Frame & Reference Podcast - 52: "The Kominsky Method" DP Jaime Reynoso

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

On this weeks episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast, Kenny talks with "The Kominsky Method" cinematographer Jaime Reynoso. You likely know Jaime from his work on a number of series including "Snowpiercer", "Bloodline", and "Ballers." Jaime was also nominated for an ASC award for his work on "The Kominsky Method." 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 with Jaime Reinozo, the DP of the Kaminsky method. He also shot Snowpiercer at the television show, and he was recently nominated for an ASC award for the Kaminsky Method. So season three. And, you know, we have a really great conversation here. Me and Jaime hit it off, you know, like gangbusters, as it were. He took time out of his schedule shooting something in Mexico. So he hopped in his car and is on his cell phone. So you'll have to forgive the audio quality on his end. For some reason, it got way better in the last like five minutes. So, you know, sometimes that's how it goes. But the content of the conversation

far outweighs the sort of less than desirable audio quality. So I hope you'll give this one a listen. And it's, you know, we talk about photography and painting and culture and how that affects you as a cinematography. We talk about the lighting setups in the Kaminsky method because They're very interesting color contrast in that show and so much more. So I thoroughly think you're going to enjoy this one. I certainly did. And yeah, so have fun. See you on the next one.

I don't know. I've got NAB next week. I'm like in a rush right now. Anyway, here's my conversation with Jaime Renoso. Well, the way that we start all these podcasts is, by simply asking how you got into cinematography, not necessarily what got you in the industry, but like, were you always a visual person growing up?

Did you start with like different interests that then dovetailed into filmmaking? I mean, just because I've been asked this before, I've traced it. So when I entered basic schooling, you know, probably preschool or so, And probably the first few years, I was in a very progressive education or, you know, education system here in Mexico, which was more focused into, based actually on a couple of Ukrainian pedagogists and some Soviets that were more directed to making humans rather than, you know, and for the rat race.

Right. So, you know, it was the 70s where, you know, capitalism was proud upon, and socialism was the thing to do and the goal to strive. Not that that changed in my view, but it seems to have changed in most people's view. And now the dollar is the king and everything else doesn't matter. So in those schools, they, you know, when there was a freakish kid like me that didn't know how to read and write, they would take. well um when you write a drawing about your holiday or you know whatever it is your early compositions are i do remember that the that i just didn't wouldn't learn how to read and write and they would have me draw um so i guess that is a pretty heavy indication that i was a visual person um eventually i did

learn how to read and write but it was you know but i did i did develop a little skill and then i I thought my childhood, I drew a lot and I painted a lot. And it was, I guess, around the teenage years where I started, like, after a year of drawing solely soccer players and Spider-Man, I was like, this is shit. I better stop, but this is the least interesting thing ever, you know, you know, muscular bodies with bandics and soccer players. Like, you know, I can't think of anything less interesting. So I kind of let it go for a few years. And in, you know, as one of the extracurriculars in high school, they had black and white lab photographers.

And I had purchased a bass because my friends had a band. And it seemed the easiest thing to learn if I wanted to join my friends in their band. because just you know it's like it seems fun who doesn't want to play rockstar for a little bit so the base was proving to be a little difficult you know or a little more effort than I was willing to give at that age and then when I when I started with the with the black and white photography I was like man this is easy it sort of came natural naturally and so I did that and kind of forgot, you know, slowly forgot about the base and, you know, to, I still, I'm starting to take film photographs again after, you know, a good, I'd say a good

15 to 20 years, um, adjourned. Um, but I took pictures for a long time, even, I knew I wanted to be a photographer before I knew I wanted to go into cinema. So when I chose the path of cinema, I knew that there was, it was just changing from photography to cinematography. I never really, you know, I did, I did sound, I did many things, but I knew always that I want to be a cameraman. And I've done a bit of directing, and I, you know, I still think I'm, I'm just a visual filmmaking. It's what comes more natural to me. And I'm, you know, I've always been um i've always been into the storytelling that the image can do even when i was taking pictures it was really about the stories you could tell through photographs rather than the pretty

picture yeah and yes of you know yes of the evoking feelings but there was always i gravitated over sort of photojournalism and the stories you could tell yeah it did it it I had like three thoughts at once. You're going to find that through this conversation. I tend to have about five questions and then have to select one. Me too. I'm like that. Just kind of quickly touching on your artistic beginnings.

