff as well. In fact, our first, like, our second album comes with the DVD, which that came out in like 2005. And there's two, there's two tour documentaries on there. I mean, the first one was our first European tour, which I shot in probably, I think it was 2003. And I shot it all on Kodachrome. It was all on Super 8. No shit. So, like, yeah, it's kind of like, it's not, there's nothing like amazing about it, but it's like, it's entertaining and, you know, you get a glimpse of stuff. It's not mini-d-d-for-the-time. No, exactly. And, like, I would basically just shoot, you know, there's three-minute rolls or whatever. I don't know how many I bought at the time.

And I would just give the microphone to band members. Like I had, I think it was, I think I had like, what is it? Like a mini-disc recorder or something I had at the time. And it was like, I said, just go talk in the room about the day. so like I basically like edited the movie through the audio and then then I've started laying the pictures down to it and it's I don't know it's probably I don't even know how long it is maybe half hour 40 minutes or something and then there's like another one we went and played like all throughout Southeast Asia in 2004 which like nobody like people still don't really

do that but like definitely nobody did it at that point so that I mean it was an adventure for sure and I actually left my camera in like either in the taxi I forget where I left my my like the video camera I was going to take on the tour like in the then the van that dropped us off at the airport or something and then somebody in Hong Kong let me borrow like a pretty crappy mini DV camera but I filmed that like whole tour and there's just you know there's like there's footage of us playing in Jakarta and you know the world was different 17 years ago like globalization hadn't like caught up a lot of places especially throughout a lot of Southeast Asia and no social media really except my space no no exactly and like I always wonder

about that how that band would have existed with social media I don't think well to be honest but I almost have to go into the band to talk to like express how it would have been but like we had a Guar-esque show so there was a huge audience participation factor in the band and it's kind of hokey but like super fun so like the hype from that if you're you didn't see it was incredible and it was incredible to experience as well i just kind of wonder how if like social media was a thing and people were actively seeing you do it all the time just how that was played out who knows but you know it's it's interesting to think about because i've always especially you know with film and shows now like when people people really want to know

exactly what they're going to watch right now. And that whole idea of like funneling the experience, like managing expectations or like setting, like the first using the Matrix as an example. Like remember the ad campaign for the Matrix? Yeah. It was just like, holy fuck, what is the mate? Or same thing with like Blair Witch, right? Like they really like set up.

And I don't think you can do those ad campaigns. I don't think you can just get people into a theater or in front of a TV and just watch the thing without like first. reading 70 reviews on Twitter you know yeah five leaked clips you know it's like no there's that that build to expectation or that that um willingness or that ability to be surprised is kind of gone now and that's a huge part in my opinion that's a huge part of of seeing a lot of things yeah everybody knows everything and wants to find out everything before they experience something yeah basically it's frustrating i would love to see your uh tour documentaries that'd be cool um yeah

did you see the the um dave girl documentary what drives us i haven't i've been meaning to watch it but no i have not seen it yet i interviewed um the d p uh jessica uh last name escapes me um she's awesome but the movie's awesome too but it's it's about you know touring in bands and stuff but sure um i kind of asked her this but i think you might have a slightly deeper insight um what sort of parallels can you draw between um music and filmmaking like how do you how do you approach both in the same way because this is something i've been trying to articulate for a long time like i've always said that like josh homie's approach to music is kind of how i've started to approach filmmaking yes uh this is a giant question this is a huge question that's

going to that's going to be tangential in my thought process good that's fucking spiral bud um well let me just start with god's country so like i i like i knew the script very well uh like julian the director and i had you know i've been a part of that project for a very long time and um and we've been working together for 12 or 13 years at this point and uh I just appreciated the scripts so much because it was like a 65 or 70 page script by the time it was completely done. So we weren't just making like a TV show in movie form or I just I kind of differentiate things by commerce and art. And obviously you need those things to coexist in filmmaking at some point in the process because it's expensive. right but my first question is always like are we making commerce or art and we were making art

from the from the get go and i i listened because i knew this i didn't wear like comtecs or anything i was often operating with a remote head out of the room uh the second half because of COVID. And I had these, I had one of these in just tucked, like one earbud tucked into my ear on, on certain shots. And there was always, often I will pick two or three tracks of music per movie that for me illustrate kind of mood or tone. And I'll put, I'll just put it in turned way down when i'm like operating a shot and i i'm like okay we're good we're good we're good and that's that's like the ultimate for me like merging of music and what i do now uh because it's very direct um but back to the other question i think

some of my favorite people are like artists that i really respect musically right and there's man, I want to talk about this so bad. So the album that I have... Do it. It's what this is for. It's like... So the album, I haven't... The band has a new album coming out, right?

