Frame & Reference Podcast - 41: "Chaperone" DP Jordan T. Parrott (Sundance Select)

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Welcome back to Frame & Reference. This week, Kenny talks with cinematographer Jordan T. Parrott about the Sundance short "Chaperone." The short film follows an unnamed figure who picks up a young man in his car. As the two drive together, and settle into an austere rental house in the country, the details of their arrangement become guttingly clear. In this episode Kenny and Jordan, of course, talk about the film but also dive into simple lighting techniques and about Jordans time as a gaffer. Over all its an interesting & educational conversation! Enjoy :) 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 I'm speaking with Jordan T. Perrault, the DP of the film that just played at Sundance, called Chaparone. It's a short film starring Zachary Quinto, and it's, it's a, it's, I don't know if the phrase it's a banger is appropriate for the film, but it's a really, it's a great one. So if you're able to find a way to see it, highly recommended. This is a great one. You know, me and Jordan talk a lot about sort of the psychology of filmmaking almost, you know, stillness and considered frames you know obviously the like we always do the the film school question comes up i swear to god i'm going to stop talking about it um you know the uh the idea of mini dv or coming up on mini dv rather

film that kind of thing digital cinematography um yeah it's just a good one you know it's just another great one i've yet to i've yet to i maintain there are no bad podcasts on this podcast yet so um that's it i'm going to let you go ahead and listen to it. So here's my conversation with Jordan Perrault. How did you get started? Not in cinematography as a job, but just like what got you in the image making? Were you always kind of a visual guy or were you more kind of happened into it? I'll say I've always been a visual kind of person and my mother tells a story of like any time she was holding me as a baby walking down the hallway. If a frame that she had on the wall was slightly skew, I'd be crying

until she fixed it and leveled it out. You know, I never saw, growing up, I never saw cinematography as an actual, tangible, or even knew about it as a job. I think what really got me into it was, like, video class in high school was fun. I'm like, I could do this, and then when I went to college at Emerson,

I kind of just threw myself every weekend onto a student project or, like, a music video, and then on the very first weekend project was a music video. I remember being an electrician. I didn't even know what that meant. But I remember seeing whatever DP was doing the music video. It was like, oh, I like that. That looks interesting to me and seeing how they're logistically creating the look

and managing the whole team to get what they want. So that's kind of when I attach myself to it. And around the same time, too, I was watching a lot of Sergio Leone. And I love Sergio Leone. I think like once in a time in the West, I fell in love with it. And just building tension from silence. something I always really gravitated towards when it comes to the image and cinematography. Yeah.

What type of, when you got started on that music video, what type of like budget are we talking? What, like, what were, I don't know. This was like, at the Boston scene at least, this is, you know, between 2004, 2007, 08. So like the height of mini DV. Yeah, exactly. It was mini HDV. Like, mini HDV was a new thing, I think, 06, 08, 07. been so it was like like the adapters when even out yeah like the PS

technique or the music adapter so it was all mini db um you know and the tungsten like it was like normal tungsten ari lights or mole lights it was nothing crazy maybe a kuno flow and stuff like that it was small it was I remember like the clubs that you did for the music videos like they had a little bit allocated for certain weekends for certain music videos oh look oh like what do you mean like a like a bar club or like a no so it's like the college had a v club essentially the college had many different clubs had a phone club had a video club and had a few other different things in between gotcha because yeah the i remember in high school same thing regular dv around that time um couldn't find just because i lived

in a town of 5,000 people so there were no film lights and i remember a local college got I don't even think they were Ari or Mole. I think they were just like, I think they were theater lights. I think we're doing all like Likos. You can use these and we just didn't know, they didn't have diffusion or anything. So we were like,

we're not spotlighting everybody. And we were too, we were too dumb to think about bouncing. So we were just like, yeah, fuck it. We'll just shoot jackass videos. That was basically how we started. So at Emerson.

At Emerson, what was their film program like? Was it any good? Or did you kind of have to like make your own way? Because my college was brand new to the project. Was it? Yeah, I'm curious to hear about your experience. With Emerson, it was a very competitive school, which I liked. It helped me kind of rise the occasion.

And I needed that. It was really good. What I say about Emerson is that, or it's really any film school, because you get the question a lot, like, oh, is film school worth it, especially if it's the money. In the back of my head, I'm like, no, it's kind of not, but it is what you make of it,

and I don't regret doing it. But for most people, when I get that question, I'm like, you know, suss it out. You can easily get on set and do your own thing and pay your own way. And I think any film school is you learn a lot from your peers, right? Sure, you have the professors kind of guiding you and hopefully you learn a lot from them.

And if you don't, you do have the peer-to-peer learning experience there about essentially fucking up making mistakes together on a low-states thing and making something beautiful out of those mistakes. And what I found out shortly after graduating and still to this day is that that is how most learning does happen. It is peer-to-peer. It is from your fellow friends, your fellow technicians, and all that. So that's my general quip about college and film school. Yeah. How was it for you? And where did you go? I went to Arizona State. And when I got there, So not a film school.