Did you have any sort of maybe even comic? I know Todd McFarland's a big inspiration for me visually, but were there any painters or drawers that you kind of looked at and thought that was kind of your style? No. Not like that, but, you know, Mexico has a huge pictoric tradition. And, you know, even before graffiti was ever a thing, when I was growing up, there was official, the official buildings have mural.

And, you know, the three Mexican muralists, Orozco Rivera and Cicados are all over town. You know, you see him in the, in the Ministry of Education, or in National Palace and they were, you know, funnily enough, the images depicting the stories that those murals depicted were very narrative. I don't know if you're familiar with the Rivera

Rockefeller mural that was taken off the Rockefeller Center and eventually plays in a hotel here because it was the, I think it's called the Atomic Man or something, the modern man. And there's at the center, it's free Gagarin and an atom like uh and lenin and oh and rockefieler wasn't having that so they i guess they

you know giga had commissioned that for new york and they eventually placed it here so they were if you see those murals there's they're like a film so i was you know i was drawn to those and they were super fun to watch as a kid i don't know if that was it you know there's dr atul another painter that sort of had this wide angle feel to these paintings um and of course pose that has been now turned into a, you know, a popcorn kind of commodity every day of the dead and the little panda bear sort of faces. But the guy who started with those bone straw, you know, the purple dancing and the Katrina, that guy was an engraver, all from the turn of the century, which is, funnily enough, where the period in which Mexico found its image, in the mirror and its identity as opposed to being a you know a washed out version of whatever european influences we have right so i think it was a clump of all and you know uh mainly just to give

you the short answer mainly mainly you know the very mexican uh pictoric tradition but also all kinds of painting i was always attracted to painting i can't tell you there was one at a an early age that, uh, that, uh, marked me. Of course, every cameraman has gone through a hopper period. Like, there's not a single filmmaker that has not said, oh, Edward Hopper for this movie. So, you know, the Andrew Wyatt's and the hoppers and the, and the Caravaggio's and the ones and the Rembrandt that lend itself to, for cinematographs to masturbate, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, there's, it's, it's kind of funny because, you know, growing up in, I grew up in California and in the Bay in the Bay area in San Francisco area and there is some sort

of muralistic or artistic influence around that area but the mission district yeah a fair amount of them yeah yeah but down here in L.A. it's graffiti and that's it it for the most part I mean there's a few bigger ones out there but there's for being such a supposedly artistic city, there's not a lot of art on, there's not a lot of art facing the general public. You know, you are right. It's not in the foreground. But I think Los Angeles, it's paradoxical, but it's the city with the most murals.

A lot of it has to do with, you know, with the influx of Mexicans. But if you go to Eco Park, if you, it's really the alleys and the side street. have a lot of murals. They're, they're very kitchy. I don't know if you remember. In downtown, I think it's in third or fourth, there's an Anthony Quinn mural that's actually an ad for an old tailor that made suits. But, you know, East L.A. has a lot. There's, you know, they're between kits and naive, they're not like fine art murals, but there is a lot and they're votive, a lot of it depict the class struggle. And I think they're anchored in, in those very socialistic Mexican murals of the turn of the century.

Cicadoes had a couple, I think there's in Pico, in Placita Olvera, there is one painting that I saw. I lived in Los Angeles throughout the 90s. And one of my first jobs was a still photographer for a Mexican exhibit, and it was General Pico's house. And it had, like, on a terrace, you know, it had been owned by somebody else by the time Cicados was commissioned for this mural. It's there.

It's hidden. But you're right, for the amount of murals it has. They're not, you know, they're not in Melrose and La Brea. Right. Yeah. I mean, when Kobe Bryant passed away, I think we still have 870 Kobe murals. Someone went and counted them all around here. But, you know, you get more of that that's visible and less sort of individual artists.

