Frame & Reference Podcast - 46: DP Joey Fameli of Adam Savage's Tested YouTube Channel

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Welcome to another episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast. This week, Kenny talks with cinematographer Joey Fameli about his journey into the industry and about working with Adam Savage as his DP & content producer for the Tested YouTube channel. 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're talking to Joey Fameli, the DP and content producer over on Adam Savage's tested YouTube channel. It's a fantastic channel, both educational, and entertaining and oftentimes meditative. You'll just have to check it out to see for yourself. Joey's actually a personal friend of mine, so this is kind of two guys just catching up after a few months of not talking.

But I do try to keep it on the rails as much as possible. So yeah, you know, plenty of tech talk, you know, tested as a channel in which they test stuff, as well as watching the one-day builds and stuff that Adam does. But yeah, plenty of gear talk as well as sort of learning about Joey and talking about in, you know, quote-unquote indie production on the whole, a bunch of great stuff in this one. So hopefully you'll have as much fun listening to it as Joey and I had doing it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Joey Fameli.

how did you get started like as a as a creative like where did your visual um sort of influences come from like were you always into film or did you start some other way or had that get going yeah um how did i get started so i was always kind of i was always creative as like a kid um i think like you don't i'm at an age where the uh the old like vHS camcorder was very popular I don't know if you remember those like big old. I don't even know it was VHS, but essentially like a lot of parents had these camcorders. And so me and my cousin used to make just a bunch of little animations, a little short films. But it kind of ended there for a long time.

I got really into comic books at that time. This is the 90s. This is like the heyday of, you know, the Jim Lee, X-Men, the whole Marvel universe I was super into. And so that was my path for a long time. I was really aiming to be in the comic book. world whether that'd be like not really maybe a writer but i was really into like framing up stuff drawing uh doing my own panels doing my own my own uh essentially my own narratives in the comic form uh and so i was going for that for a long time as i kind of got out of high school i was

um i was doing a bunch of stuff in high school it's kind of all the place i was in a in a band playing music i thought that was going to be a path i was doing uh yeah doing um uh starting to get a little bit the photography not very good at it i didn't uh it was more than the technical stuff who was still film i just didn't have the patience for that at the time and doing a lot of skateboarding uh and didn't really have a clear idea of what i was doing out of high school except for just reading comic books uh watching a lot of movies and it wasn't until i went off to uh it was i was going to junior college and i went off to do a semester abroad in florence italy I was just yeah it was it was wild like I was all of a sudden pulled out of my you know I lived in a suburban hometown and north of San Francisco and so there wasn't it wasn't a whole the world my world was very small you know the the the townies I was around everything felt very insular and so getting out into the world especially going to someplace like Florence was huge and sort of mind altering um I was going for just general classes I was taking like a full time a full time load

of credits, but everything was sort of pointed towards art history and especially like the Renaissance art history. You know, we'd spend class time going to museums and checking out Michelangelo, Leonardo, all that, all the big Renaissance heavy hitters. And so coming out of there, I sort of just reevaluated myself. Like I was really into art. I didn't, I still didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I thought I needed to get out of the town I was in. And ended up moving down to Los Angeles early on. And I was still doing a lot of drawing, still thinking about Marvel, still thinking about comic books.

But then I also started thinking, I also started thinking about my love of movies at that time and really how I love to take something from the start to the finish of some of these things, especially like when it came to drawing, it was like coming up with an idea, characters, and then writing out something. and then drawing those things out. And then, like, sometimes I would even scan these things into a scanner. I was using, like, After Effects and Adobe. I was making animations and a little, like, almost like pop-up book

or flipbook style animations. And that sort of led to me just having this moment of realization where, like, you know, I think movies is kind of where it's at. Like, film, like the music side of me loves it. I love sound design, love scoring things. like thinking about composers and putting this art to eventually all the art that I was doing became like storyboards for that stuff. So it sort of just kind of hit me out like all at the same time of like, yeah, I think all of this artistic urges I have can be funneled into this thing

of a film. And so I started doing a lot of PA work, started doing, um, just interning at that time. Like this is now we're in like the early 2000s and like filmmaking was becoming kind of cool. I remember, like, Project Greenlight on the lot, like those big shows. MySpace had like a filmmaker. Mini-D-V was a thing, right? So MySpace became like a place where young filmmakers were shooting mini-d-d-V short films. And this is before. I was one of them.

Were you? Yeah. Yeah. I got the Canon's X-H-A-1 mini-d-d-V camera. That's nicer than mine. I have an XL-2. I still have my XL-2. The X-L-2.

I was trying to think of which camera was it because there was that MySpace guy, I remember him always pose on those things. I'm like, what? Like, yeah, it was that X-Lxatives had interchangeable lenses. And, like, no cameras at that time really had that. And I probably wouldn't even know, at that time, I wouldn't know what to do with a interchangeable lens camera. Like, I was, I was riding that zoom on the, on the XLH1 and sort of figuring out, figuring out what shots I like, but again, like not, I wasn't really learning lensing. I wasn't learning focal lengths. I was just sort of, that was my, my training ground in terms of knowing visually what I wanted.

And from there, I just made a ton of short films with my friends, went to college, didn't go to college for film. I went actually for finance. Probably a better move at this point. Yeah. You know,

I was being in Los Angeles and working on music videos as a production assistant, everybody I was around was coming out of $100,000 debt in film school. And here I am at the exact same place as them. learning on the job where I think you do a big amount of learning. And so that was my decider against film school.

It was like, I can do this like self-sufficient. I can seek out these people, seek out these productions, and work on the job and learn it that way, and then go to school for finance and sort of get that safety degree. At that time, again, we're still in the mid-2000. So college was really pressed on everyone as being like, you need to get a degree, you need to get a college degree

if you want to do anything. And so that was my safety. And then I just haunted the film department, I made a lot of good friends, some of whom I'm still making shorts with. John Finger is one of the guys I, he's getting really into, um, uh, LED screen, volume stuff. And, you know, we'll still play around. Yeah. I get into that so bad.

I have some, uh, I, I do VR production now. And so I have, like, Steam trackers. So I'm going to start, I'm going to start messing into it as soon as I get down and visit him. But yeah, just haunted the film club, made a bunch of short films with those guys. And then, uh, and then after getting out of college. I sort of entered into, you know, the job hunting phase of my career where I was back up north. I'm back in the San Francisco Bay Area, not a whole lot of film stuff up there. And so I was just working part-time jobs and doing a lot of music video work.

At this point, I was now competent enough to, like, grab a camera and do stuff. And so I was either doing camera operator or like assistant camera on, on some music video, the music video scene up in the north. the North Bay. And that's when I met, who had become sort of one of my, my mentors at that time, Mike Sloat, who directs a lot of metal music videos and like some early 90s punk stuff, like No Effects and, like I don't know much of other names of the Bay Area punk scene. But he was doing a bunch of things up here. And so I ended up just working with him a ton. And then he got this opportunity to go on tour with Machine Head, which is a big metal band, and they were going on this Metallica, on tour with Metallica, and he couldn't do it. And so he threw the job to me,

which being like a 24-year-old kid with very little experience at that time. I mean, I was doing stuff under the tutelage of people mostly, but he threw me into the deep end with that. and I ended up going through the East Coast leg of the Metallica tour as sort of a behind-the-scenes documentary filmmaker with the band, sort of documenting the life and creating sort of something out of all this footage that they were getting from the East Coast and Europe. Well, Metallica famously, Bay Area Band. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. They're up here. They were flying home every few days, so I was living on a tour bus going through the East Coast.

And they were just, you know, we're in the East Coast. They were just fly back every a few days, hanging out in the Bay Area with their family. It was very interesting because you think of like metal bands and being on tour. You think like almost famous, right? The movie almost famous, right? You're just engulfed in these like this wild time. But like everyone there was kind of like they're family men. They just played their music, practiced, went home.

Like it was very chill. It was cool. It also humanized the, you know, humanized them for me. And I think that sort of thing kind of helps, helps me work with actors and work with named talent later on. Sure. And that like just not knowing how to talk to them, not how to not kind of not freak out or that you're talking to, you know, Johnny Depp or whoever.

And I've really starting to learn like the folks who are in those in those positions like really appreciate when you don't can appreciate a person who can hold their shit together when they're around them. Yeah. And then from there, I was coming back from that tour. I had all this, had all this footage, I sent the footage away, but I made copies of it, and I cut it into like a little, it's like a little demo reel. This was the only thing I had that wasn't, that I shot personally. I guess I could have been labeled the DP of that. That also

wasn't narrative short film. I had so much narrative, not so much, but it had a handful of narrative short film stuff, but it was all, you know, with the friends in the college. Like, it didn't look great. It didn't, it wouldn't have got me jobs. But this was something I saw that. I could get me a job doing something and once I cut that together I sent that off to some folks and through a loose connection with somebody else ended up getting an interview with a company called Whiskey Media in the Bay Area. Now we're like late, we're like 2009, 2010 where digital was sort of a big thing. YouTube has been out for a few years and there was tons of companies that were putting together small teams and doing these like digital productions.