And when I got there, their film program had just started. Apparently now it's actually like awesome. But when we, apparently the president told a friend of mine that like it's awesome on the back of us. And I was like, oh, so we just wrecking balled our way through it. And then they figured out like, oh, this, we should not be doing this anymore. But at the time, too, like it was the only cameras they had were DVXs and they had like a couple five. and one read about the time I was a senior

and so everyone had to fight for that and of course it was like whoever the guy in charge of that's favorite person was got that about it but same thing I didn't know cinematography was like where I wanted I was just in film school this is where I say that like film

school is worth it is I knew I wanted to get into filmmaking I had already gone to New York film I feel like I say this exact set of things every episode so anyone who listens a lot. It's probably like, we fucking know, dude. But I had gone to the New York Film Academy like summer program and that had really put me on like a good path. And I thought that was very worth it. I learned a lot, but also was around very creative people. You know, going to

Arizona State's film school at the time and, you know, 08 to 12 was a lot of fun. And not everyone was super committed to film. Some people were just there to goof off, you know. And so I would say it was valuable in that I had experiences that I didn't learn until afterwards taught me exactly what you were saying like, oh, you have to step up, oh, you know, I was able to make mistakes. Like you were saying, you know, mistakes are where you learn, not successes. And I think if, so I think the whole college experience, I think, was worth it for me more so than that specific film school. But looking back on it, I should, I should have like, met more people or you know done focused on it you know but I think that's that's

valuable education because it's true at least in my experience in the film world too is like if you don't try if you like nothing's going to be fucking handed to you so yet you have to go in and start like making your own path the same way you would in in film school yeah I definitely second all that did you have film at your college We shot 16 mil at NIFA, but yeah, they got it. Okay. Which that was super valuable. Yeah, it is.

I was right, probably the, you know, college classes at 04 to 08. We still had film and mostly did learn film. And that was extremely valuable. I kind of missed that of the whole process of it. Like coming into class and be like, okay, I know what film is, but what exactly is it? How do you use it? How do you expose for it? All that stuff.

and I speak to you know friends that actually went to this in college and they're like four or six or even eight years younger at this point and they didn't you know they still did learn a lot of film but they kind of like they're secondary or third what they call film two film three is they have other classes like that that are more video oriented than film right so they did that more instead of the film which is like upsetting to me but it's kind of how things have gone in general so what uh what about shooting film do you carry on into your digital cinematography work uh metering mostly metering you know i still i still use false color and it's it's a tool and i'm actually using a lot less i kind of yeah i still got mine yeah exactly i've like i've always been i have the dual and i love spot metering just staying behind camera spot metering um so that's probably the biggest thing, you know, they're very different mediums to exposing for them, very different, but I've carried on just at least metering and keeping it in my head for consistency

sakes. Yeah. A lot of the DPs I've talked to have mentioned metering as being like more of a sanity check, or yeah, they end up just relying on false color because it is technically more accurate for your sensor, you know? It is. Yeah. And, you know, between Vennis and R's and all the systems, like the false color is always a little different. So getting used to that if I'm like switching for a body that I'm not typically used to. You know, false color is super handy for handheld, especially if I'm doing the handhold holding shots. So that's nice to have a quick check because I can't always just check in my meter. Or if I'm outside and some, I can't trust them on her directly in front of me if I'm not using the I piece

at least. I tend not to use the IPs. So that's where I kind of rely mostly on false color. You know what's funny is I've been on monitor guy by not necessity but just like I don't own an I piece and they're so fucking expensive now for these digital cameras and they're going to C500 mark two and the canon I piece is five grand it's like I could buy a C70 for one of those and so I'm always just like man I wish I could have an I peece you know grass is always greener I'm like someone get me an I piece for Christmas they are not they're getting really nice uh I got to LF one is nice the Which one?

The LF, the RELF. Oh, yes. Yes. It is really nice. I just played with the Venice too right before the new year. I got it on a commercial before it got released. And that it's really nice. It just keeps getting better.

It keeps getting better and better. Talk to me about like your sort of inspirations that led to your initial sort of, let's say, aesthetic choices. Like when you were first getting started, like what were you trying to sort of emulate? Or were you more of a free spirit? There's plenty of those guys who were just like, I was doing whatever I felt. No, it's definitely not a free spirit. Or maybe there's a balance to do it.

Certainly. I do, like I said earlier, I do lean towards the films that speak, that carry tension with little dialogue. and having the weight hold on the actors and also real cinematography and possibly the sound design or a sound design being silent helps that tension. You know, I think one of the films I remember saying

I was young and I didn't know I was going to go into movies yet was Road to Perdition. And I visited that film back after getting into movies like years and years ago that we're talking about college and I found love with that. And I think a lot of it is a beautiful blocking and the incredible lighting that Conrad Hall did. Unfortunately, that was his final film.

I think that is always something in the back of my head that I try to emulate is those very precise blocking and framing but particularly with lighting and having the right contrast of moody but not too dark

it doesn't fall too much in darkness when it's not appropriate they use silhouettes very poignantly and not too much so it does mean a lot it's not overdone in a film yeah i can't say i'm too much of free spirit i think on set there's always an element of if something's not going quite right or it's not what you're thinking of and you kind of have to

pivot in your head there is some element in trying to follow your gut to fix it right and break away from what you're thinking of what you had in your mind's eye yeah did you uh did did that sort of appreciation of stillness and sort of maybe I suppose proscenium look did that help sort of push you towards learning about composition faster than anything else because I know that's something that doesn't really get these days composition isn't really taught that much it's always like lighting in camera and now like cool lenses but no one's ever just talking about like literally the frame.