And especially, like, go ahead. No, I, they're. And they, I think they also fall in sort of outside of Whiteville, which is the reason they're not, you know, they're not, as you say, in the general public. They're not in the center lane, but they're there. They just, you know, they fall more in, you know, in what you'd call the ghetto, which I guess Los Angeles is a collection of ghettos in a way. Pretty much. You know, being, you know, Rodel Drive being one of them, you know, there's the ritzy ghettos, but they're still function as. Yeah, but they don't, that's the thing, though, like, so I live in, well, I won't say where I live, just for safety.

No, no, I live in West L.A. in the Japanese kind of area. Oh, I knew it, yeah, so tell and. Yep, exactly. And so the, there's, I've noticed a vibrant sticker culture, kind of standard graffiti, but really vibrant sticker culture here. The little one. Yeah, yeah, just any, you know, every road sign has hundreds of stickers on them, and only for the sawtale strip. Everywhere else, it's just... And, you know, to the adding, because it is muralism as well, you know, there's like in Silver Lake and Alvarado, but most any lamppost of the wooden electrical post, they must have like a hundred pounds of staple.

Yep, yeah. I've noticed the texture of staples in the Los Angeles polls are fascinating. From, you know, from I lost my dog and, you know, and tear you slip to call me, to all kinds of, you know, really ingenious, artistic expression sort of announcement with the same sort of terror, the piece kind of, very interesting, you know, that, so in that sense, for a city that doesn't, or that advertises itself, as nobody walks in L.A. If you look closely, there's a lot happening in the sidewalk. Yeah. No, I'm a big, because of the neighborhood I live in, it's very easy to walk everywhere. And I recommend it.

People should walk more in L.A. Granted, a lot of people don't live in neighborhoods, but a lot of people do. And there's a lot of awesome stuff right around the corner from you that people don't tend to... It's changing. It's changing. And, you know, there's more... There's more...

Because I lived in West L.A. at some point, It was, I think, it was closer to Bundy. But in the last 10 years when I've gone, it looks like every, you know, or even throughout the last 30 years, all of a sudden, there's large one village. So there's little sort of villagey, there's a movement to make a neighborhood where there was just houses. And so sort of the, I was talking actually with the director of the, with, with Andy. tenant the director of the episode in question um i hope he's the director of the episode in question i could be caught off sight really easily right now but um he said the malls were sort of dying already the shopping mall idea and then and the pandemic boom it hit hard so it seems that los angeles

from being a highway like freeway car tire shopping mall experience is becoming a walk to my coffee shop in my neighborhood and hang out with the people that live around me and just an only drive when i i'm going to go see my friend in venice yeah well and they we've also got the scooters here now too so that makes getting places a little easier which is they're kind of an eyesore but they are helpful they're good and the scooters and those funny bikes i've used i've used them they're expensive but uh sometimes like some i've i've gotten out of an uber and taking one of those to arrive to a meeting in time and succeeded at it. Yeah.

Talk to me about your, you said you were photojournalist at one point? Well, it wasn't. I gravitated. I'm still an amateur photographer. I think I've been, you know, I think I must have gotten paid for taking photos once. And I think there was at some point that a band from San Diego that I made a music video for. in my early days when I lived as a film electrician and I made a living as part of the crew but I was still taking pictures I think they published a photo I took in San Miguel de Allende

in some kind of San Diego magazine or two two pictures I think I've had published so as a still photographer it's a hobby I'm an amateur it doesn't matter how many hard drives or books of negatives I have not even my mother's system so It's still just, you know, an exercise of pleasure for me. But I always gravitated towards that photography rather than just portraiture or, you know, or passion or anything. You know, I always was interested in the narrative aspect of it. And this is something I've thought about later, especially when formulated questions from people like yourself, that has forced me to think about how did I, which, which, did I take to get here. When it was happening, I wasn't seeing it.

Right. You know, it's funny you mention that because I've also been taking a lot more photos recently. And I am interested in sort of more editorial fashion photography, but it does feel more like a technical exercise versus documentary film or documentary photography, which is, as you say, much more storytelling. Yeah, just random thought. No, like, because I had children with a, the mother of my children was into fashion. And there was something they called the editorial that was sort of, it seemed, I liked it. Because it seems like they got out of the studio on the pretty light, and they would just put, you know, some fun.