Well, that's, that's right when the, uh, I've talked about this a few times, but that's right when the like the 5D came out. Pete, we started to be able to shoot on SD cards instead of mini DV. So like, yeah, I missed that. I missed that whole 5D thing. So I was coming from mini DVV, jumped into whiskey media who were using the DVX 100s. I believe what it was. Yeah, with the P2 cards. They were using like large. No, that was the H. That was the HVX. 200. The DVX 100 was the Panasonic version of the XL2, except it didn't have. In film school, it was always, are you going to shoot DVX 100 or XL2? And most film schools had the DVX. I think they were cheaper. That's funny. That's like the area, the area in red debate just back in the consumer. Oh, 100%. Dude, I remember when the red one came out in like 08 or 09, something like that. And everyone.

suddenly thought, oh, because it was affordable, you know, whatever it was at the time, 30 grand, 40 grand, something like that. And we were like, man, if we could rent that, we're going to be real filmmakers today. Oh, yeah. I, so I don't remember these. I, when I was using that camera on the machine head tour, it was rigged out with, I think it was red rock that was making them, but it was like a bunch of adapters and mirrors locked onto the end of that camera to make it look cinematic.

Red Rock, Lettuce, and P&S Technic were the three companies that were doing that. And you lost like what, two stops of light, four stops of light, some nonsense. And then what was it doing? Was it just, I can't remember. Was it just increasing the sensor size, a theoretical sensor size to give you a sound? It was, so it was attaching a photo lens to the front, but then also it was, I believe there were some optical elements that were, it was like a speed boom. almost, except there was no speed to be boosted.

And it was, yeah, and it was focusing the output of the lens onto a piece of ground glass. And I remember the thing that P&S Technic did that was revolutionary was all the ground glass in like the Red Rock or the lettuce version. I could be confusing who did what, but one of these companies had a motor in it, which spun the ground glass. So because all these other adapters, it had a still piece of ground glass. So you would get this grain, but it wouldn't move. So it was like it looked like you were filming.

It looked like what you were doing, which was filming a projection. Yeah. So one of the companies, yeah, so one of the companies spun the ground glass. So the grain would move. That's wild. Really? Wow. Yeah.

Oh, man. But then you'd get the footage in upside down, which was a pain in the ass. And then somebody had the mirrored version, which flipped it for you. I mean, those were, I mean, it's silly now to think of, but those were, it was interesting, fun times. It was a little bit of like emerging tech, a little bit of, you know, it was like filmmaking, like camera operation and filmmaking was a little bit of democratized. It was very new to everybody. And so it was, well, the thing that we've talked about a couple times, because there's a few guys who like kind of all came up that I've interviewed recently, who all came up in that sort of same time. And we all kind of reminisce about how like when we got 24P, when we were able to.

shoot to SD cards, you know, all that kind of interchangeable lenses, all that kind of stuff felt, or even the adapters felt like exciting and new. And that was like all we needed, right? We were just like, if only we had like 24P or whatever, or if only we didn't have to shoot to these tapes and do login capture. And now it's like, you hear like, oh, this one does 8K and you're like, who cares? Like, that's not, that's not exciting to me. Like that's, you know, the adapt, Getting that giant adapter thing was exciting, you know. Yeah. I'm at a point now where I'm like, oh, I want that dolly.

So I want to put this thing on a techno guy. The weird things I get excited about now, like have nothing to do with the cameras. It's more just like, ooh, run that. That's a long dolly track. I like this. Yeah, or like do the deacons thing of just getting like a dolly track with the remote head, like the Libra head, you know, so you can just operate it from with the wheels. I was just doing some, but I'm jumping in the head a little bit,

but I was just editing some behind the scene stuff or something. And I was just all the different heads and dollies that are available now. I'm like, oh, wow. Like, that's getting to watch how the, how simple yet, like, intimidating some of this stuff can look is, I don't know. It's a lot of fun watching that pan of the scenes content. Dude, I remember it's funny, man, you're like unlocking all these. I remember one memory you unlocked for me was I remember back in elementary school or a junior high. We would do flipbooks with PowerPoint.

Oh, interesting. So we would do stick figures. It was usually like a skateboarding stick. We would have like a stick figure like skateboarding and hitting like obstacles and stuff, but you would just hold the right button and it would fly through and we would animate that way. Yeah, you can almost, yeah, it's almost like a little frame. Yeah. It was laborious.

But the thing that you're reminding me of is I remember my freshman year of college, my buddy Smalls, what's his really? David Breschel. He had, you know, we all brought something to our film school. So I had the XL2, you know, some other people had maybe like some connections to things, but, you know, a nice house somewhere in the area. But Smalls brought, he had a jib. He had a jib arm. So you better believe those, that first year, there was just jib shots in everything.

No one had a jib in 2008. Yeah. That's like the FS 700. Yeah. When we got that, it was like all of a sudden, everything was slowmo. Everything was 120 frames a second. Oh, dude, speaking of, like, I just did kind of a while, maybe a few months ago. I did, like, a sort of retrospective review of the Excel, too, because I was able to plug it into my recorder.

Oh, I saw that, yeah. Yeah. And so it occurred to me like, wow, this thing came out in like 2007, and it had interchangeable lenses with an EF. They had an EF adapter that was this big. So you could have used stills lenses on the thing, you know, interchangeable lenses, built in ND. you could selectable white balance 24p in 2007 and then like camera started to come out that didn't have all that shit yeah yeah that's so like the FS 700 having 120 and then now it's like hard to get right and I don't know like I know with the G I use the GH5 quite a bit

and it one of the camera one of the reasons I liked that camera at that time was like the smaller sensor meant like the processing power wasn't as intensive. And so like they were able to like play with things more advanced than, you know, at that time like, you know, the, uh, the optical image stabilization, like the frame rates you can get on that. Like they, like you couldn't really get that with A7s yet. Right. So I wonder if that has something to do. Oh, I mean, definitely. I mean, like when I've talked to some people at Canon about the C500 and like just very questions I had, a lot of time the answer was well it's a big ass sensor and it's hard to process all that information at once yeah I mean yeah it's uh yeah I can't imagine I'd love to like do a

look like going to a factory at some point and break down what is what is going on because I'm still digital sensor still baffle me yeah it's uh I'm actually going to do something with Strangel I'm going to start working with Strange again making more content for him but like one thing that we want to do is sit down and create the perfect cinema camera like borrow all of the parts that we like from various cameras that we like and see what that looks like yeah because i can't imagine like most of the there's like the ven diagram of all these cameras that we like is pretty collapsed in on itself it's always like like one thing i like about red is like there's a function that was demoed for me on the gemini when that first came out

and that was you could push a button and in the metadata it would create a marker and I was like I would love that if like on my camera if there was like something I wanted to remember like ooh that's a good thing just push a little button and it creates a metadata marker like metadata is the one thing I think like black magic does really well

and red does really well and I think more metadata features more digital slating more behind the scene stuff I wonder if it gets trickier with like HVEC or like H264 codex You know, because some of the cameras, like, I feel like that would be an easier thing when you're shooting out to pro res or shooting out to some kind of raw format.

Like, you can pass along that data. I mean, it shouldn't be that difficult. Who knows? But, I mean, all these cameras have some version of raw at this point, you know. I mean, maybe like Canon's raw light, I think, is less raw and more half processed footage. You know, it's 12 bit. It's not like raw, raw. And, but you can still select, you know, your ISO and your white balance.

stuff. So I think with your black magic or your red raws, those are far more raw, like literal raw data. And I think you can probably stuff a lot more stuff in there. Yeah. Yeah, now we're, now we're getting to a point, some of the cameras we have in house. Well, I guess I should fin it. Oh, sure. Yeah. Sorry. It's a good tangent. Um, uh, so what I do now go, so going back from Whiskey Media when I got that job, we ended up, I ended up working with a small team, teaming up with Adam Savage, who was the MythBusters host, one of the MythBusters host, that television show. And he has a digital brand now, which is predominantly platformed on YouTube called Adam Savage's Tested. And so I been working with him since 2012, a pretty small

team. It's like, it's always been sort of four to five of us. I think we just got our fifth head in, so I work with him and another host slash producer, Norman Chan, and my current roles now sort of, I kind of do a lot of stuff. I wear a lot of hats. My role as director of production, but I sort of work on a lot of special projects, campaign stuff when I'm not shooting and editing sort of our normal everyday content. We do a lot of iPhone stuff now, being that when the pandemic hit, we couldn't all get together. So we shoot a lot on iPhones. Now back into cameras again. We just got the Sony FX-6. That's a great camera.