The, it goes, obviously it goes hand in hand. Sorry, something just popped up. It goes hand in hand. Actually, I, it's a good question. It's funny, because I don't think lighting is that taught, at least when I was coming up. It's like, I definitely gravitated towards the lighting side. And I was a Gaffir and electrician on the Indy scene in New York

for about six years before, like, taking the jump to the D.P. But there's this, there's this stunning us in finding the frame. Whether you're in prep, you're like, okay, this is the frame. You saw location, hopefully. And you're like, okay, this is what conveys a message. It was like solitude.

Or particularly in this film that I have on sundowns, it's like the feeling of dread and heavy weight and depression. Right. So you speak in detail and prep, you're like, how do we display that in this room, in this empty, vacant room? And how do you centerweight them or do you have them off to the side slightly as the film progresses to show that sparseness happening around them? But when you set the camera, you don't move it much.

I think there's a beautiful thing that can happen is that this is it. This is your blocking. It's here. The camera maybe moves a little bit, nothing crazy. And then you light to that, you know. And you're always in prep trying to figure out how do you light for that frame before getting there. but there is a meditation in lighting for that frame and knowing that frame is not going to move

or move too much, and I like that. Because then you can focus on if there is blocking towards camera, away from camera, how they come in and out of light, you know, and you see it opposed to doing a bit more handheld, a bit more moving, you're moving with them, so that lighting change might be less felt, which is a beautiful thing too.

depends what you're going for. But I tend to like to feel a shift in lighting within a scene through blocking. Yeah. Well, and it just makes low-key. It kind of makes your job a lot easier, too, because if you know the camera's not going to move, you're like, I'm going to get this, you know, piece of diffusion just right there, you know. You can come in super close and make it softer, whatever. There is definitely something to that. You know, I don't do that on my commercial work, because then if I get a note to make it wider, I'm like, okay. My commercial work, I always go actually two to three feet wider in my framing, or at least lighting-wise. So I have space.

That way, if I get a note that they want to widen it out, I'm clear from that. But in my narrative work, yes, you kind of push the lemons quite a bit with that. Yeah. Actually, it's great you bring that up for me. I'm trying to get more into commercial work now. And I was wondering if you had any tips on A, how to maybe make one's real get into the right hands or if reels are even necessary anymore and then two uh kind of just like commercial uh maybe um the differences between commercial and and narrative work that one must be aware of

when we're working with clients that want to get this shit done yesterday essentially i'll talk about uh experience and difference first uh a lot commercially they aren't they're comedy commercials uh they're a lot of fun and i have phenomenal directors that I do them with. And they've become close friends, have, you know, a few. So those sets are like letting the scene, more static movement, a very little movement, and just letting the actors play with it because only 15, 30 seconds spots. So it's got to be really tight. And if you had too much movement, I learned early on years ago that the movement essentially gets cut out, or it makes the cut a little jarring because it's only 15 seconds.

You know, it could be 12 seconds with the end title bumper. Yeah, a lot of my commercial was just speaking to the comedy between mostly two or three or four actors playing in a scene together. It's fairly simple. But where I try to get a little, not too fancy with it, but still lighting. I could have a little bit more fun with or just play with hard light versus softline in certain instances. My work is not quite that super moody dark look of either sports or other kind of genre of commercials. So one of those tricks I do is Minds that go into commercials always

give room to your lighting. So if you get the note about being wider, you could go wider. It's a lot of safety. I think commercials, it's a lot of safety. You don't know if something's not working quite the right way, if something could change on you.

I haven't had anything changed like crazy. Like I've never had switched room on 80. It's always been set, approved by agency and board. It's like, this is the angle, this is the shot. You know, most are moving and shifting like a few feet here and there from a close-up, left or right. And then when it comes to reels, I can't tell you. Like getting reels or getting into it.

It really is, you know, I've had, I've been put up for jobs I haven't gotten. I've been put up for the jobs from directors, which is great. but sometimes, you know, and sometimes rightfully so, the agency doesn't go with me and they go with someone else. And that happens. And it's just become a process of learning to accept that. It could be whatever reason they don't accept me. It could be something totally unrelated to my talent or what they see in my work. Or honestly, it could be the director sometimes. Maybe they want to try someone new and it doesn't have any harsh feelings in our relationship. It's just like, oh, someone else is available like to try them and you know that happens quite a bit so it was a lot of learning to not take that

personally yeah uh and obviously happens on narratives features shows and stuff like that but i've had that happen to me a lot in commercials i understand there's an extra layer with commercials um so that was probably the biggest thing to learn over the last six seven years when it comes to commercial work um they look at at least i know with my own directors that put me out for it i think their production companies send they go to my site i think and they send like three to four examples of my work of commercials they don't send a reel nor do i have a commercial real and i don't think they ever send my narrative real i think they just send like some commercials i've done either with that director and without that director to see if i get

approval yeah yeah because it does feel uh like in some cases i felt this and i know a few of my friends have that like you spend a lot of effort making a really cool real and then it just does not get seen and on the one hand like it who the fuck cares if it gets a million views on like youtube or whatever because those aren't people that they're going to hire you anyway but it but it does feel like the uh exercise of building the reel takes a lot of creative energy and then it's like not even going to get used it does um yeah it's you're so at the whim of others and in this industry as a whole and you try to make your way and try to do stuff they're like okay you have to go out and do it.