Oh, shit. Very cool. Unexpectedly, right? Uh, there was no intent. It was like, we broke up 2006 or seven at the height of that band's existence. Because we're like, we were playing a show. It's a very odd. band like singers like watch it we're really like into seeing birds and going in the national

park we like weren't part in so like we would go to these places and like people would like come out tonight we're like no we got to get up at like six a m to go see like this one bird like in whatever national park right and uh that you know that that that that like lived its its life and i like picked up a guitar and i was i wrote all the music i'm like the architect of the band singers like the figurehead but i'm more the architect of especially with the music and And I didn't play guitar for 10 years. I can only do one thing. It's like this one thing.

It's not like back to the craft thing. It's like I'm not, I can just do this like really narrow band of style of music. And that's it. And because of that, it sounds a certain way when I do it. And that's what that band sounds like. So I didn't touch my guitar in 10 years and picked it up. And like all these songs started coming out. And I didn't, I was like, the punk gods were like, here, have this, here, have this, have this. And I'm like, I angry again. Like, what is happening, you know? And, and I talked to the guys and they're like, they're like, what is this? And this whole thing has been running in parallel to God's country. Oh, wow.

In a really crazy way, and it's made me really understand, like, what being a director is like, too, because I'm kind of the director of the music part of it. So there was a lot of, like, Julian and I, he really involves me in the process, and it would be like, I'd be like in the mix of the album, and he'd be in the sound mix. And I'd be like, we'd just have these, like, conversations that were, like, meaning the same thing about two different things, you know? And because of this, this, you know, like there's some, I talk to the bass player of Dillinger's skate plan all the time. He's somewhat I went to. I went to art school with Liam. That's awesome. And our conversation, like back to that initial question, like, our conversations are all about process and creativity and how those, those things are like extremely.

similar between music and film and I had like another person like I'm not going to claim I'm like close to him but we we've had an I met him while I was shooting a TV show earlier this year completely randomly out at a bar in Oregon and I started I had just finished God's the second part of God's country so I like just gone to Oregon to start this TV pilot and we're talking we're talking and I'm like talking about process and I was talking about this album and he's like for like an hour and a half he's like oh I play and we had this really creative great conversation

about creativity you know and I think we were both like a little bit enamored with one another within that conversation and eventually he's like and like he wasn't trying to get it out he's like yeah I play music too you know and I knew that from our conversation

but it was like and eventually he's like he's like he probably know the band I'm like there's no way He's like, it's just indie music, you know? I was like, I was like, I'm sure I don't know what band you're in, you know, because I'm like not that active in that stuff either. He's like, no, it's Death Cab for Cudy. And I'm like, oh.

I heard that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's like, it's Dave Depper from Death Cab. And it's like, you know, it's, I can't claim that we're friends, but we have like a. Friendly. We have, yeah, we have like this conversation that's happening. And like he's in the studio with his album right now. And, you know, it's just you can talk about music and film in almost the same way.

if you are one of the creative people on it like i mean they're they just run so they're like so parallel and like it's just like a tiny turn to get into the other lane you know and honestly like when i wrote this album so much of it was so different than how i did it in the past because it came back to to you know if you want to say i've been like a professional artist now for like 13 or 14 years with cinematography. I didn't have that point of view and that filter of the creative process doing punk music before, which is also why it is what it is. So it was very interesting for myself to like come back to writing music now and being like, well, I need like, this album these like a beginning, a middle and end, and it's like the flow has to go like this and like

I'm going to push every creative piece to the to its limit and then see where it's too far and pull it back. Like that was never how it went before. And it's not that it sounds drastically different. It's just to me it's way better now, but it's refined, you know, like and it's like it's like the old band on steroids, you know? Yeah. And I didn't want to, I didn't want to do stuff. My big thing going forward with the album was like, I don't want to, I don't want to not do, I don't want to not explore something creatively because this music doesn't do that thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's like really applicable to cinematography also. It's like it's really easy to be, like it's not hard to make good images, which is not, especially nowadays. Yeah. It's so easy to make good images now. And it's like, what does that mean at this point? You know, and like, what is a good image? And that's why a lot of shit sucks now, to be honest.