Yeah, I totally dig it. I actually brought it home this weekend to really play around with it a lot more. But we went from the FS5, FS7 to this one. And then we rent, we scale up because one of my roles is to scale up and down as we need. And so if we have a shoot that needs more people, more crew, then I'll sort of come in and manage that and then rent cameras. We just, We just shot with the C-500 mark-2, and then the Atlas Anamorphic lenses. And before that, we've used Alexis very rarely. I remember, I think you and I were talking, when you were thinking about buying the FX-6, you were kind of waffling between that and was it like a C-300 or a C-7?

Yeah, I think it was the, oh, a good question. Yeah, it might have been the C-300 Mark 2. That's what you shot with before the 500, right? No, I shot with a C-100 mark-2. Oh, that's right. Okay. Which I still think is a great camera, but now it let the C70s out. It's kind of like, it's better in almost every way, you know.

Yeah, I think you recommend the C70, too. And I was looking at that pretty, pretty, yeah. But it's it, like six. Oh, so two things. One, I don't know if you saw, but the C70 is getting raw in March. Really? Yeah. So now it's a mini C300.

Like, I, unless you need like SDI and a few of the other special features that the C-30s 300 has, you know, the recording media difference and all that kind of thing. C70 is really attractive. But I wanted to ask, what made you decide? If you were looking at the C300 mark two, I could definitely see the difference. But what made you decide on the FX6? FX6 was a combination of, of we are, we've, we have been a, I guess a Sony house for a little while now with the FS5, FS7.

And we have so much, I mean, this is kind of might sound petty, but like we have all the batteries. We have, we have everything. That's a huge consideration. Yeah, it was just being in that workflow. Just grab that. You know, we have, we have Canon Glass. I got a, I got a mount that can just easily transfer everything over. I mean, not that we couldn't use that with Canon, but like we just kind of knew FS5, FS7 so well. We thought it would be an easier transition, especially since we've, we've sort of become, for a long time, it was just me and maybe one other person doing all the production stuff in-house. But it's sort of changed a little bit where everyone kind of touches the gear

and touches the editing systems. And so I've worked with them on the Sony FS5 for so long that, like, I thought it'd be easier just to get that camera in so that everybody can use it. And yeah, we can kind of share that knowledge. Yeah. It's also, yeah, it looks nice. It looks, I mean, I've always had issues with some of the color and magentas on the FS5, but this one looks a lot better.

opinion. You know what's funny is I just saw someone had done a comparison between the FX3, which is not a fucking cinema camera. People need to stop. FX6, FX9 in Venice. And the FX6 looks better than the nine, in my opinion. Really? I'm really disappointed in that FX. Like I did a comparison of it versus the C500, the Venice and the Alexa LF. And like at that level, like they all, yeah, they all look great. But the nine seemed to have like kind of a problem with like depth of color the best way I can explain it still had that greenness that you kind of used to see with Sony but um the six and three that's all gone with like the new synatone um yeah processing and all that stuff like it just look it looks way better that's what we've

been shooting in is that sin I really want to I really want to get my hands on a Venice and just shoot with both and see how I can match them together and like if they do match okay they match okay they honestly yeah um the Venice obviously you're going to see all lot more spatial resolution and a lot more the image cadence is a little more I hate saying it but cinematic but quote unquote cinematic yeah yeah but no yeah they've done a great job kind of making those all work similarly yeah from what I've seen of the Venice it just it looks I really like the image coming out of it I love it's just it's low light I think there was that movie Kate was just shot on it if you've seen that Netflix movie Kate

pretty wild like John Wick style movie but with oh really uh what's her name from Scott pilgrim uh blanking on on names today but um yeah we was all shot in Venice um the girl in the band uh the girl that plays romano flowers not captain marvel no not brie larson romano flowers oh she um she damn it yeah i know who you're talking about though yeah yeah she's um Mary Elizabeth Winstead. There you go. Yeah, totally worth seeing. That's one of my favorite movies the last couple years, Kate.

But yeah, I'll shot with the Venice. But I, you know, I don't know if you've had this issue when thinking about investing in cameras is I want it to be an investment. And I want it to be, I want it to be something that will help me get work, if that makes sense. But I feel like you need to have the, you need to have the red or the airy name to get most people to, you know what um i would say that in 50 episodes which is giving away when we record this because right now that's one that just came out was 40 but um a a huge number of these projects are shot on venice really huge number it's right now like it's either venice or a um r elf but a lot i mean a lot of venice a lot of tv shows are shot on venice um plenty

of films. I think a lot of movie, like older, I shouldn't say older, but like more traditional DPs probably gravitate to the LF, but I'm, I was actually shocked over the past year and a half of how many, just how many projects are shot on Venice. Oh, that's good to hear. Yeah, I'd like to see somebody else got to enter, enter the, the conversation a little bit more seriously when it comes to that stuff. Yeah, Alexa is just so simple to you. I love using that one. That's, I mean, that's literally why they made it that way. I was just speaking to an older gentleman who said, like, that was what got him into the Alexa. He was a staunch film guy.

And when he was using, he was saying, like, the Panavision Genesis or the Viper or anything like that, it was just huge and complicated and wires and all this crap. And then Ari came out with the Alexa. And he just went, oh, there's a button to record. There's a button for white balance. And that's pretty much it. That's all I need. Thank God. A giant record button.

Just hit that. Yeah. we uh we shot at uh we shot in new zealand and it was with the weddon and peter jackson team and he allowed i was prepping for the day and he allowed me to go uh this was 2016 he let me go into his his studio and just basically pick out the gear and the lights and we ended taking some red they're a red house they had you know they shot a hobbit on red but i was looking at the red 3d rig that they had and it was essentially cheese one red and then another red shooting down into a mirror and i'm just staring at this

thing thinking about how they shot the hobbit you know taking this giant massive thing around i'm like oh that is there's a lot of technical aspects of cameras i love this is not one of them like i want something simple and easy to carry easy to use yeah like that monster rig from uh the irishman right you've seen photos of that thing where it's like four cameras mounted to the same unit because it was all for the de-aging right i mean it was that's a Yeah, they were witness cameras. They were using Alexis as witness cameras. So that footage never got used.

Oh, yeah. I think one of them they had a infrared, like they had changed the filter to like infrared or the sensor to like infrared so that they could get like depth and whatever. There's a lot of data for that CG team. Yeah. That's cool. But yeah, those rings were enormous. What I was going to say earlier was Dan Stoloff, who shot the bull.

boys was saying how the boys is shot on Venice, but something fascinating he told me, which I, it gave me like a boost of confidence was we were just sitting there talking and he was like, you know, one thing that's kind of nice, because I asked him if he used the Rialto extension, which I've learned since apparently is kind of a pain in the ass. It's a cool idea and apparently it works great, but from I had read some things on some forums about people who have to rig that thing up and like put it, not the DPs, but like everyone around it. Right.

And they're just like, Rialto. But he was saying that the studio or whoever didn't really want to spring for that extension. So he was like, yeah, sometimes I'll just grab my Fuji XT3, put it where we couldn't fit the camera. And there's plenty. There's probably one or two shots in every episode of the boys that shot on the XT3.

And I was like, what? I grabbed mine. I was like this thing. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that thing. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. That's too funny. That's a very like anamorphic, high contrast.

chill like that's that's cool that they're all the well and i i use the xt3 since that conversation i've used it as the b cam to my c 500 and when you get the footage into resolve it does not look the same at all but it but it colors to match very easily okay um and so yeah he said he just would throw a pl mount on it and then they recorded out um to a recorder so they could get like a ninja or something 10 bit yeah yeah that was the biggest thing we we we we we we There was a period of time where we were shooting both the C-100 and the Sony F-S-7 or F-S-5, and we did this big gig with multiple cameras. It was like those two and a bunch of drones and Gopros, Blackmagic micro.

I remember the micro cinema camera. This guy? It's a little, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we got introduced to that on MythBusters. They replaced their Gopros with those eventually because at that time, you can just color it to match their, whatever they were using it at the time. time. But trying to go from Canon to Sony in Da Vinci, it's like I'm taking curves and I'm like adjusting hues to imagine. Like this is ridiculous. Yeah. I was I, you know what I did honestly is

I just did set my girlfriend up with some color charts and stuff. And I've done this like this is how I made all my like picture. Well, maybe not the picture profile so much. But like I've done this a lot but I did it with mine is I just put the two cameras together and created a lot that I drop onto the XT3 footage to match the C500, you know, because that way I only have to do it once and it's technically accurate. It's not like a look. It's just like technically moving the curves around and adjusting, you know, the color chart. And that gets me 85, 90% of the way there every time. Wow. Okay. And it's like you just put a lot of work in at first and then you don't need to think about it anymore. So I was just at the shop yesterday and Adam just finished rebuilding

an air reflex camera like oh cool like you got the all the motors work in and so we had it we had it open and he's just showing me how it you know how it shoots the film down and like everything we're talking about putting some film in and shooting and he showed me like the tools you know i have a light meter and color meter and stuff like that but i've never actually put my hands on film film i've always been a digital uh and he's showing me some yeah we're so excited look at that but he was showing me some tools that i didn't even consider and one of them was like an eyepiece that, I have to look at it more, but the way he explained to me was it was an eyepiece that DPs used when they were shooting film that would sort of, I don't know,

explain it. I guess it would, it would just bring the dynamic range of the world around you into something that's a little closer to how a film would see. And so it's just a tiny little, like almost like a monocle. And he's just, oh, no, you know what that is is, it's, it was used for, I can't, what is it called? Gaffer's Glass. And Gaffer's class, okay. It was blue, I think. Yeah, I had a blue. Dark, yeah, like ND or something.