But, you know, those little defeats could add up and get you down. And it's just trudging through it. Oh, yeah. I think if anything, I think your longevity is entirely built upon not getting bummed out. Just like shit happens, man. Like, you got to move on. You know, I was into perspective. Recently, I actually started writing in 2020, you know, pandemic, that whole thing.

I haven't done in creative writing in like over a decade. And I wrote a few short scripts. I've gone a lot better, thanks to my lovely girlfriend who hammered in the grammar and the active tense and all that. You made me a lot better writer. I'm still working on it. But, you know, I wrote a few. I like a bunch of them. And last July, ended up with a good friend of mine, Johan, co-directing one of them.

Oh, cool. But it was a really cool experience to keep my crave juices flow. just to be like, okay, I could write this, I could create this, and have complete control over it. So that revitalized me quite a bit. What I learned is in the casting process, because I've never done casting process before, how you look at certain things or what you look for, and when you get all these actors doing self-tapes, they can be fucking phenomenal. And it's just something is like not quite the character you saw, something like that.

So that taught me about like when other people view my work or from up for approval, it's like, okay like I saw a bunch of cast that was great and I was like oh this person has this little comedic beat just slightly better it doesn't mean they're like less talented um so that gave me a fresh perspective on how like other people uh see my work approve or decline my work when it comes to like approvals sure yeah that's a good analogy um so in your mind would it be better to make a uh like a few spec commercials if some if most people are going to to be looking at examples of work. Because obviously, like, the first job you're going to get is going to come off the back

of one of those examples. Yeah. If it were a real one. I say spec commercials. Like, keep it cheap, though. I wouldn't go like crazy spec, like spending thousands upon thousand dollars, maybe like a few thousand or a thousand or two. Honestly, uh, uh, interesting situation, uh, well, I'll make a long story short.

I mean, with the person that's a neighbor, actually. found out we're neighbors in both kind of in the industry. He's more a photographer kind of guy, but does cinematography and directing work. And my favorite commercially he told me was a spec commercially shot an 8mm film. And he just went out with like, it was a shoe. I think it was like maybe an Adidas type thing. You know, he just went out with 8mm camera and a model and shot a bunch of stuff. And it looked great. And I thought it was a great work. So I think that is how you could do it on a very cheap, give it a good aesthetic with film or 60 millimeter, you know, shooting on Bollex. You know, if it has light flare, go with it.

stuff like that. I would keep it cheap, keep it creative and cheap. Go with the grain. Yeah. Go with all the mistakes, make it a part of the edit. People pay so much to add that shit now?

I do. I mean, everyone I know is adding grain in color. I mean, I add grain in color all the time now. You know, I've learned that I don't use softening filters in my work anymore because I know the level of grain I like to add in color. Yeah, I don't. I've completely almost bail. I mean, I shoot full frame now.

So I guess I've noticed that there's like a kind of a smoothness to it already. But yeah, I've completely ditched diffusion filters almost completely. Yeah, it depends. I mean, I like my certain cocktail with either cook anamorphics with a classic soft or I'm trying to think Likas. I might use more with a Hollywood black or something, which is always a good default to have. Like if someone in front of camera needs just a little bit of it,

or if the lighting's harsher, a lot of times that comes in. it and it's not soft light, you know, you kind of just take that out. But yeah, when it comes to at least super 35 centers, I'm currently not using too much or any diffusion. My full framework, I think once I guess that 85 millimeter or essentially over 55 millimeter, I am using like an eighth of something if it's a close up. Yeah. I find, because I color most of my own stuff, which was really a pandemic thing where I was coloring all my own stuff in general, but I was like, well, I can't leave the house. I might as well get good at this because people

pay a lot of money for it. And I ended up coloring two features, which was nice. I mean, they're indie features, but still. But I found that like there are ways to get nearly the same look. I used to say no. I used to say there's no way to get the same

look of a glass filter in post. I used to be staunch about that. And now having played with it a lot, I'm like, ah, you can get pretty fucking close. I'd be curious to comparison to that. I'd be really curious about comparisons on that. You know what? The HDR panel in Resolve, which is not specific for HDR,

it just means that you can control areas more granularly. The contrast slider in there works more like sensor contrast and less like the wheel contrast. So you can really flatten out your image, but then the colors react as if you were exposing them at those exposure levels. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, so if you, yeah, I'd have to show it to you for it to make sense. But like, if you like level the contrast out to where there's just enough where it still looks like a good image, and then you use any of the sort of mid-tone detail tools, there's like a handful of them,

you can get like a nice kind of bloom or anything like that. It's interesting. I have to look into this. I do not know that. Yeah, it's cool. I'm still thinking of like, you know, the optical of what I use is usually one-eighth of something. In my head, it can't be redone in post, but I'm curious to look into this. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's definitely going to be ones that can't, of course.