So that's a great, I didn't know I had this question until you said that. Because I've been writing this article. So I write for the website that distributes this podcast, Pro Video Code. And a lot of times I review gear. And at the beginning of last year, I was handed the C70 to review. view. And at the end of my time with it, it was like three weeks. I was just, I had nothing to say because it's a great camera. It's awesome, right? It makes amazing images. It's got everything you need. Built in NDs, XLRs, the whole thing. It doesn't have SDI, but whatever. It shoots raw

now. And I couldn't write an article about it. Because I was just like, it's great. What do you want? So it, so the article turned into like half, what is a cinema camera? Like, can we start defining hardware in a way that makes sense? And the other half is kind of what you're saying of like, What, if everything is perfect now, what do you, what does the, what's the language of cinematography mean when, when like a great image is achievable with almost no effort? Yeah. How do you, how do you structure? Yeah, I don't know. That's a, that's a, I mean, if people aren't asking that question and people clearly are not, you just end up with junk.

like it's like it's it's like professional looking junk right it's like yeah you the facade of filmmaking is there but like it's how it's like it's empty yeah so to me like to expand on that and these are things like i'm really not great at expressing cinematography's things i mean it's like but i have had to think over the past week with you know people talking about this movie and asking me about the movie, like, in style questions and all these things, I don't really have an answer for that stuff. It's like, to me, the, the camera, like, where you, this is something I kind of had to type out. It's like, you have to figure out where the camera goes. That's the most important thing, right? At the end of the day, it's like, that's the, that's the pen. You know,

that's what's doing the writing. Like, you have to figure out where the camera goes. You have to figure out where the camera goes and you have to figure that out with the director as well uh and once you you figure that out a lot of the why you're doing it and why it's going there those that that the answers to that start to come in once you know where it needs to go and i think style completely comes out of that like where the camera goes how that is style is where the camera goes because You know, there are, obviously there's certain DPs over the years that, like, have tons of style in the lighting. And you can look at it and go, that was shot by sell and so. Right.

That's that style. But they're also good at the camera part. So they can go, they can go hand in hand. But you got, you have to have the camera part first. And a lot of people can get in the way of where that camera goes. and how many times it needs to go somewhere, you know. And that's like, that's what's really hard and trying to, I almost want to say, like, you've got to protect that,

but it's not even like, it's, that's the thing about God's country. The collaboration of this film is, it's just like I haven't experienced, I don't want it to sound like other filmmakers aren't as good or like, it's like, I'm not trying to like come off saying, in that but like the thing that i have with julian and perhaps it's because of 13 years like we are aesthetically aligned on certain things we don't we didn't even go into the we don't go into the movie talking about references we didn't we didn't it wasn't like we wanted to be like this movie

and we wanted to look like this and here's this painting and here's this whatever that people do often do and we just talked and talked and talked like forever and and and and and and refined and refined, you know, and I was included in a lot of the process, like before shooting and after shooting. And there's just a confidence there. And that's because of him that like, we're pushing this thing in the right direction.

And like, that's, that's what we're aiming for, you know? Like, let's not, let's, let's have a movie that like, when it's done, we're like, we made the choices we wanted to make, not like this situation forced us to do this, or these people forced us to do this, and now we're not happy. Like, people may not like the movie. People may not like choices we made, but we made choices, and that's pretty awesome. I would be surprised if people didn't like the movie.