So what that was actually used for was, I've never, I didn't think about it like as a dynamic range. It's, you know what it is more like is it's like a welding helmet. So what they would do is it would be to check HMI's or like carbon arc lights. So the Gaffer could look into the light and not fucking blind himself. Wow. Okay. So it's actually, they're just there to just to dim it, like an ND or something. So you could literally look at like the carbon arc or the HMI or whatever and see what's going on in there and make sure that it's like correct.

Okay. I got to let him know. Yeah. He's giving me these tools. I'm like, I've never touched these before trying to explain to me. But he, to be fair, that's the on the box description of what a Gaffer's glass is for all. Like I never, it's interesting to think of it as like a dynamic range compression or something like that. But that's what a Gaffer's Glass.

He might have shown you something else as well. I could be completely off the mark. But if you Google Gaffer's Glass, I think that's what you're thinking of. Oh, yeah. Because that would be a cool product. Because, like, filmed straight up, you have like three stops up and down, and that is it. Well, so that was going to be my, that was, I guess that's where I started thinking about it was because I've been shooting a lot of VR with, with Oculus.

And so that everything is so new when it comes to immersive 3D, 180 VR video. that it's, it's, it's, it's really tricky as a camera operator, a cinematographer, to bring that stuff and, and light it correctly and also get the right monitoring tool. So like we shot, I think three or four seasons, uh, about eight, eight episodes each and so much of it is putting a camera, putting this camera with these two large lenses. We're getting a new cannon for this, this year's project, but it's essentially

two giant fish eyes. Is that the double lens that the R5? Yeah, it looks like a like a, uh, uh, It looks like Johnny 5 Alive or something, like a robot, a short circuit robot. But we don't have great monitoring tools yet. I mean, you can kind of see, you can kind of see the image. You can sort of, you can sort of get your exposure. I still use, I still meter it.

So I'll bring out a light meter. I'll know what exposure looks great. Exactly. Yeah. But the problem I'm having is when we shoot for 69 or whatever, well, frame, you know, we sort of light, play with contrast and move things. around, but like none of that works in this context. Like when I'm looking at the image on the viewfinder,

and I see, oh yeah, the subject's lit and everything else kind of falls off. There's some, like, I have some lights there that add a little bit of, you know, bring back some levels. But when you put on the headset, the world completely changes because you want to give the user the experience of standing there in the room, but the cameras don't have the ability

to see levels like we do. Like they don't have as good of dynamic ranges or eyeballs, right? And so I can like, light someone and make it look good on screen, but then you put the headset on and all of a sudden they look like they're in a cave or something because the levels drop off so dramatically on certain parts of the image that like it just, it kind of, you sort of lose the, the immersion. So I was looking at that tool. I'm like, I would be so good to have something like that,

just like a monocle where I can just, I can look at the world in the way that the VR cameras are going to see it because I, right now I'm walking around to every part of the room with light meter, adjusting lights to make corners pop just a little bit, just to bring those levels up so that it feels, you know, feels real while at the same time looking at the camera, at the viewfinder and seeing something that's a little more washed out. It's, yeah, it's super difficult right now. You are kind of getting the like the OG film experience then, you know, just like, I don't know what this is going to look like until we're in the grade, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's what they really need. They need like a live view headset. And I'm sure

will come at some point, but, like, it's, you know, you have to, like, take those images. You're hitting two separate images. You have to take that stuff together and, like, stitch it together. And, like, especially with 3D, you have to, like, stitch it correctly so that those images give you the correct 3D experience so that the person saying 3 feet ahead of you, looks like they're 3 feet ahead of you and it's not focused all weird. So, yeah, it's very, it's very new emerging technology, but also, like you said, like there's a little bit of some old school filmmaking stuff. But also, as a, as a shooter, I have to, like, almost forget a lot of the things. Like, I want to do, you know, a weird angle. I want to go Dutch. But, like, no, no, you have to, like, stay at the eye level of the person.

Like, you're basically trying to simulate a person standing there, which is, it's not what you do as a cinematographer. You have your artistic manipulation that you sort of add to the image of the story. And you kind of can't do that here. Are you, so you said you never worked with film before? I've never worked for photography yeah photography and that was it and like a not film cameras the closest I got was no yeah is that I'm going to let you like take the the rye flex for a spin and too yeah we're going to get some film I think he has a little bit more to do a little more work to do he just built some or he I guess refurbished and like built some old school sticks for it

has has like the airy like the ball head on those things so we got some wood sticks for wooden sticks yeah yeah and it looks straight up like I'm looking at like this looks out of time like it's it's great it's not just an area flux on a modern you know satchel tripod it's like it looks like something from that era and uh yeah it's loud as hell so we're we're probably going to do something MOS or just just shoot some some tests but yeah should be well you said you you like doing the like Foley and stuff like that that could be a good like really like a really good Foley test or like just doing everything in post, you know, hone that skill. That is a, but then also just, yeah, I wouldn't even know.

I mean, I know there's a couple companies I used to live by down in Los Angeles that do like film processing, but yeah, that's going to be nerve-wracking to send off stuff for the first time film shooter and having that process. Definitely. I mean, we were just talking about this in the last podcast. Rip off a few tests, like a few hundred foot rolls of just, just testing. Like what they had us do at NIFO. was get in a lighting situation that you're expecting and you just have a whatever piece of paper,

something like that. And something to do that will help is at the head of every roll, shoot a gray card. And if you're shooting color, then a color chart. Just like have the person standing there ready and then start rolling until it speeds up and everything and like hits there. And that gives the, I'm sure the technology is there where they don't need. need this anymore but that that just really helps the processor know what's supposed to look correct right if you've got the gray card in the color chart there for him but um a few test rolls

what we would do is we would uh whatever stock we were given we would set that up at the gray card in a person in the lighting situation we do and we would just write like uh key you know shoot a few seconds at key shoot a few seconds over exposed by a stop under exposed by a stop blah blah blah and then get the whole thing back and then you go all right so in this situation that we're in I know that one stop over looks really good on skin. That's where we should be shooting. Or two stops under, you know, whatever looks best to you. And this all changes dramatically.

I'm assuming with different stocks, different style of stocks. Yeah, yeah. Well, now that today you've got one option, and that's 5219. Okay. Is it 35 or is it 16, though? Okay, so whatever, 7219. But, yeah, Kodak, Fuji doesn't even make motion picture stock anymore. Really?

So you can't buy short ends. Like everything, all that infrastructure is. They might exist, but yeah, I don't, I don't, they would potentially be expired or something like that. You know, at film tools, we just found a box of some exposed and some unexposed 35 reels. Wow. Just behind some stuff. And we, well, because movieola is the main company that that does film tools and pro video coalition. So we're assuming it was, you know, movieola.

is the editor, the giant editor flatbed editor. So we were like, man, this must just be like somewhat. Like it didn't have enough data on it for us to know what it's from. But I was like, dude, you need to get this processed. And then we need to take these other roles and go shoot something. Wow. For like the film tools, YouTube or something.

But yeah, you're going to get 7219 for that or black and white. Although Kodak did just start. Black and white could be really cool. Yeah. A little more forgiving in certain ways, especially with like, color contrast. Right. You just throw whatever colors. Yeah. You can use whatever light you want. But Kodak did just start making ectochrome again. Really? That's what they shot all of Euphoria

Season 2 on. I haven't seen Euphoria. I need to check it out. I don't know about that. It's a bunch, dude, it's so weird. It's like a bunch of college age or older people playing high school students just doing drugs and fucking each other every second. It's the weirdest. 90s, right? All the high school kids are played by like 35 year olds. Yeah. But, um, yeah, Ectochrome. As far as I'm where Ectochrome is, is a slide film. So you've got like no dynamic range. You have to fucking nail it. Yeah. There's no room for, for, I would maybe say stick to a negative film to start. I might go somewhere more forgiving. Yeah. But I'm excited for that. That'll be fucking cool. I'd love to see what you do with that. Yeah. I think at some point he wants to like modify it a little bit and

and add some modern, some modern things to it. I'm not sure what that is yet, but we'll, yeah, we'll see. It'll be on tested. Might have to get like a blimp for it or something to bring the noise, the motor noise down. That's what you was talking about. Yeah, he really wants to do something, get one of those old school, like, sound, you know, sound impressors, whatever for the. Yeah. So how did you, you kind of alluded to it with the whiskey media thing, but how did you get involved with tested?