This was in the 90s. So, you know, the next wave of hairdoos that were not fashionable yet. um in the park with some whatever light against some whatever background and they would call that in the fashion magazines that she was doing editorial and it looked to me it was a little stage but it was it gravitated towards uh street photo you know uh even though it was at then it was like the super ultra new fashion stuff so i guess they all touch all the edges touch each other right what I'm trying to say. Sure. The, uh, does, oh, your Uber persons here, uh, do, uh, what drew you back to film photography? Is it the sort of versus digital, I mean, is it the kind of, um,

the method and the methodicalness of it, that kind of, that meditative photography, or is it it just something that you're familiar with? I think it was, I think it was, it, you know what, It was peers that were taking, I was like, oh, they're taking film, what a pain in the ass. Oh, you know, then you got, when you travel, basically, what pain in the ass? Keep track of your roles. And then I started seeing more and more of it. And, you know, there's something about film that digital doesn't have. And it's the mystery of how is it going to come out.

The alchemical part of it that I miss. Even in, you know, professionally, I miss it. You know, you know, there's no reason not to see because you know you have it, right? But there was always like, oh, you know, fuck, what if there's nothing? What if it's too dark? You know, they're not knowing exactly what the contrast, at the level at the base, you know, there was something that was exhilarating about it. So in, I did a picture in like 2015 in Cambodia and my assistant traveled with me.

and he took a film camera and I could see him taking a picture and looking at the door you know at the door of the camera where the where the piece of cardboard from the film is and I was like I was making fun of him because I traveled with one camera there was a little micro four thirds that I looked and then on my when I was doing snow pierce in Canada I started laughing at these guys was one of the actors was in photography and had a shitload of cameras and I live on you know i don't have a house i live on the road i live of a couple of suitcases and i was like i could never do that so one of the operators gives me a nicon f a and now i've bought eight lenses two more bodies so you know i'm basically i've been i've been drug by the tide

but uh but now i have a like i'm i'm looking for a support group i have a problem I was taken back to a year and a half ago where I was taking pictures with my sort of mediocre microforters and happy with it. Now, everywhere I go, I have, there's negatives in the lab in New York. I got to pick up whenever I go next. I just picked up something yesterday here that I had developed after a trip to India early this year. But if I hadn't picked them up, they'd be sometimes they even throw them away. And you have a just JPEG. So it's funny that at the end, the life of that negative is that little JPEG.

I tried to print some photographs and I left them on a plane. So I'm still, as you can see, I'm struggling with that, the actual transition. And film is not friendly for the traveling Hoover salesman, which is what kind of am, right? But it's fascinating. And, you know, sometimes the film, some of the roles I had in my drawers or, so they're, gray and dull and truly whatever takes you away from that perfect digital sort of middle of the road iPhone photo it's good yeah the uh it is it's kind of because I've been trying to articulate the oh first of all I have a I have a Nikon F2 that's why I have all the AIS class um yeah so that's that's

been really fun to use for cinematography now that um I have a camera that can really utilize it but And I have a RZ 67 for medium format. But I've been trying to articulate what the film or help people, help myself and others kind of articulate what that film to digital thing is because it's so romanticized. And I think it is like you're saying, like leaving film in your drawer for a while or whatever. It's that it's you creating one half of the image and sort of nature affecting the other half. that I think is kind of fun to think about. Or just chat, you know, there's random is not the right word because it's used like, oh, my God, there's a random guy there.