But I was surprised to see anything get replicated, you know. Yeah. Well, it's also, if there's only like the tiniest amount off and it's close to it, it's like, can our eyes even perceive it at that point of a difference. Yeah. Well, there is something obviously to be said about confidence, you know, if, if you like putting the one eighth of anything in front of your lens and it makes you feel like you're getting the image you want, better to have that than not have it and constantly have that in the back of your head going like, well, what if, what if, you know? That's true. That's true. That's a very good point. I didn't think of it that way. For some reason, I'm always thinking about like the psychology of what our choices do, you know, like. Because I was talking to this one, a YouTuber, his name's Sawyer Hartman.

It was for, I was reviewing the Canon C70 and they wanted me to talk to him because he's got two million subscribers and loves the C70. So kind of a traditional YouTuber and I was like, he apparently came off the 5D Mark 4 or something like that. And he was like, once I got the C70, man, I just started shooting like more like my cinema camera because he had a red. And I was like, what do you mean you started shooting more like your, like what does that mean? And he goes like, well, I started like lighting it different. I started using my primes. I started doing all this. And I was like, oh, so it had nothing to.

I didn't say this to him. But I was like, so you're telling me that you could have done all this with your DSLR. You just didn't. But now that you had a quote unquote cinema camera, like it felt it, the psychology of it made him want to light the thing or want to use primes or want to compose better. Oh, interesting. I never thought of that as a layer. Yeah, no, me neither, until he said that. And I was like, that's, because I was so stumbled by it.

Like, I had to ask him, like, three times. Like, what do you mean you shot more like your cinema camera? What does that mean? And he kept saying stuff that he could have done either way. But it was the confidence that the camera gave in. Right. You're like, what's the point of doing on the smaller system? Because it's only going to look to whatever 10th degree it is compared to this.

And we're like, oh, I could actually do the thing and make it look better. Oh, that's interesting. I never would have thought of that. Well, and I think, too, like, I'll include you in the U and I. Like, the biggest technology advances I remember seeing were 24P, shooting the SD cards, and interchangeable lenses. Like, everything past that has been just like a dream. Yeah. You know, like shooting on a DVX wasn't like, well, fuck it.

We can't light it. It was, you know, it was like, we got to really try to. to make this look good. You had a light it. I remember shooting that thing I was through a college and try to light it. The latitude was awful, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had like three stops. You had your key, one under, and one over. It was essentially like color reversal film. Yeah. It was like no latitude. But, you know, I was a little inexperience.

I mean, the music video I mentioned first, I think that was shot in a DVX. Yeah, I still have my XL2. Damn. Oh, yeah, Sean, that a bunch. Yeah. About the same. time.

Talking about your time as a gaffer, how did that inform your cinematography, or not specifically your cinematography, but you as a cinematographer? Yeah. I think about that a lot. How did my gaffing gears? It was, sometimes I miss it. I definitely gravitate more towards the lighting. side and love geeking out about honestly lighting side more than camera side to be honest

it's a part of my style um you know it's a lot of part of it that kicked my ass you know it's indc and in new york doing electrical gaffing work uh but it was it was a blast it was fun and met great people all throughout the years um blurring the intricacies of obviously running a genie department, which are extraordinarily valuable, especially when I come into a new project currently and I don't know the gaffer or key grip. I have a quicker shorthand with him, knowing a little bit more of the minutiae of the departments in the gear. That helps significantly. Things have changed so much since even I stopped doing it like seven or eight years ago. Now, like I stopped doing it before LED is really a big thing. So now,

it's even like an extra limit that I don't know about it's a little bit more removed from it at least um it's it's it's I think it helps me save time on set having the background of coming from the lighting side or electrical side of it either just knowing if big unit's worth the time to set up and do that whole thing with the power run and everything, or if I could do it on a smaller unit inside and that kind of comparison basis. Or, you know, talking with a GAFR, of planning with it,

and essentially, I'm trying to think of back, tracking now um i mean i'll sum it up all and all it was it was a super great experience i'm glad i did it you know it's for six years it was a glass i learned a lot um i did find my lighting style throughout those years of working with other dps i mean like okay i could take this i like this i don't like this how this was done i like this to kind of bounce soft silver is one of my favorite things to bounce into, or Roscoe had a pebble kind of soft silver. I was slightly different than I love, like tiny things like that.

That's huge. And learning your, it is, like learning your materials. I mean, everyone does it now, but I think when I was gaffing a bunch, like silk was still a thing where everyone goes grids now. You know, no one touches his bulk. You know, one eighth silk for an overhead is nice because they don't make that thin of a grid. So, you know, learning your your flavors in that regard or even to, deciding went to book light versus a direct light.

Even if you want the direct light to be soft, it is super valuable. Yeah. Yeah, I'll leave about that for now. I'll try to think more of that. I usually, because I think about that a lot, so I always go back and forth. Like, I think if those six years were well spent.