It's quite good. But one thing that you're kind of dancing around that I've had a handful of conversations about, and everyone kind of agrees, but, you know, obviously I'd like to hear your point is, I think that that transition from, I don't know, plumber to artist, so to speak, comes from, as you said, confidence, but also going with your feeling. I think you as a musician probably are a little more in tune with this idea, but I think it's really hard for cinematographers or whoever to trust their feeling and not go, oh, we're supposed to go wide, medium, over over. Like one thing I really love about this film that you did is I noticed right off the bat, I was like, you get these really beautifully composed wides. Like everything has played a lot wider than let's say is traditional now, you know, right, these days. Very few close-ups.

And it just looks gorgeous. And I'm sure part of that is a technical. I wanted to ask it all, sure. What lenses were you using? Because they look exactly like my Nikors. Okay. Yeah, we used It was all Panavision stuff. So it was like their set of lenses specifically are Pan of Speeds for the bulk of the film. But we had two special kind of semi-uncoded H-Series panavision lenses that we use for a lot of Tandy's stuff. And especially when Tandy is just alone. Gotcha. Yeah.

No, because you get amazing separation. Were you shooting the DXL? DXL, yeah, DXL, yeah, DXL, too. so slash red monster, I guess. You know, big censor. Yeah, yeah. And very wide open. A lot, the movie's wide open, uh, for the bulk of it, uh, which I get, when I hear

people say it's like a wide open movie, not about mine, but in general, like, I kind of cringe often when I hear that because things are just close ups and you just have a blurry movie with like no scope and you don't know where people are. And you're not actually using the focus to like isolate how someone's, feeling you know yeah no you you do a fantastic job of like i said those those wides like there's a i think when when tandy's talking to the truck guys me at first i think the first time yeah there's just a great wide of her where again the separation is beautiful but i just remember going like that's normally where someone would play a close-up and i'm loving the framing where that's

julian that's all julian oh is it because i was going to say like the compositional choices Well, yeah. Composition is something that I was, I really got, I was interviewing Tim Ives from Stranger Thames. Oh, yeah, sure, of course. Yeah. And I got him on a lick because I was like, do you have any like photo? I was just starting to get into photo books. And I was like, do you have any like photo books at you?

And he goes, hold on. And he walks away and he comes back with a stack like this and just starts doing show and tell for 20 minutes. And I was like, this is awesome. Yeah, that's amazing. But going through those books, I'm really starting to get better with composition. I got like a little Fuji film camera that I like walk around. take pictures of the practice. But where are your kind of compositional brain? Is that strictly coming from just like, I'm going to do what feels right? Or is there kind of, like, I know you said

you didn't really have references for the film, but where did you learn sort of composition like that? Yeah. Not that specifically, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. I try to answer this because there was like a couple things I wanted to answer in there. I'm sorry. Yeah, I told you. Yeah, no, no, it's all good. If you watch Thief, which is the film that Julian and I did before, like that was our thesis film at AFI that won Student Academy Award that year, there are crazy similarities to God's country. So there's a, and that was, you know, he was, he would have been like 25 at the time. I was 29 or whatever. So there is a, there's like a baseline of aesthetic styling that we like, I guess. um the we strive for wide wide shots it's like it's one of my issues with anamorphic shooting

to be honest like it's something that we and i appreciate hearing that the movie looks good because it didn't we that's like not like a it was not a goal necessarily that's like a really low like the low level goal in a sense you know what i mean i know you're speaking more specific you mean other things when you say that. But it's like, and I think that that like, that base of like, oh, no, the movie looks good is like, that's just kind of like the base we're working at. You know, that's like everybody has like their taste, right? And that's kind of like our taste level, I suppose.

And we have to, you know, such a big problem with, well, I have a house in Montana. So this is part of this. So, like, when people are like, what's the inspiration? It's like, well, Montana's the fucking inspiration. Like, that's, that's like a, I mean, the movie's not really set anywhere, but it's, you know, you can't mess those photos up in, in a way, right? Well, you know what's funny is? Yeah.

I was, uh, I just spent three weeks and I helped run college ski trips every winter. So I spent three weeks in Colorado. I just got back a couple days ago. I was in Keystone and Steamboat and Breckenridge and all these places and, you know, especially Steamboat is a lot more out there. Yeah. And I felt like for a second there, I was just like watching this film because it looks very natural. That's the other thing. It's not like a Guillermo del Toro looks nice. You know, it's like very natural, natural looking. But I was sitting there and I had this immediate appreciation. I was like, this is what this looks like. Yeah.