But it's actually, there's actually a level, you know, pixels are organized as, you know, as the army of Ho Chi Minh. And, you know, and silver highlights are like, you know, like people in a Metallica concert. so it is randomly um the chemicals you know the you're monitoring temperatures and and times but things are not precise um usually when i shoot for as a job i i try to incorporate as much randomness as possible as much accident yeah um so you know i think it yeah you're half of it is a plan or an intention, it's not a plan and intention, and the other half is

life. It's like bouncing a ball in a cobblestone street. So it's more fun than the flat street where everything's predictable. So I guess that's what it is. It's less predictable and that's why we like. Yeah. It's like, you know, for me, if I had to draw an analogy, it'd be like, you know, where is it snowboarding you know the the uh why is it fun well you're in nature and that's awesome and it's physical and that's awesome but there is i think anything fun there is some element of of danger and uh well photography isn't can't can be dangerous but isn't in itself dangerous that um randomness that you speak of is kind of the uh analog there the unexpected if you if i if i'm going to visit your snowboarding analogs i'm you know i i'm

I learned fairly late in age and I don't do it enough, but it's those days where it's so cloudy that you can't see volume or texture in the snow and it's just white. Don't really know, like it might grab, it might stick, it might, you know, and if, you know, if you take your glasses out, you see less. Yeah. At my skill level, that's, that, at my skill level is kind of terrifying, but I'm sure at yours, it could be a good at a level of fun because, you know, it'll keep you on your toes. Yeah, it's the one thing that'll happen for me on those days is I don't tend to fall like I have good feet under me, but I will get vertigo.

Because you can't, when it's white out like that, you can't tell if you're going up or down and the gravity starts to play with you and you're trying to like adjust your feet just by feel. It's very strange. Don't quite like those specific instances so much. Those become less fun because you're about to vomit. Talk to me about how kind of shifting gears, how starting as a gaffer sort of affected your cinematography. Because we'll get to the Kaminsky method in a moment, but going to the idea of that randomness that you were talking about. I saw a lot of that in your lighting, that sort of staged randomness maybe. So, yeah, how did gaffing kind of influence you?

In a way, in a way it didn't. or it did because they pushed me in the opposite direction so i am i i don't know why i started working in the lighting crew well it was it just seemed a lot more fun than working in the camera department and i i always had an aversion to smaller screws and minutious mechanic accurate accuracy i've always been i guess um drawn away from accuracy um so uh so we It seemed like bigger tools and bigger pieces of metal were not as delicate, and you didn't need to be such a surgeon or so mathematical about it to learn it. So I started working the lighting crew. Then at some point, film was all about light.

All the light, all the light. And it took me years to sort of to understand that film is really just about the frame. And the light is, you know, it's part of it. helps. But I, you know, my early films, I would, I would manipulate, you know, in what I could with my input, manipulate the staging so that there was space for a backlight. And I no longer do that. But it took me a while to first see it. Like, you know, I'm starting to put the car in front of the horses. So it was, it was on that Cambodian film where, There was no, I mean, the world was going in that direction anyway.

You know, there had already been films that had, were not lit at all. And I started thinking, you know, and even years before, there was, I remember a Mexican colleague that's very good, Alexis Abe, who, who showed the Florida project. He, he proposed to a director to do the movie without light and the director, what are you crazy? No way. I ended up doing that movie for other reasons he didn't do it and I ended up doing that movie

and I did it with lights and you know it's okay the movie's okay but it took me a little bit to see that when I went to Cambodia there was no way

we can have light so the producer says what if we build them and I'm like okay let's say I build them like I did when I was on AFI and I get some light bulbs

and a china ball who's gonna work who's gonna hold them oh these films are revolved around an orphanage. So there were kids from the orphanage will. And I had time to do a film without lights. I thought about Alexis and I was like, okay, well, no, no, don't worry, we'll do a film without a

light, lights. And there was another, another Mexican feller had done a film called Volver that happens in Barcelona and they just, they, it was 800, a.A. 1.3 and they just, you know, extras, no art department. and basically put the actors in the right place. And it, you know, it had that realness to it. So when I was pushed to do it, I, first of all, I realized I'd been ruining film with lamps. And then I just found this, you know, this other path

that was way more expressive, way more fun, and a lot more brave. So now, You know, in a show like the Cominsky method, like, yeah, how do you keep that feeling when you're in a stage and there's space, you know, you're going to come in through the windows with bites and you've got to replicate what would be happening randomly if you were in a city or in a street, but you're on a stage. So you're going to have, you know, the gaffer's going to want to do it a certain way because he's been lighting movies. And I was a gaffer, I'm going to have to tell him. Don't light it like a movie. You know, try.