Like, was that, how did that first meeting go with Adam? Right. So that was the result of a buyout. So when I got involved with Whiskey Media, there was five brands, five digital brands. So if you think of Whiskey Media as the parent company, there was like a movie website, a video game website, which is still around Giant Bomb, and then like an anime, comic book, and tested. I came on the same time that they were relaunching, that they were launching tested. screened the movie website. And so there was five of us in-house video producers. We were sort of what they would call like producer editors. And I predators, right, yeah. I hate that phrase. It's, I'm starting to start, it died for a little bit.

And I'm starting to hear it pop up a little more now, the predator phase. But I did all of Testid's launch videos. They came on. I shot on their launch videos with my boss at the time of Vinnie Caravella and got them going, then handed that project off to another video producer. I went over to the movie website and worked with those hosts full-time and then kind of as a sort of paratrooped in

when needed for like the conventions for everything else. So we did a lot of conventions across all five brands. But, you know, like a lot of tech companies in the 2010s, it wasn't making a whole lot of money and they ended up selling off a few of the brands. So they ended up selling half to CBS, that was where a giant palm went. That was where their home remained for a long time. And then tested was sold to a company called Wellrock, or at the time was Burman-Bron,

but it was a company down in West Hollywood who was getting into digital and getting into a ton of stuff. And so they were doing like Kardashians digital stuff, a bunch of like AOL stuff. And so they bought tested as a way to to bring a digital home to their clients, which were Adam and Jamie for Mythbusters. And so that meeting, I wasn't involved with that meeting. That was Norman and Will from Tessid and the owners of whiskey media sitting down with Adam and find if that's a good fit. And I think the pitch to Adam and Jamie were, you know, if you guys are the don't try this at home folks, like we. are to try this at home folks and so like that was a good yeah it's like a good pitch yeah so like

that that marriage started there and we you know we left whiskey media we had all the gear with us part of the purchase was like you take all of the stuff like you and the brands come you the gear the brands come with us and then the other brands go somewhere else because cbs already had stuff and so i yeah yeah i was there's pictures of me in the studio just me it's just three of us. It was Norm will, me. And here I am with five Panasonic's. I have a tricaster, like a $50,000 tricaster, which is like a multi-cam mixing. Yeah. Tricaster must be so pissed at the like Zoom Revolution. There's so many inexpensive mixers now. We're looking at our tri-cat. We still have it. I'm looking at it. Like, I think we missed the point of selling this, but I don't know. I'm

going to try at some point. Probably sell it to a studio. They're not going to use a black magic of like uh yeah and like churches use them a lot anyway yeah i had a ton of this stuff and so i just sat there for the next few months and built out a studio uh and then we would jump over to adam's shop and like shoot with him maybe like once or twice a week because mythbusters were still going on and so they were shooting mythbusters adam would come over with us and and shoot for a little bit and then we do a bunch of original content and slowly as time went on adam's schedule freed up mythbusters eventually ended and so he became a much more of a full time uh in involvement and now it's it's a pretty close uh pretty close collaboration in terms like the day to

day so it's it went from three of us to like five or six of us and then um yeah it was all part of a purchase and all part of a marriage there and that we got involved with them was uh myth busters is like a big thing for you because you're a slightly older than i think the demographic that like probably watch is tested but yeah myth busters i actually kind of just i don't know if i was in the right the wrong age or the wrong time, but I was coming out of high school in 2000, and I went off, I, you know, once I went abroad and did that, like, I just had this sort of less consuming, super ambitious kind of track. And so I never, that's when that show just started. So I kind of missed the whole, the whole aspect of that. I think if it came out while I was in high school, it had been a

big one for me, but I totally missed it. And so like, when I came on board, like, I've seen it, I've seen the show, I was very familiar with it, especially because it was a bear. show and there wasn't a whole lot of those. But yeah, I just, I would see things in there and like Adam would tell me stories and I just kind of like, oh, yeah, I don't know. I have to have to catch up. At some point, I'm going to sit down and watch a marathon. It's got to be interesting for him to like go to the conventions and stuff and talk to people who have like a more intimate knowledge of his show than him. Because, you know, when you're a fan of anything, you probably know more than the people who made it because you've probably watched it a million times. Or as if you made

the thing you did it once. Maybe you've seen it a second time when it aired or whatever and you're done. You can like make polls from a specific episode and one specific thing. The biggest, the wildest thing that I think came out of working with Adam or observing, observing that the culture on the show is he would do, we would still do a lot of conventions. We're at Comic Con like every year before COVID and he would do a lot of speaking engagements there and conferences. And sometimes we'd shoot those, sometimes we just watch them. But I'd bring up a camera, you know, go to the press, the press booth plug in an xLR and get audio and just sit there and shoot and i've shut you know a dozen or so of his of his talks and there's always a big Q&A portion and being that the show

aired started airing like around 2000 and went on 2013 14 15 those folks are now older and getting jobs and there is an insane amount of people who are like i watched your show when i was younger and like now i work for NASA or like i watch your show right now i'm an engineer like oh wow like I didn't realize, I guess I'm now seeing the, and I'm sure it's a trip to him too, but seeing the effects of his show on people and how that, that sign, that, how important science communication and engineering communication is to sort of motivating younger folks to take these career paths that aren't, you know, as sexy as some other things that have earned the media.

So it's really cool. It's been a benefit of working with them. For me, it was like one of those shows that, uh, because I'm only a few years. younger than you, but, like, it was one of those shows that was always on. It was just always there. You know, so, like, when it ended, I was like, wait, are you allowed to do that? Like, I thought, like, it was always there. I thought that was just something that we always had was just these two guys blowing shit up and teaching us things. You know, it's like, it felt like Sesame Street. You know, like, if Sesame Street ended, we'd all be like, excuse you.

Yeah, like, that doesn't happen. You're not allowed to do that. Actually, you reminded me of a question I wanted to ask you is when you went to Italy and you did your semester, one thing we've been talking a lot about on this podcast recently has been a lot of these older DPs or more traditional DPs started as painters. And I'm wondering if spending the time in those museums or anything like that, you know, studying art, what that might have taught you about art yourself. Because you can get lost in a painting, not only thinking about the story of the painting, but also the process of painting it, you know. right yeah yeah i think i think the biggest thing the biggest thing i took away or at least thinking

about it in retrospect is you know and this might have to do some of the movies that i kind of grew up on from the 80s but like during the 90s and comic books and the shows then i was just so used of being blown you know just a high-key image being blown at me right detail and everything lots of color but being there I think I really started to develop a taste for darkness when you really start to look at some of the

Renaissance paintings you're like oh there is a very specific way that they are drawing the eye to an area of this painting or certain areas of this painting or you know using of course using like shapes and color but also like they were most of that canvas is black or dark or just just super

dark and the areas that they you know a lot of not to put on my fedora but like when people say like Caravaggio like there's a lot of really high contrast the images because all they really had was like a window right that was just blown out as reference as they would be painting these things

but not but like not being afraid of the darkness I think really like stuck with me and being able to I don't know produce something or be or understand that the power of of what high contrast

and dark images can do. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, as I've heard David Fincher say, uh, in like interviews or, or DVD commentary, it's what you don't do. It's what you don't show. Yeah. That's important. And it's like, you can do anything.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And especially now with like, the cameras with the dynamic range that the where they're at, like, and what we do at tested too is sort of is completely contradictory to that. We're trying to show the details on certain things, right? It's not dramatic filming, but it's like we, we, we, I guess it all makes, it's project specific but like taking all of this information and being like what do we really

want out of this like yes we can like capture all this we can overlight this thing but like is that is that what we want to do here and I don't know yeah it's it's something I still struggle with but one well and especially with these modern cameras you end up it's almost easier to think about darkness because the only way to shape contrast is to remove light whereas with you have to give it light to get anything you know otherwise it's going to be black with with digital sensors it's like like right now this is starting to look quite lit because the sun's kind of hiding from you know this is a north facing window but um if i were to turn off all the lights you'd still see everything right yeah the said yeah the like the sensitivity of cameras too has become

much more fun to paint images on because even going back to like the xl2s and like those video cameras still needed quite a bit of light and so you always always kind of overlighting or blasting things just to get a properly exposed image but like now being able to take like in now lights have also been super cheap I shot an entire short film using like one dimmable quasar two and a high sensitivity camera because I was able to like just give it the amount of light it needed bring the sensitivity to the camera up and we didn't have a whole lot of natural light blown out the image but like you can use much more subtle strokes to do the bigger things I think now which is super exciting dude the number of DPs talking about like

all the DPs using the Venice. The number of DPs who have said, like, yeah, I mean, we set like a big light outside so that we can pretend it's the sun. But inside, it's like a lot of negative fill and, and, and Titan tubes. Like, every D.P's got a set of Titan tubes somewhere. If you would have told me 10 years ago how much I would love negative, like using negative fill, I'd be like, what? Really?