This is exactly what this looks like. Like I just was there, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know that's so i i i have a sony a seven r two or whatever and i i shoot tons of photos on it especially when i'm at my house in montana and uh and if people it's not it's not landscapes it's like i have uh my i have like a farm up there we got like an organic farm that i've got seven or eight years ago but i retired my parents to the farm and then i my sister and her family live in one of the other houses on the farm and they do all the actual farming, but I like, I get to take pictures of my, my parents, like my nephews, like in this, and we're right against the Mission Mountains, north of Missoula, that, those photos,

like, if I put those photos together and then like you start to see the photos on the scouts of God's country, there's like not much of a difference. Do you know what I mean? So it's all on one lens that kind of looks like the lenses that we used on the fifth. film and that like inherently is imparted on the film right on a singular image level yeah yeah uh so i yeah i don't know that's a bit that is a big part of it but i and i just i didn't have any restrictions obviously shooting those photos you kind of do what you want and you you figure out what's working so you just start to like i feel like i was developing like a certain style of photography in in the in that pandemic window like right before and then through it for

the second half that like just kind of goes with this movie whether i was thinking about it or not you know yeah um shooting in in uh snow is particularly difficult uh i think you guys it seemed like you guys were blessed with a little bit of over well blessed with a little bit of overcast a lot of the time but um how are you managing contrast in those that makes me so happy to hear because we were not blessed with snow. And shooting in Paradise Valley was L.A. style blue fucking skies half the time. It was awful. Oh, really?

Yeah. So that makes me very happy because we, winter light, when we did the short, like we got snowstorms. And it was all of those things. And that's how we envisioned the movie initially. And I think we called season one and season two because we were shut down. by the pandemic, right? And season one, it's like the first day of the shoot was cold and that was it. And it was, it had snowed maybe nine days, probably 10 inches before we started shooting.

And that was it. So like the snow was just melting on the day up to the shoot the whole, the whole time. And we were chasing it and we're just like, this fucking sucks. Like, why are we shooting here? You know what I mean? And then we would just get these like literally like, I mean, Paradise Valley, now I presume it's Paradise Valley because it's blue sky all the time. So unless a storm blows through or something, it's, yeah, it was brutal like in that regard. So thank you for that.

That's a huge compliment. I mean, Elity, our colorist over at picture shop helped with some of that stuff. there's snow like there's some snow replacement on the ground things we were laying snow blankets down all over the place but there's actually i think there's only one or two shots where there's actually a snowflake falling oh yeah damn well that that makes this question even better then which is like i was going to say how did you manage contrast with all the bounce but now i guess how are you setting up those uh outside shots to look so natural because like like i said i was watching and going, yep, that's what that looks like.

That is, it looked untouched, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of it is natural. And I don't want to say that I didn't do anything in that regard. But it's like, the other thing is, is where that house that we shot at is like a wind tunnel to, when you go, there's a highway just below that house. You can't tell, but there's one right below that line of sight. And that goes right into Yellowstone, National.

part. And that is a wind blast out of there. So like we couldn't do big rags and things most of the time to block sun or whatever. The great thing about our style of working is we don't shoot a lot of shots. So you can be like, we got to go shoot this from four to six p.m. And we got to get our two or three shots. And that's what we're going to do. You know, So, like, a lot of the, like, no, I owe a ton of credit, like, to Julian for the way the film looks. I mean, you can, I mean, that's because he's malleable in that way and confident in that way. And, and, yeah, you mean, you were talking about your gut, like, my gut's gotten really good in the last few years, finally, you know? Like the craft, like, the craft side of things are, like, pretty good where I don't have to think about most things too much.