It's a philosophical approach. Like it, like architectural life. You know, light the space. Don't light the faces. Don't light the shots. You know, you need to do a little bit of adjusting every shot. So in a way, it's helped me to communicate. When I go into a set, usually the grapher's already read that and they respond to it.

But I guess also I have all kinds of bad habits or habits are different than theirs that might be aggravating as well for them. Sure. You have a great in the, I watched the episode that you got the ASC nomination award, ASC award nomination for. And you have a really great palette of colors that you're using, you know, really drawing out the colors of the various lights within the frame. Was that something that was kind of set in the earlier seasons of the show, the earlier

episodes of the show, or was that something that you brought to the table and, or, you know, how, how was that interaction? Because coming onto a show late can be difficult for some people. It is. And I think it was one of the things that I didn't, I didn't go in saying, I'm going to change thing. You know, it's one of the things that just my personal, the way I, you know, the way I, do things and my taste uh ended up i think that the that the biggest difference um and it's just

you know the it seemed a the previous seasons have a lot more white light than colored light but it wasn't conscious it was something that just i remember there was a there was a set so the sets were were reassembled on the stages and they had a fluorescent lamp above the kitchen sort of bars table. Right. In Sandy's house? Yeah, in Sandy's house in the kitchen. And, you know,

the gaffer was sort of telling me what they've been doing. And, you know, and I went with the same gaffer that that Annette went to quote Marlis, the producers, like, well, if you go with him, he knows what the dead body is buried, which is something that, you know, that you want to have. And he's like, well,

here we have these color corrected balls and I was like color corrected balls and I was like well I'm sorry but there's no way I can do that you know fluorescence are cold and green and and actually they're not only cold the cold and they're a great excuse to go really cold and really green so in a way I could I can declare myself a bit of a colored light junkie and I like great contrast um at some You know, in my gaffing days, in the early 90s, it was really, like, everything had to be the same. People would obsess for Keno Flows to being, being in the same color and the HMI is all, you know. Yeah, if you have four HMI coming through a window pretending to be one source, they should be the same color. But my color meter hasn't seen a battery in decades. You know, I tend to go for, for, there's nothing subtle enough that you can't see it with your eyes on my side. And, you know, it's just, I guess, the natural evolution of how I do thing. Yeah, you know, it's, I love to see it.

So, A, I'm a big fan of that sort of fluorescent green and that, and that yellow warmth, especially that you have going on in Sandy's house, but also just elsewhere in life. But it's something I've been thinking about with film, those differences were really stretched out with normal fixtures. whereas with digital, it seems to even out those color differences a lot. You know what? Sorry to interrupt you, but I did. On a film I did, we were, it was early on on the digital progression. We toyed with the idea of shooting 16, and I did, I tested a son in 900.

That was like around 320. and the 500 Vision 2, I think, that was, what, 729, 79, I don't remember. In my street, you know, we shot it in my street, and everything was opposite to what I thought it was going to be. Films saw a lot more in the dark, a lot more on those tests. And then, you know, the sodium vapor on the digital, even though it was still a video, camera um you know there was this this redhead girl that there was all these different like a huge array of red between her freckles and the hair wherein in film it was just like kind of like one paste of red there was less sure i guess now color space and um in you know there so the color

space was um was greater on those early rudimentary video cameras than than that 500 ASA, you know. You know, so I, it depends on the film, I guess, but it depends on the emotion you use. But I was surprised of, because it's always the camera in conjunction with the monitor. And then the film, you know, the film negative in conjunction with a film print and the screen projection.