Actually, I should say this too. Knowing and coming from those six years of doing the work, I know how I would like to think, and hopefully I just keep it always in mind, how hard the crew works and how much power it takes to even just run power lines on a big system and stuff like that and keeping that always aware in the back of my head when I make an ask, whether it's for an 18K or more than one 18K and how that affects how much work that is to do. I was going to say that now that you're on the other side of it, so to speak, do you like kind of. kind of limit yourself on the purchase sheet or the rental sheet, like, all right, don't, don't get crazy. Or as a DP, you're like, I now, now I get to go for 18Ks, you know, yeah, 50, 52 space lights. Yeah, I'm always a little cognizant of it. It depends on the size of the project, you know, obviously, Indies, you're always going to have to be like, yeah, cutting the budget,

you know, just making it work. And that's a beautiful thing about LEDs. They're so versatile that you can do that now with LEDs. And you can make an indie feature or not, at least a small lighting package and make it look great with combination of these digital sensors being so powerful with latitude. You know, on my higher budget stuff

for the commercials, I try not to worry about it as much. But then again, I think my mentality is like, well, I'm 90% confident I'm not going to use that thing, so why I put on the order? Sure.

You know, it's the extra thing to, to not think about by not having it there. Sometimes I actually do find that advantageous. Limitations can be freeing. Right. So it's like, so yeah, I worry about it less and the higher budget stuff, but it is always kind of there. It's like at the same time, I think it's a New York mentality

because we don't have much space out here. Like, and I, every time I work in L.A., they have all the space in the world, it's great. And it's like adding up for 18K or even a, you know, a 6K in a truck is not that big. of deal where in New York gets a pain the ass and then even getting up to location or wherever on the street it's pain in the ass. So yeah, it's split. But I still, I'm still cognizant of it. Sure. That actually is a great dovetail into a, into chaperone because it looks,

obviously it's, it's an indie short, but it looks incredibly natural. So I'm wondering, my first thought throughout the whole thing was like, because I had looked at your I and D and I saw shit, a ton of the gaffer stuff. And I'm like, how much gaffing were you doing? Or was it a very, was it kind of what you see is what you get? Or more grip heavy. It's a nice flux of everything. It depends on the same.

You know, I take this comment being like, oh, it looks very naturalistic. And a lot of times it takes a lot of work to get that natural. Ment is a compliment. Yeah. But a lot of people outside of the entry don't, like natural means not much work was done for it. But, you know, we kind of know that making it look natural actually is sometimes really tough in the space and it's a lot of work. It's more of us diffusing or hiding things and it's a lot more stuff. So with chaperone, it's, I mean, a lot of it is naturalness sense of like, it is natural light because I have a lot of driving stuff that is us, you know, daylight.

It's all composition. It's all like, you know, hostess tray or vice versa of rigs. And then once we move inside, it's a little bit of shaping for that daytime and go through the scenes. my head. And then once you get to night time, it was very little. There's,

there's at least a shot going out with, or two shots going out. Right now, of still images of, one's of Zachary Quinto, and it's just black behind him. That's a still. And the reverse of that is actually

public now that is of Russell or actor in his lap. and the chaperone's hands around it. Yeah. That's as simple as Sam, as the director, they wanted, you know, those like Coleman LED lamps for camping.

Yep. It was at high. I had a 4-by bounce with muslin on it and just kicked it back at their faces. And that's it. That is it. So you get a little bit of the harsh quality of that Coleman, the LED light,

like a reflective mirror, and then all of it was bounce. And then maybe I did add like a helios or an LED, a battery power, just a little bit of fill into that bounce. And everyone loves the tubes. Every single DP. This is the 40th episode. I think 40 times I've heard everyone say they use the tubes. You can't be the times or the QIOS tubes.

They really, I mean, the pixel tubes, it was a nice foray into the Titan tubes, and they really nailed it with the Titan tubes. I mean, they're great. I have them on almost everything, almost everything. They were also on this one, there's a scene, a dancing scene with the two actors. And now we want more mustardy, kind of unease, yellow. And the Gaffer Luke had the new Nix bulbs by Astera that you plug in. And those were all used.

That plus the helios were tightened for a little extra film. And we just match the color and obviously the whole system. And that's really it. And then I had a little bit going on elsewhere, but for the main scene, it was that. So for this film was mostly keeping a small, contained, given time and space for the actors do their thing, especially with the director's sound. And making it moody and creating the feel from that. So negative feel played a large part of it too. Yeah.

Talk to me about how you, I suppose, expose the camera, quote unquote, for color. Because that's become kind of an interesting topic now that you can, you know, set it to fucking 42 and a half. half, you know. Some people, some people go, it's 56 the whole time. It's a film stock or, you know, get wild with it. I'm pretty, to keep it simple. You know, for daytime interiors and exterior is my 5600. If you're, if the house or wherever you're shooting is shady or if you're in the shade outside, I do put it at 7,000 Kelvin, so you keep the warmth and the coolness kind of balances out. And honestly, otherwise, nighttime interior exterior meth, 300, I don't mess with it too much from there. I just, you know, if it's a warmer thing, I make my lighting warmer

and I keep it kind of a balance out like that regard. I don't, the in-between I really only do if I'm in a fluorescent situation. Then I'm like, okay, doing that 4,300, cutting the green out with my lights if I can't replace the tubes up high. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty basic on that. okay yeah i've been i recently got a uh color meter and i'm just a huge nerd so i went i fucking metered every bulb in the house every bulb i could find in a drawer i'm actually a buddy of mine's let me develop a it was supposed to just be a website but he's like i can turn this into an app and i was like fucking go bro and it's just gonna i went to film tools here in l.a and i metered every single light they had like all the film lights and uh you know it kicks out