and you can just really listen to that. And he and I have gotten quite good at that. I mean, I know this is his first feature, but it's a gross understatement, to call him a first-time filmmaker in every way. And it's, you know, the director's job is to enable us, like to enable everybody else to do their work confidently

in that you inspired them to be working towards the same goal. And he's, I mean, you'd think that would be a given but it's not and like here here's like a really good example of this like the whole that whole end sequence uh which i don't want to talk too much about the details of it but yeah you know with the fire and stuff yeah okay from the from so it's basically from like her leaving the bar on uh that was a huge that sequence was a huge problem for us in the sense of like how the fuck are we going to do this because it's a night scene and you know this whole movie the environment is present and it's part of the film and we're like we can't have her

just even that property where the house is I was like I can't really light this up like and if we try to it's going to look fucking stupid like it was ultimately like not a big film like It was minimal crew, you know? And there was just, like, you're talking about like, you know, no country for old men style. And even they did a lot of it at blue hour. But like that, that, those night exteriors or the dogs chasing them and that whole sequence pretty similar to our ending, like look wise.

Yeah. And they were, they had lights like just huge lights pointed at mountains, basically. We can't, we could not do that. uh we probably couldn't even do it if we wanted to here the scale was so big and uh so like what are we going to do so it was like Julianne's like what if we just do it at blue hour and that never crossed my mind because I'm like well it's like X amount of pages of work you know like how are we going to do that you know eight cameras and seven yeah yeah exactly and so So once it was like, we decided, like, he's like, let's think about this.

And I was like, okay, this is a good idea. And, you know, we then it, then, then the problem became, well, how do we schedule this? Because he's like, let's just do, we were at that house for like seven or eight days, I think, on the first season of shooting. Right. And, you know, we're like, well, let's just try to do two or three shots a night for the end sequence. which most people don't want to think about things in that way so and actors for that matter aren't going to necessarily want to do that either

where you have to like break off what you're doing and go let alone like getting in line with directors and producers for something like that that's how we did it and we needed actually more than those so some of those shots aren't even at the house you know and that's that's what I mean when I say like I owe a lot of the look of the film to Julian because he's just enabling we always know how to do stuff we know the right way to do stuff as a cinematographer quite often why things get big and challenging is because you don't have people understanding why or you have people's schedules that don't line up with the time that it would take to do it that way or whatever it's like a

a million things they can get in the way and that's that's what happens but those things didn't get in the way for us ever so and that's just a combination of you know being smart about what you shoot when you shoot it and how you shoot it you know it's like the lighting is like in the movie is minimal like i mean it exists and there's a little you're doing little things here and there but i tried to stay out of the way to let him deal with the actors and not deal with the actors they were all amazing like like have his time with the actors you know yeah yeah so it's uh it's funny to bring that up because like i did want i did have questions about like how you handled a few of the interiors because they all again look very natural um how were you augmenting for instance i had

here um the lighting in like the church versus that breakfast with gretchen or even like brechin's office or whatever you want to call that section right the t a office like how are you augmenting sort of available light, was that mostly added light? Were you just shooting again, scheduling correctly? Like, how are you getting those? Yeah, it's, that's, um, so there were some lights outside of the windows in the church. Um, and that was a hard seed for us because those, those windows are yellow and like, oh, geez, the stained glass windows.

And we're not trying to make like a sunny movie. Do you know what I mean? So, uh, and, and, and, and, the the like the storyline in that scene not is like that's that's like a there's bad acknowledgments happening in that in that moment so we didn't want it to be like yellow sun through the windows so that was a tough one and the sun didn't that was a location we got pretty late and uh so we had to it still has a little bit of that but yeah it's just some lights outside the windows like i didn't put anything in the ceilings and then it's just little that was

actually two cameras. That's one of the only times that we did. We almost never did two cameras. Those kind of scenes, we often, we don't try to reinvent, because there's not a lot of dialogue in the movie, we were never trying to reinvent dialogue scenes. It's like, this is where information has to come out.

So we would sometimes just put two cameras out like a wider and a tighter. I think it ends up just staying in the tight for that scene. And you can do that in our movie because of all the other stuff. Yeah, it actually does kick to, it was funny. I was actually going to ask you if you put anything in the ceiling because there's a wide, like behind or I guess in front of like all of the people in the church and you can see them. And there's a big, you know, open space, beautiful composition, but big open space above them. And I was like, I'm wondering if they split comp out some lights because it looks very nice on them.