Yeah. In the Kaminsky method, then, are you, you're shooting on Venice? Venice, yes. Yeah. I only guessed because in the sort of behind the scene shot of the doctor show that they're shooting in the show, you got that image of the monitor and I just saw the OSCEN or whatever. And I was like, oh, shooting Venice. How about that? But so were you, were they, were you using LED fixture? Or were you using traditional gels for like, um, to get this good color separation? A little bit of a little bit of everything, you know, the, the LED gives you all the, the freedom and the movement, but there was, we had some, we had tungsten and we had the sodium paper, um, gel, you know, and, uh, and I generally either have the sodium vapor gel that sometimes a little too toxic. Um, and then there's, you know, you know, and, uh, and I generally either have the sodium vapor gel that, um, and then there's, you know, you know,

there's like a minus a plus green no minus green c t s sandwich that uh you know some gaffers have blamed green you know some kind of sandwich that gives you a similar feel and i think we actually had some uh some actual um of sodium vapors yeah in one of the scenes in the street we replaced them. You know, we, they hired them and we had some, some sodium vapor bulbs in them, and we just plug them in, put them in the sidewalk, turn them on. Yeah, those, uh, that light, speaking to L.A. fucking it up for everybody, uh, you know, L.A. replaced all those beautiful sodium vapors with, uh, 6,500 Kelvin LED street lamps. And it's just, it's impossible to go to sleep. Yeah, it's not Los Angeles, though. It's the world.

One of my sons studied in Tallahassee, and I was really happy to see that some of those, you know, because they have, you know, they have that boring white, and they're all the same, but with time, one will go. So I remember in the 90s, in the white light era, people being upset because they couldn't color correct. uh sodium vapor when they when micro man shot i think it was heat there was a whole thing where they located the streets that had metal halide so they wouldn't have to suffer the pain of the sodium vapor so people hated it and then as soon as we started loving it they changed but it's you know life is like that and I think art is like that as soon as you see like oh my god I'm surrounded by this beautiful thing it's gone um but I I saw in Tallahassee some really odd purple of a few of the fixtures that with time they go.

So I'm looking forward to actually all that super even white light in Los Angeles. You know, in 10 years of 15, it's going to be some fruity, one has to been changed to something. So it'll be, you know, I agree with you. It's a little boring now, but it's a good seat. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely safer to drive in, but when it's coming through your window, It's a lot at night. You know, it's three in the morning and it feels like daylight.

Your brain's like, can we stop? Yeah. In the episode in question that we're talking about with the Kaminsky method, first of all, each location, you have done a fantastic job of giving each location its own feeling. You know, his daughter's soon-to-be husband, you know, the warmth of his house is beautiful. Sandy's office has that great sun coming in that's like kind of everything seems to follow him that's green and every in his like family seems to be very warm and it's just beautiful but I did want to know how how you approached lighting the fake show that they're shooting as opposed to the real show that is the Kaminsky method so the we know the instruction or the you know the conception by the author was like he Because he's been, you know, Chuck Lord has been in television for quite a bit. So, and he's, you know, and he's, uh, he's, to compare to him, I'm a young pop.

So he, he said, well, this should look like, I want this show to look like, well, he didn't, you know, he said, CSI. Sure. And, uh, and I was like, how do I say, hey, CSI is nothing new? CSI is 20-something years ago. And then he explained to me, no, no, no, what I mean is something that changes the game, like CSI's, you know, he said one of the things those shows did change the way of lighting television. Television was a little less risque, but also there was sort of a ridiculousness to the, you know, to the, you know, the labs.

The labs and the foreground thing. So it was somewhere between a homage and a satire of that. So that was what the author, you know, he, you know, he mentioned he wanted to, you know, as an example. And so we went that way. The, you know, the medical lamps are all LED now. So funnily enough, there was, I assumed, well, we're going to have those lights. are going to be tungsten, they're going to be very warm, like the dentist light, you know,

and we'll have the body, and then we'll come up with, because one thing that TSA had was all these blue lights, and he was like, oh, yeah, the blue light. But then when we got there, all the medical lamps were LED, and they were white blue. So then we had to throw orange in the background. So I like when things don't go as planned, because then you have to react and, you have to react. And then, you know, and then you think out of your guts rather than your brain, and they're usually better. Yeah. So that's what happened there. And then, you know, there was a whole thing because also we're using the same cameras.