like a graph that tells you the spectral reading of it, obviously CRI, TLCI, TM30, which is like this weird circle that just lets you know about Hueshift. And the app is just going to let you compare, either just look at the results of light or compare them. Oh, interesting. So like if you have a mixed, if you have mixed fixtures on your set, you can know like, okay, these two are going to match better than those two or whatever right it was just too go ahead go ahead oh I was just going to say it was just supposed to be like a thing to kind of prove it was for an article I was writing because like the sky panel doesn't actually read that well like there are lights that are way more accurate than the sky panel and so I just kind of wanted to prove that because I kept

saying it and I was like well I don't know if that's true that's just hearsay so I went and like metered them all and like the aperture lights everyone's super into like some of them are good but like some of them aren't that great you know so I wanted I just wanted to be sure I wanted I hate guessing I agree it would be a fun tool I mean I remember I have an older my color meter is really only four at this point because I don't have the what I think with the newer chips they can read LEDs like the newer color meters create LEDs so I have the one before that it's the conic C500 which I love it I can't do LEDs with it so it's in the back of my head I could kind of meter it I'm like, okay, this is off by this amount.

So it's more for HMI's, bouncing HMI, some of that. But I've done that before. When I got it over a decade ago, I was metering everything, seeing like what kind of wattage bowl was below $3,200, or what degree below $3,200. It is super valuable. I do find that sky panels, I don't meter. You know, I guess trusting the Calvin in the back of the unit,

what it says. I mostly trust it. When it comes to saturation index and using the color, I do feel like sometimes the rendering depending on the camera you're using is not quite the color that you're seeing. And that's just, you know, mixing of technologies at this point. Yeah. Do you have a kind of a preference on camera?

Because some people, like, some people are super camera nerds. Other people don't really care, you know, whatever's getting ordered. I just, I typically prefer Ari. Ari is kind of my go-to. The Venice is a beautiful system. I use Venice One on a feed. future two years ago. I just used the Venice 2 and it was very impressive. It was a nice, it was really nice to upgrade incrementally. They didn't change too much, but it was

everything that did change was really nice with the new Venice 2. And it's beautiful. So at this point, really between those two, I'm not too much of a red user in whatever capacity that is. I still haven't like gravitated back towards the red from like over a decade ago. It's a hard system to jump into because it changes every year. Right. I remember that one. in 2010's, early 2010, or in 2010, yeah, that it would change every few months. Like, they would change the interface upgrade and then all that stuff. Yeah.

So going back to Chaparone, how did you, I should have asked this at the beginning, but how did you get involved in that project? So Katie Schiller put me in with director, Casey was the producer on it. She put me in to interview with Sam Max, the director. I had a Zoom call with them. After reading the script, I thought it was phenomenal, it really beautifully written, really, really sensitively written as well.

You just feel the weight of the whole script because it speaks to inescapable depression of a young man's seeking of release, essentially. And there's this mysterious character, the chaperone, that helps with that release. So I really wanted it. I thought it was really written with my interview with Sam. It went really well. You know, I sent Sam a film that I did previously with my friend. I gone to South by 2021. So I was trying hard for it.

And they landed on me, and it was very grateful. I was very ecstatic to get into it and do all the prep work for it. Yeah, it definitely fits your, you know, self-proclaimed aesthetic of, like, stillness and moments of quiet. it definitely does. I mean, that, yeah, that film was very up my alley in my style. Like, it's not like I had to stretch too much from my natural thinking and instincts at least, which is, you know, good and bad.

Obviously, you want to stretch this muscles a bit more. But it definitely, like, I had a good sense of it from the beginning, jumping into it. Yeah. Were you guys storyboarding it at all, or was that more of a just kind of like, we're going to set this up on the day kind of thing? Sam did little storyboards between our shot list and prep meetings which was very helpful so I would come to shot list like for the second or third time

they did a little bit of storyboards but it was mostly going through shot by shot and hammering in the mood and feel for each shot and it took us it took us longer than most short films like it took us four to five meetings I would say four meetings and then a catch-up on a fifth meeting to be like, okay, this is what we're doing. We usually it's like half the time for a short film,

which was great because then we're really getting into nitty-gritty. Talking about the minutiae of, like, you know, certain blocking elements are just low-verse-high angle in, like, very small and incremental ways. Yeah. What was the, what was the shooting? How many days were you shooting? There's three shoot days.

Okay, yeah, that's... Yeah, it's typical for sure. Day one was very long. We started in Brooklyn at 4 a.m., but then we had a two-hour commute at around 8 a.m. to Jersey to do the driving stuff, and the rest of it was being shot near there in Jersey. So that was a longer day. But yeah, three days. Were you scheduling a really long drive just so you could shoot it along that road? Or were you kind of like going back and forth? No, that was that. That was just the next location. They got an Airbnb house and it was in western North New Jersey kind of thing. So we shot in Brooklyn four hours, loaded up, and then drove an hour and a half two hours to the next location to then do the driving stuff.