You know what I'm sure. I wonder if there was like a boom or something up there. They're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Right, right. Yeah, no, that's, we didn't do that. in that scene but yeah it's like it's a lot of this stuff is just taking light away you know it's like putting negative fill in and just paying attention to what the weather's doing and if you need

to augment it from the the sunside you know yeah pretty pretty i mean there it looked like a film set often when you're in there it wasn't like we just went in and shot and there's nothing in there that that's not the case but it wasn't it was never overly complicated you know um i think and then you know Like the dinner table scene, we got a second shot at that scene. Like we didn't, it was, I think it was our first or second day in that house and we hadn't really learned how to deal with the interiors yet. Because it's really just like a white walled house, which is hard. And just was like, it wasn't bad. Like we didn't change what the camera was doing.

We did the same shots again. Just like my, from a lighting perspective, I got to, that was one of my, just that was one of my, just that was one of. the lux of getting shut down was that I got to, because that scene was always going to bother me moving forward in my life. If you had to stick with the first version. Yeah. It's not bad. It's just like not.

It just wasn't quite right. How did you approach that? Because I mean, Lord knows, especially in the indie world, you're dealing with a lot of whitewalled houses. You know, you're kind of given what you have. So like, how did you make that look more dynamic? You know, and also what did you change that made it more palatable? Yeah. The light was, we kept the light coming from the same directions. There's, it was really just, we had black, like black flags and like everywhere the second time. Like we hadn't, we weren't controlling all the ambient light on that first day when we originally shot that scene the right way. And it, and we didn't know it was the wrong way yet. It's like one of those things where it's like, sometimes movies with a little more money will reshoot. their first day of shooting or second just because you just weren't in the yeah and it wasn't

it it stuck out a lot because the movie is so strict yeah you know uh so i got to redo that one but yeah it wasn't again it wasn't anything crazy i think i don't even remember if i had a light it was just the curtains and i was kind of opening them closing them and then just black stuff everywhere on the other side you know it's funny uh with modern cameras now i am finding a lot of dps talk more about throwing up a shit ton of neg yeah and then maybe like a titan tube as like of like a back rat kind of thing yeah and that's like it that seems to be a lot of for at least for lighting like a person you know yeah it seems to just be like half the building's going to be black and then Titan 2.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it works, you know? But as with anything, everything's going to start looking the same soon. So you better put that camera in the right spot. Yeah. It's so funny that you mentioned that too because, like, I've just been thinking about compositions so much.

What were you, uh, I saw in your IMDB at least that you had done a handful, like, pretty big music videos. What, uh, yeah. what um what's shooting those like as opposed to shooting like a feature like what did you learn how does one inform the other i don't know i mean that's that's a tough question i don't not that much for me i think i think it informs craft things like you know you're out on music videos they're quick you're doing exaggerated technique often and you're maybe doing something you wouldn't otherwise do that is somehow applicable in the future i i would say they they helped in that in that

regard and you had to do like a lot of beauty lighting so like that that never you know you can get in hot water sometimes with actors or actresses about certain things and maybe that i haven't really encountered that all that much but um i know it can happen and i think that's helpful in that regard you know it's all just experience i think uh but from from an informative like on my, you know, those were, I mean, they're like glorified commercials, really, you know, or un-glorified commercials. Commercials pay better. Yeah.

Well, that's kind of, kind of what I'm leaning into is like a lot of times that's going to be, if you're lucky, sort of your bread and butter between cool projects like your God's country, but like music videos and commercials, kind of on a more practical note, like how do you, how does one start working? in that sphere if you're uh you know you know the craft you you're good at what you do how do you start getting into those bigger projects like bigger commercials yeah consistently uh nowadays well as consistent as possible but yeah um i don't know i would love the secret ingredient uh for for the answer to that but um i mean i know how i did it it was like i got out at you know i got

out of afi and it was i i knew that I still had to just shoot a lot to like get better and like I met my neighbor's friend we were like walking in Silver Lake and she's like this guy's a music video or he directs stuff and I'm like cool nice to meet you and like I went out with he went and co-directed a video with his other guy for like not an unknown artist but nothing crazy and it was like we just went out on a 5D and like made it and then I did like 20 25 music videos with the other guy where and he's like a guy who has his name's Alex Erdman he actually runs a he's a director at reset content but he also has a clothing