A big thing, a duveteen? Like, yeah. Oh, yeah, I've got like two bolts of it. I'll just put it up on one side of a room. Just like, that's shadow now. I actually heard going back to your idea of like pairing things down to like its basic form, you know, especially when you're showing detail and stuff. Someone had recently brought up a Gordon Willis quote, which was when you're shooting film, he found that this is kind of later in his life. But he was saying that a lot of modern films seems to be trying to add a lot, you know, trying to do more and more because more and more things are possible.

And he was like, no, don't do that. you want to keep it simple, pair everything down to its most basic thing to get the information across. Sometimes it's just one window light. Sometimes it's a look instead of a sentence. And then the other thing was he said was it's simple, not simplistic. You don't dumb it down. It's like simple doesn't mean lazy. Like yeah. Right. Well, you're not trying to dumb it down for the audience. You're trying to make it the most, the easiest to digest. Yeah, digestible. You're not making it. stupid. You're making it specific, you know. Yeah. And I assume in Adam's fucking man cave, it's a little hard to simplify anything, you know, visually. Yeah. Yeah. We've been going through

how to rig, rig this place, rig that place up to be, to be usable, uh, or to be, to not fight us so hard. Because right, right now we're using a few LED fluorescence. He's got a few old school fluorescence. I just give off this crazy green. He's got a skylight that we, You keep ending, but it falls off. So we need to get up there. We need to black it out. I think at some point we're going to build out a grid, just a trust or something above and just putting some area lights down.

But it's tricky because what I've noticed shooting in so many shops is every time I sit there and like spend a pre-rig couple hours or a day making it look super like, oh, this is great. This looks fantastic, like super nice and like just, yeah, creamy. I love this. And then they come in and they want to, they want to start working and being filmed doing the work stuff. And like, they can't see a thing or like it's difficult. They almost need, it's like they need to have large ambient area lights with little shadows.

So even if I had everything just the entire ambient exposure of the room brought way up, I couldn't really accent things with hard lights because like if a shadow falls from their face on down to the table what they're trying to do. soldering. It's just, it doesn't, it makes it unworkable. And so there's been a big trying to dance around folks who, um, trying to figure out what the, what the balance is. I'm making a nice looking image in a workshop, but also having the workshop be usable for the person who's using it. I wonder if you could like, uh, find a way to include the light that they need in your package. So like, if they need a flashlight or a lamp or something, get one that has like a really nice TLCI, something that like you can use as a. Yeah. as a light like a practical basically basically just use that's yeah practical you know that's where

i think we're going is like take all the fluorescence put give yeah put some actual like you know stairs or something quasar is in there and then he's got a whole lot of he did build like some panels onto his table that are film lights and that can i can adjust so i can have everything sort of set around the 4500 range and it's you know it's it's it's tricky it's uh it's different it's a different A different thing than unscripted and documentary, stuff like that, is it can be a much, much more challenging than being able to, like, have whatever you want in a studio and do whatever you want. Sure. Yeah. Talk to me about kind of shooting that G4 piece and what you learned on that project.

Yeah, that was, so one of our branded spots was we were working with G4, which is like a television network back in the 2000. 2010s or so. They went away for a little while and they were doing a big relaunch. And so they were working with us to promote that. And they sponsored four build videos and then one big finale piece. And so we gave them our sort of traditional tested one day builds, which are like half hour to an hour long videos of Adam building something. And it was all, he was building essentially a space suit from scratch. He has a background in visual effects and working on props and stuff. And he's never actually, he's built. spacesuit replicas, but this was his own design, his own creation. He was kind of a designer slash builder and built these two spacesuits that we then shot in this sort of cinematic finale, this like two minute long piece that would reveal the G4 network kind of coming back. And the creative on it was

essentially it would be a bit of a, it would be a bit of like a fashion piece. We would be shooting these things in a sci-fi environment and then at the end give it an MTV style or reveal, like an old V. old CRT TV showing the G4 logo and he wanted to include this like chess game being that it was a video game company he wanted to take this like old game elements and involve it. And so the creative was basically shoot the suits in a sci-fi location, have a chessboard in it, RT television. And then it was kind of handed to me as sort of dual director DP role to execute it. And so that was a situation

where we did have to scale up. We did a lot of location scale. outing here in San Francisco, couldn't find anything that really matched us, matched the scope of what we wanted to show and ended up going down to Los Angeles to one of his old co-workers, Fawn Davis at Fonco Studios. And this is the benefit I think of Los Angeles set locations is that there's a lot of places there that have, like one building will have five different stages, right? Like one building will have the police precinct and like the the doctor's office and the bar. And so his studio is set up to be a fabrication shop,

but it also has four or five stages within it. He has like a modular spaceship that sort of has the interior all built out, that you sort of move around. And he's got a few, like a bar set, a few other sets. So we were able to knock out three or four locations in his one shop for the one day. And so we got a small crew together, hired them down south, got like an AC, a grip.

a gaffer, the regular camera support team, then also got set designers, rented the cameras, and then got Atlas anamorphic lenses to give it that, you know, that sci-fi look. And then got the two suits that Adam made, got the hosts, and I essentially storyboarded it out. I think I had this posted somewhere, but I storyboarded it.

I do this quite often where I, we didn't have a script, but we had boards. And then I took those boards and I bring them in, and this is kind of going back to what I used to do as a kid. I bring them into the computer and narrate through the boards as they're sort of like an animatic almost. That's actually

really smart. It gets you good on timing. I've done this. I've done this a bunch and like I'll all and I think it's more for me to understand where like shots I don't need or like you said timing, figure out the pacing of something. Because I'll add music. I'll sound effects. Sometimes I'll like read the script. I'll read the parts of it.

And so I did that for this. Brought the boards brought the animatic with us kind of showed everybody, got the whole team on board for this idea, and then, yeah, did one pre-rig day of going through getting, getting all the set design stuff. We had to age everything quite a bit. The idea was it was like a dilapidated environment. And so we had a few folks there just aging things down, put a lot of dust on things. One of my friends described my shooting style as dusty. And I think I'm like, what does that mean? What does that mean exactly? And I think it's

just being someone that grew up on carpenter films and like that style of of shooting like the even like the dean kundi cinematography like there is something i do like about having a dirty frame of just a lot of dust so anyway so we did a lot of dust we had a lot of atmosphere we brought hazers uh did the whole thing and and did one pre-rig day and then one shooting day which was not enough um i think if anything i learned on this as if anything i learned from this, it is that a good AD is awesome. We did not. We had an AD for a New Zealand shoot and our day was efficient and like went through. We didn't have an AD for this and we felt it. It was a rushed day. There were certain aspects of like the costumes that

weren't working. Like they were just like they're kind of digging in. So we had to kind of change the way we shot for comfortability for the talent. But yeah, we ended up doing, I think, a good solid two minutes. You probably had a forfeit, maybe three or four shots. And then I took that in the post and did a light edit and color. And then we did like fully work. Adam and I went through a shop and took the suit and made all the sound effects and did just, I think I have like 30 layers in Premiere of just sound design stuff happening. And then, yeah, scored it and then pushed it out for G4. Like, is it? it's not two and a half minutes, I'm probably going to do like a 30 second cut down as a,

you know, as a demo reel kind of thing. But yeah, yeah, I think, you know, working solo on so much stuff, this is, I think, one of the, one of the things that starts that is good to learn early on as like how to know exactly what kind of crew and support team you need and then how to work with them to alleviate some of your, um, alleviate some of your workload, especially as like a both the director DP combo there's a lot I was juggling and I think having a larger support crew would have made that day even even the cost a little bit more I think it would made that day much more efficient yeah well and especially if if you are the director DP like everyone's coming to you right yeah so now you're putting out a lot of fires

and it was yeah having one ear of of just the the grip gaffer team talking to me and then having the other ear of like working with the talent like and the uh the folks that we had there that was kind of running the the stages it was uh it was a lot i mean it wasn't it wasn't by any means um a disaster but it was definitely a lot to juggle well and i'm sure that shooting rhythm that you're used to kind of in the more documentary style where you're finding the shot uh it could probably be i could imagine it was uh maybe not difficult but a solid gear change to try to do something scripted. Yeah. And I think I was ready for it. I've I've shot a handful of things that required larger setups now. And so I was prepared for it. But the thing I think I didn't do was

get everybody else on the same page, right? Like everyone was used to sort of shooting quick run and gun. And so being able to explain like, no, if we want this to look, The way that we've all agreed that it should look, we need to spend X amount of time doing this and sort of having to bring everyone's expectations to that level is all, I guess, all part of the communicating job of directing that I think should not be overlooked. Yeah. A big part of this podcast that I like to do is figure out where non-film influences can influence someone. Right. And I'm wondering if there's anything that Adam's sort of singular process, he seems like he's kind of a, maybe not unique, but it's all his thing. He's developed the way that he does his shit.