Right. Did you have to strip down the house when you got there or was it already pretty bare? I don't remember. I think it was pretty bare, actually. I think the production of that elements were just kind of moving the furniture around a little bit, adding plastic, adding props, curtains. Yeah, it was mostly bare. It's like it's the guy knew we were shooting there. He was a cool guy. It was a very, very generic kind of lonely Airbnb. Yeah. Now, were you primary, I don't know, I might have blacked out when you just said this. Were you mostly lighting like from the outside or were you tubing interiors or all sort of a reflection? Trying to think.

We have a bathroom seat at the end where I have like an M18 outside through a four by quarter grid. But mostly, you know, a lot of the bedroom stuff was up. stairs and there was no access. You know, we were talking about 30 feet off the ground and in small budget, you're just, the time energy is, it didn't call for having window light come through. I did have a natural light come, actual natural sunlight come in, which was nice. But it was just letting it play, putting a negative fill off to one side. And then when I got to a close-up of Russell on the bed was two helios tubes in a Keno housing fixture with diffusion, just to give him a little light on the side of the face from the window. And that's really it. And keep that negative

fill up. So it was very simple. It was very, very simple. That's good. I mean it's yeah. I was going to say it's nice to hear because you always see something that looks really pretty and you're just kind of like obviously the goal isn't only to make pretty pictures. But when you do see something that's really pretty and you're like fuck, is that one of those like sneaky ones where it's impossible to get or is it like you know two tubes and I think a lot of cinematography comes down to a lot experience happens when you start out, you think things have to be complicated because that looks better, right? And obviously simplicity has its own form of making things look great or even better than the complicated. So I think over time and experience, it's just learning those, when you

look at a scene and location, like, okay, simple is the way to go, whether it be for looks and getting the best look out of it, or is it better for the actors and the director to actually work within the space and get the scene right for simplicity. You know, because sometimes once you throw up a metisarm, even if on your space we could wheel it around, that menisarm could be a pain in the ass. Or if it's a space where you can't wheel around, you're on carpet or something.

It's like, well, how is this menacein going to screw me up later on the next shot and cost time for either me, my crew, or their director? So, no, definitely, the shop room is very simple. It was, which is fun to embrace, because when you go into a short film, you're like, okay, these are my tools, I'll make it work, and you just go with it. And sometimes that it's freeing in its own right. Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, like I'm actually a proponent of having certain limitations put on you.

Not ones that like fuck you up, but just ones that like you can work around easily, you know, I think are helpful. I know you got a hard out here, so we'll just kind of have to skip to the end. although I had a few other questions about, like, working with colorists and stuff, but maybe next time. I ask everyone the same two questions at the end, and they are, A, what's a piece of advice that either you were given or you read somewhere or something, or just maybe a quote that is stuck with you as a cinematographer, as a filmmaker, and two, suggest a movie that isn't yours for people to watch? Watching a lot of shows recently. I mean, those are been,

shows are great. I mean, you're talking about, it's not even related to simitography at all, but I've been watching Big Mouth on Netflix and I fucking love it.

That's a great show. I mean, it feeds into my comedy and dark humor greatly, so I'll say that. Not relating to sumitography at all because it's animated,

but sure, I'll go with that. Sure, that works. What was the other one? Advice, either I heard or experienced. A lot of it, a lot of advice is already out there what I'll say is that when you start out

in film school or not film school I don't think that matters I don't think you need film school but when you start out it's the relationships you make along the way particularly with the ones I're working most closely with so when it comes to either if you're crewing, your fellow crew or your directors,

your producers, treat everyone with respect. It's not so much that obviously you don't know where people go and come back at you you had a good relationship with him, but just gaining the respect as someone that treats other people with kindness on set. And, you know, just having that, I think, is super valuable. You know, it's, I mentioned I did my own short film earlier. It's like I have beautiful friendships and relationships. Like, I pulled favors to, from my friends who I work with a lot, and they're more than willing to do it. And I love them for.

it. You know, it's just like having that relationship being like, okay, and it makes everything easier on the day. Yeah. No, literally, I would say 70% of the DPs I've spoken to have all mentioned some version of being kind as easily the most important factor. I think it is. It's, uh, and you know, stuff does go wrong in there and hopefully it doesn't. It's not taking responsibility when you have to or when you should and not trying to find elsewhere it's like okay internalize it deal with it and be like okay no you messed up or if you didn't mess up it's like maybe you have to take the blame for whatever going around even if it's wrong fully so and just kind of dissipate and fix the situation and not make it more toxic yeah I think

it's a lot of it's a blend of everything yeah coming up with a solution and then uh but that also comes with experience too is like knowing when it doesn't the blame for something it won't matter or where like if someone tries to pin something on you and you're like no no no that'll ruin my career you get fucked that was not me you know not that that ever happens but just know the difference not everything is going to ruin your career right right it's experience you know it is i guess it's learning also when to put your foot down in certain scenarios totally especially for safety of course but sometimes that goes gets very complicated sometimes the safety unfortunately but it's knowing when to put your foot down yeah it's sometimes very valuable well uh i'll let you get to your uh

next thing. I hope your sun dance, what is it, a week? Sundance time is a lot of fun. Yes, thank you. I think we've got a week left or six days left. Yeah, awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time, man. That was a great conversation. And hopefully we can have you back. Thank you, Kenny. Speak soon. Thanks, guys. Bye, bye, bye. 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 Pro Video Coalition.com or YouTube.com slash Owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.