company in LA called Born and Raised now so yeah he's like a he at the time he had his finger on the pulse of like new musicians and that like hadn't popped off yet so we did like four or five videos for like Igizia that were like five thousand dollar videos and I didn't make any money on them. I took zero dollars, I believe, for that whole time, just so I could have one more crew person or whatever. And, you know, like, you just, people need you to be validated for them. So, like, you shoot one artist, and then the next level, people are like,

oh, he did that. That's fine. And then it's like, from there, it was like it just turned into commercials. And, like, the music videos for me started to go away. and like that's just kind of how it happened you know i knew i needed to do commercials i had insane student debt from afi sure uh and honestly julian is like was the ace in my pocket all the time i knew this was going to happen eventually if i'm speaking truthfully it's just yeah went it just went you know so that's you know a big part of it too is like you know when we got

out of school, like I didn't see that much result from the short film winning the Student Academy Award, but Julian did. And like one of the, one of, this was a big lesson early was he

he got to direct an episode of the last season of House, the TV show. And that was like, I want to say it was like 2012, probably, 20, I think the Student Academy Award was 2011 and then like, Greg Yattain's

he was a TV showrunner, director like mentor Julian I guess you could call it because I think he gave him the student Emmy as well like he handed it to Julian or whatever it was something like I don't know the exact detail

but Julian was directing house he was like 25 years old if that and and I remember being like fuck like this is it like there goes my ticket

kind of thing you know that was like my first reaction to that and then I just had to like think about it and I was like okay I got to step it up because I actually I have to make it hard for whatever producer or team he's going to work with in the future and him for that matter that he doesn't like I'm just not going to get overlooked like it has to be hard for them to say no

to me so like I need to like I need to be building also you can't just like he was he was a lot of eggs in one basket, but I had to, I had to keep the train going. Because if I didn't do that, this move, like I, we wouldn't, I couldn't have done a good job on this movie either. You know what I mean? So it's, um, you have all, all kinds of painful moments like that, I think, and either sink or swim, you know. Well, you, you don't learn from success, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And there's heartbreak in there and not everybody like Julian could have not called me. You know, that could have happened. I've had that happen with people. people, you know? People don't. In one hand, I don't know, it's tough. You, you like expect

things from certain people sometimes and like really no one knows you anything for the most part also. Yeah. Yeah. Hardworking moments are important. Yeah. I got to let you go here in a second, but I end every, which sucks because I could I could do this for another. Yeah, I could keep talking for sure. But I ask everyone the same two questions at the end. and that is a what is a piece of advice that you either were given or read or whatever that really stuck with you as a cinematographer or even as an artist in general

and two suggest a movie for the listeners to watch I mean I'm going to look at you should check my quote here to make sure I'm saying it right but there's a Gordon Willis quote that's like has always stuck with me And he was like, it's basically you need to make things simple, not simplistic. Like the ideas need to be simple, not simplistic, which is like make it so they're

understandable, don't make them dumb, basically. And like that, I mean, like that idea certainly informed the movie like this, because there are complex ideas in this movie, but it's like not a lot happening with the, like, if you just like turn it on in the middle of the movie you're like what is happening you know it's like it's not moving or whatever so I don't know that's just that's that's one of those little nuggets of advice that I like never forgot wasn't said to me directly but that's an excellent you know um and then what was the other question uh suggest a movie that you think people should see oh um I mean related to this movie I think our current favorite like filmmakers are like

the team that did Leviathan and Loveless and Russian filmmakers. Like those are kind of, they're a little bit similar in tone to this, to this film. Like, it's just proficient filmmaking, you know. Yeah.

I love those movies. Well, I'll let you get to your next project, but thanks for, that's easily one of my favorite, uh, conversations that we've ever had. So,

uh, we'd love to have you back. Um, yeah. Yeah, it's great talking. Yeah, we'll talk soon. Thanks so much. Yeah, appreciate it.

All right, take care. All right, have a good one. 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 F-at-R matbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truaxe branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.