I'm wondering if that methodology, or his methodology specifically, has informed any sort of filmmaking for you, anything that you've kind of taken from that process. interesting yeah um because i've used i've used his like get the cheapest tool uh until you know what you need and then buy an expense to do i've given that advice to everyone who says like what camera should i get i'm like just get the one you can afford until you know what you need and i directly stole that from him that's a really good one yeah because it it is you do especially with us in the camera stuff like we see we see the ron in like i i'm like i I need that. That's what I need. But like, do you? And like, yeah, trying out, trying out some steady camp or glide cam stuff first. Like, there's definitely been aspects of that I've taken

with me. That's a good one. Same with like the right tool for the right job. I mean, honestly, I think the biggest thing of being in such close quarters with him for so long is really understanding the power of good communication. like really understanding how to how to articulate things in a way that gets your point across effectively and like that's all part of him being on camera and that's all you know part of his job for so long through Mythbusters but I think I really starting to see the effects of that and how little time he could waste of other people being able to just come right out and and articulate what is what is the goal here and what is being said and how to do it in a very nice way

like he's he's exactly how you see on tv like this personality and it's um i think there's a lot of things to take from that for me at least but there's probably more stuff that'll come to me later sure uh for anyone listening the the conceit of this interview is that we're friends so it's a little easier to just like sit here and talk for three fucking hours and i know but i'll try to keep it to the hour like we promised. But the way I end all of these interviews is asking the same two questions. First one being, although I just kind of asked it, but what's a piece of advice that maybe you were given or you read somewhere or something that has kind of stuck with you through your filmmaking career? Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like I've

gotten different pieces of advice that have helped me different at different stages. I'll take a couple. It doesn't have to just be one. I think the one, and I was thinking about this recently, if there was a, you know, I'm going on, I'm getting close to late 30s now. I loved the change.

I'm almost done. But I feel like I spent a long time my 20s and early 30s, sort of a bit paralyzed in terms of self-generate. Like right now I'm in this like self-generation mode, I'm trying to generate as much content myself to pursue the goals that I have. But I feel like there was a long time, especially when you start really consuming, when I started really getting into film and started consuming a lot of film

and having filmmakers influence me, I sort of started to understand my taste a little bit better and like understand things. And it almost became sort of paralyzed in going from making, like, shooting whatever short films with my friends to like not making anything for a long time because like I couldn't think of anything what I would deem as like original original enough and good enough right and there was a few years ago it's a guy I want to see it seems Kirby Ferguson but he came out with this with a video called everything is a remix which I highly recommend I think I've seen that but yeah yeah it's it's all about the idea that great artists you know they they go through a process of like

I want to call it stealing, but like taking someone else's idea, sort of figuring out their own spin on it, and in that methodology, like in that process of doing that and then creating something that sort of imitates it, you tend to create something new or something original from that process. And I think if I would have given myself, my younger self advice, it would just been just make the stuff that like you're super into. You don't worry about being original. Just like I needed to I needed to spend time polishing my skills, honing, you know, getting these tools together. And like, I wish I would have shot. There were short, you know, short stories that I've read. I was a big, you know, I was a big reader of like Ray Bradbury. Like I wish I would have went back and like shot like adapted things, shot things, not, not being paralyzed by having this original thought. And if I would have done so, I would have think I would have got a lot more skills quicker and not been so precious about making that a original thing. So yeah, I think the big piece of advice I want to give myself is like imitate more

to get your voice to come back around and get your original voice. Yeah. The thing I've always said is like if you're two things actually. One, I early on kind of started to think of myself as part of a lineage. Film is a relatively new medium. It's only a hundred and some odd you're told, you know. So if you think of like maybe like a family tree, you know, I always think like where where do I sit on that family tree and how am I going to advance those people, you know, we're not related in any way, but like I think of certain filmmakers who influenced me and how I'm going to take what I learn from them or what I like about them and meld it with. And this is the second thing.

If you can steal from like three artists and put it into one project, that's your thing. Right. If you steal from one person, you're stealing. But if you add three things, it's your thing now. I like that. That's a good formula. Yeah, because, you know, two even is like, oh, I can see, you know, because it's everyone always describes the film as like, oh, it's like aliens meets jaw, or I guess alien is jaws. But, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's always something meets something. But if you had a third thing, whole new thing. But yeah, the family tree thing is something I've always thought about, which. But also, I think, tell me if this is kind of part of your thought process there, because it occurred to me as you were saying it. I think a lot of that paralysis can come from the idea of making something and have it not be good. enough for like you're you're already thinking about distribution when you haven't shot a single frame

it's like you don't have to distribute it no you can just make it for you or like feedback like i i i know that that sort of messed with me a little bit as i started like working with folks and like it probably happened subconsciously at least of you know early stages of like working with higher profile people like you know adam or before adam or just like who are making really good television or movies or something like, I'm never like, I don't want to make it and then look like amateur in their eyes, right? And that's sort of a weird, you know, something you should visit a therapist about, I guess. But there's a lot of like insecurities, I guess, that artists can have. And like, going into that paralysis mode is not good. Well, and I think

honesty with oneself, or not only oneself, but like honesty, if you go up to someone and you're like, hey, like this is a kind of a leap for me. I'm really excited to be here, but I'm just like being real up front. Like I haven't done something at this level. I'm here to work and I'm here to learn. I think they appreciate that more than you bullshitting your way through the experience and then they learn about it later, you know. That was going to be my other. The other advice I was kind of thinking about was that. I don't know who said it. I don't know if it was a family member, but when I first started getting into this, it was knocking on doors. Like the way I got involved with the music video guy here is basically cold calling production companies like hey like here's my

situation like here i'm a sponge for knowledge uh and i understand that i don't have a lot of experience but like i want to show up and learn and do whatever i can like people people who are have been doing something for a while like they they kind of dig teaching somebody they're like passing on their skills and i've especially now i'm at a point where i'm interviewing people for you know for jobs in the last few years, like, I met folks like a few years back who were like coming out to college and they, you know, they seem to, they have everything figured out. Like they know like there's a put off like when you meet someone who just doesn't have any sort of humble acknowledgement of their own skill level or experience, like it's not super

great. And so being able to, yes, say what you, yeah, I'm looking for this, like being honest, but also having that desire and thirst for knowledge, I think, can, can, can, really opened you up to a lot of new experiences and mentorships. Yeah. No, it's that thing like when people say like, oh, if you want to, if you want to be interesting, be interested because people like to talk about themselves. It's kind of the same thing.

Like people like to teach. Yeah. Dude, that was a big thing when I was young. Here's some advice that has nothing to do with filmmaking for anyone listening. No one wants to be fixed. Right. No one. Don't, don't just start giving people advice about stuff.

Don't fix people's problems. If someone comes to you and says like, oh, man, this is, I'm really struggling with this. Don't immediately go like, well, what you should do. What you need to do is this. They don't care. They don't fucking care. They're going to find that, you know, if they ask you, great, then they care. But other than that, just be a good shoulder, you know.

It's funny. I'm really good with receiving feedback on projects and stuff. But there are sometimes when like I have something and someone gives me unsolicited feedback. I'm like, I didn't ask for that feedback. It's just, it's just, it's hard. published to do it away I saw I saw this email going around on there's this Twitter account called for exposure dot TXT I think and one of them was like this guy was cold emailing I think they were like YouTube accounts but it was just a

copy paste job and it was like I've watched your channel and it's great but I know I can do better are you are you interested in this that the other and everyone was just like buddy that is not how you introduce yourself I had somebody had that that beacon short film that we just talked about the g4 thing there was somebody who ripped it from youtube cut it in their way that they would make it better and then posted it and then came under the comments and said hey just for you guys know i thought this can be better if this this and that i'm like wow what a balsy move oh no you know there is something to be said for like i'm sure that person was well-intentioned.

Right. But there's, that is kind of the downfall, or not the downfall, but like a downside to, I hate to say, like, the YouTube generation, which is the high knowledge, low experience person. Yeah. Doesn't, doesn't quite know. Because, like, meeting those people, like, on set, it's very apparent. Mm-hmm.

They know every single speck of the camera. but couldn't you know can't communicate well or or has lived on YouTube learning from I was just talking about this when I have to start not talking about this it's like every every podcast I talk about where I went to college and I had to stop and this is another thing is like talking about YouTube because it's it's addictive you're on I'm on YouTube all the time oh yeah but it's like a lot of times it's amateurs teaching amateurs and and it's you know people want to become filmmakers and it's like well are you watching movies like do you have a criterion streaming, you know, thing? Or are you watching, pick a YouTuber, you know, a photographer teaching you how to make movies? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, and it's something like, I mean, this is probably petty, but like, whenever I hear, when I hear a shooter refer to themselves as a director of photography, I'm like, well, like, are you just, are you just shooting like with your DSLR or like, are you managing a crew or like figuring out a day or like, understand, like, there's a difference there.

I don't think it's petty at all because a lot of DPs have talked about that. And it's, it really is, it's kind of, that's like a micro level of this macro problem, which is education is so accessible that I think people can get the false sense of I've put the time in. Right. I sat there and watched all these. I'm ready. Yeah. Or I read all the books or whatever it is.

And while you may be knowledgeable, you still need. It's kind of what I was talking sort of offstream about the person on the snowboard, you know, where they, they hadn't gone through the 10 years of experience that I had. They just started talking to me like they knew shit. And I'm like, okay, but like, I think film is one of those things where it's like you do have to pay your dues. Just because you know a lot doesn't mean you're the DP or whatever. Like even I get kind of the further way I get from doing, you know, these past couple years, I haven't. really been able to shoot anything. So it's like the further away I get from the last project I did, the more and more concerned I am about saying I'm like a DP or a cinematographer or whatever.

I was just having an existential crisis a couple days ago. Like what? I haven't touched a camera in like a couple of months now. Like, oh, geez. Who am I? Yeah. Well, next time you're in LA, we'll have to come up with a project and just shoot it. That's interesting. You brought up the, the, I feel like like that's what that's what caused me to go knock on doors when I did is because in there in 2004 2005 like final cut everyone was editors final cut came out it was kind of new everyone was editors mini dv everyone was shooters and then there was materially that you can consume online that taught you everything and it was like how do i not become how do i get out of this pool of of people like i can sit here and learn everything on my computer

and be part of this, but like, I think I, the, the, the advantage I need to give myself is I need to go out and, like, actually talk to people and, like, knock on doors, put my time in with these folks as, like, production assistant or interning. And so, like, there was a big realization where I was like, if I just keep sitting here learning, I'm not going to, I'm going to be just like a million of these other people in Los Angeles who are all learning at the same time online. So anyway, that was the first question. try to wrap this up uh second question much easier uh suggest a movie for people to watch that traditionally i say isn't yours but oh out of all the movies all out of all time you can make a couple if you'd like dude the question i've said this a few times but the question used to be what's your favorite film and i've learned that's a that's a way worse question oh geez yeah that one's tough it's tough to attach yourself to like your your your your taste of one to the film i'm the one thing I'm starting to do, actually, is with people who've shot features, I'm going to start asking your movies in a double feature. What's the movie that comes before yours?

Oh, that's a good one. I like that. Because I think that'll narrow it. It's easier to answer. I think a lot. Like, whenever I watch movies, I'm always thinking, like, would that be a good double feature with this other movie I just saw? I do too. That's funny. What sucks is my girlfriend doesn't want to watch two movies back to back. She barely wants to watch one movies. Who else am I going to show this to? I would think in those terms. I'm going to do two movies. I had one, but now you made me think of another one. Okay, cool.

This one I saw in a theater. It came out in like the 90s. It's an anime called Perfect Blue. Have you heard of this? Okay. No. So it's a very adult, I mean, in terms of it's very, it's kind of, it's, it is a, it is a movie. It is like a straight, it's not like an anime. It is a movie about a, like a Kira or whatever.

Yeah. It's about a singer, a female singer. who goes off who isn't as big pop band leaves to do like an acting career, ends up involved with some stalker and sort of her mental stability starts to sort of deteriorate. It is a wonderfully made movie. It looks amazing. The storytelling is super good. Like the soundtrack's awesome. But if you want to see where like 70% of Darren Aronoski, Aronovsky's sort of pool is from, watch this movie because it's it's very you'll see a lot of black swan in this movie you'll see a lot of um like requiem for a dream it's sort of all that weird mind fuckery that darrenovsky loves to

delve into is sort of this is probably one of his biggest influences and it's such a cool movie i like i i love some of his movies i'm hit hit or miss but like black swan is one of my favorites of his um and perfect blue once i saw that i'm like this is like this is right up there with it i would But yeah, I think it's a fantastic movie. Again, I don't know where you can find it on the streaming or came out like eight late 90s. Then the movie, I'm going to go recent. I saw this movie called Nine Days. Have you seen this one?

Nine days, no. I've seen Sixth Day. Nine Days is a new movie about, I don't know how to explain it without giving. I guess it's not a whole lot to give away. It's a very like one location, sort of size. sci-fi-ish concept about a guy who's sort of deciding who is going to go live life. So it's sort of a weird mind-fuckering move, but it's a guy whose job is to interview these candidates through this nine-day process of who will then go off and like live a life.

I guess be bored. They're not clear on like the logistics of it, but essentially there's some pre-life space that these people are in. I think it's starting like Zazzy Beats, like a few of the folks I can't remember the name of. Oh, she's cool. Yeah, yeah. She's one of the main, one of the main candidates. It just, it's one of those movies that I love like big, big actiony movies, big pop movies, but it like is one of those indie movies that just like kind of rocked me.

It's sort of investigates the meaning of life and existence and it's super, super cool. I don't think it's terribly long either. It's like an hour and 45 minutes or so. But it's one of those movies I feel like it's going to go under a lot of people's radars in terms of a lot of indie movies that come out. Sure. Yeah. Those are great. Yeah, I'll have to check both.

I've recently, honestly, a lot of these suggestions that I get from DPs, I end up just throwing it on an Amazon list. And like, if it's on Blu-ray, it's pretty much in my arms, like, by the time the episode goes out. Big, I've been buying so many Blu-rays recently. Really? I've just suddenly, it's, I might have been the pandemic, but physical media has just become like an obsession of mine especially because like you know movies get edited before they

hit streaming that's different than you remember it or whatever you know Disney you know famously has like been editing shows out from under people like you watch it and then the next day you come back and you try to watch it again and you're like wait a second where's that thing and they changed it you know Spider-Man far from home got edited while it was in theaters there's like two sections there's two the section with um green goblin where he's talking to to his helmet and the section where Toby McGuire comes through the portal both got re-edited after release and then pushed to all the theaters. So depending on when you saw it, you saw a different, slightly different film than everyone else.

That's interesting, yeah. And also, I guess if you haven't seen it, I don't know if the spoilers or not. Oh, dude, it's the biggest, it's about to beat Avatar. If you haven't seen it, that's on you. It's an amazing movie. I loved that movie. Dude, you know what's, I assume you saw The Matrix. I did, yeah.

So let's talk about a double feature. I saw The Matrix and then the next day saw Spider-Man. Oh. And the commentary on nostalgia before watching Spider-Man was jarring. Huh. Because I went into Matrix not, like, I specifically didn't read anything about it. I barely watched any trailers. Like, I just wanted to go.

Because The Matrix, like, for me is one of the films that got me into filmmaking. And to have the filmmaker, basically. basically go like, I know why you're here to watch this, and I don't like you. You know? Yeah. I was like, okay, well, this message clearly is for me. And it's something that I talk about all the time. I always like, I don't want any more remakes.

I don't want any more sequels. Like, I want more original content. And then there I am in Matrix 4, like, yay, Neo. Yeah. You know, like. And having that sort of dichotomy thrown in my face. And I just went like, oh, I have to kind of reevaluate my creative brain in that way. And then I turn around and watch Spider-Man.

and it's just the nostalgia train from hell. Like, yeah. Spider-Man was interesting because I, I mean, great film. I loved it, but yeah. Yeah. But it's also like, the Toby McGuire Spider-Man is like when superhero movies

were starting to become good. That and X-Men were like the only two good ones. And Toby McGuire, those first two movies are so good, and I was so hard on all of them for the third movie. I didn't like it. I blamed all of them. I didn't like Toby McGuire Spider-Man anymore,

and I was so hard on them. when he walked through the portal it was I was to explain this to norm it was as if you had a fall like a really bad of falling out with a friend 20 years ago and then you see him again for the first time and like you forget everything just give him a hug yeah I just wanted to like give to McGuire a hug like

oh I missed you you did so much for me yeah yeah yeah and honestly I like I did kind of like how they handled Andrew Garfield Spider-Man where they it was it was a little more than subtle when they were like yeah no one fucking like like when he was like yeah I guess I'm The third Spider-Man, whatever. Why am I number three? Annoine middle sibling, yeah.

Yeah. They're just revving him so hard. And I was like, that's nice. But, yeah, I guess we should probably round. I'm sure you have a life to get to. But thanks for doing the podcast, man. Yeah, no, it's super fun to just, yeah, spend a couple hours talking shop or talking about an hour or so. I'll let you go and see you next month or so.

All right, cool. There you can you. Later, buddy. 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-Mapbox 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.

Thank you.