And then we're shooting the, we're shooting the screen. So I started playing with color balance. But then I have, at some point, I have to see in the same camera, the frame that's with that color balance. And so there was one shot that what you see on the TV was that was really blue and we had to power to it and correct it because because I was doing things with the left brain and I didn't remember I had to at some point see it all. So I was like, oh, well, if you do these at 32 and those are 56, when you use the white shot, we see it all, you know, this is going to look, I don't remember if it was too orange or too blue and it was, you know, it wasn't a hard fix. nowadays color correction is also very um you know sophisticated and gives you lots of freedom but um but that was you know it was an interesting uh you know it's like wearing at these guys over at these guys in a way right uh talk to me about your relationship with your colorist

are you guys doing like a lot of work in the grade to get to where you want to go or do you kind of sit with like one um show let and then just do maybe minor tweaks from there um man I don't, I mean, the colorist in this show had done the previous seasons. And again, it was smart for me to look for the pants that held the brush for the previous season. So I had a reference because otherwise I would have just gone wrong. So Peter Mano and me developed a lot based on the seasons that are next. had shot. But all that was done remotely because this was my first Covillian show. So it was still, you know, it was still bubonic plague 1620. So there was a system. God knows what

calibration difference was between his screen and my screen, but we devised this. And I think that usually the lots I do are, um, they tend to be more sort of emotional, you know, something greener, something bluer or something you know they just call into an emotional tone rather than they exterior nightexecino they're not functional right i don't need them to be i need them to to paint the scene in an emotional color so we devised i think four oh and one was because all the driving is rear projection and and and the color is peter mano has said hey no it's it George Mano, Peter Manus, a underwater cameraman. George Mano said the contrast in the rare screen projection is different.

So we did one, eventually, because the outfit had evolved for two years, so we didn't use it, but so we had three. I don't remember, but it was like a bluer, a warmer, and a greener approach. Sure. So once we, once we have the lots of put them in the camera, we shoot with them, We identified a lot in the slate so that even the proxies are not lootified. They're raw or unbaked, I guess, as they call it. And then they just play them later, they edit it. And when you color correct it, which by then I was in Vancouver and George was in Los Angeles,

then you know, let's say the graph is really square because you have one lot, one lot, one lot, and one's cut together. Sometimes one doesn't look good next to the other two. but generally all you do is round the edges up and, you know, sort of fine-tune the orchestration that you sort of started laying on set. Yeah. You know, you've mentioned a few times about going with the emotion of, you know,

how the set or how the shot speaks to you. And that's something you sort of talked about on this podcast a lot is how, you know, the technical of filmmaking is kind of day one page one, but you find that technically correct often isn't, you know, it's the flat street, as you said. The cobblestone street is going with what feels the best. And I was wondering if you could speak to the importance of that with you, because obviously it seems important, and how that interfaces with the need for maybe producers or whoever, for things to be technically correct.

um i've seen and i've funnly enough people don't see technically correct you know the audience doesn't feel that um and technically correct might be translated as sterile um uh and you know uh and something emotionally loaded because there is no correct or incorrect or right or wrong in emotion um so something emotionally loaded that feels good or feel, you know, feels bad, feels good, feels angry. And often, things are, you know,

where the technique comes to the foreground, doesn't feel a lot. Looks great, but, you know, there's not a lot of feeling in it. But going back to the basics, I mean, and a lot of people say, well, this is a comedy. It's like, yeah, it is a comedy.

It's an intelligent comedy. So it's not all about just laughs. Right. This is the journey of a character, and the journey of characters go through, you know, we go through life with our heart in our head. And that's what I try to portray, always, regardless of whether it's cups and robbers or it's a Western.

You know, there's a human in there that's dealing with things at an emotional level. And I think that's, you know, that's, that's what you're shooting. Yeah. You know, I don't know if this analogy is going to work, but I was reading a book last night. It's called How Magicians Think, because I'm a magician. And I've been drawing a lot of analogies between magic and filmmaking recently. And one of the things in this book was how, you know, there's a trick where you have one coin,

just be in one hand and then it shows up in the other hand, you know. And a few magicians had devised a way to show the audience it traveling from one hand to the other in a magical way. But if you see that happen, your brain goes out of the emotion and the excitement of seeing something impossible and then immediately goes to the method. Well, I saw the coin goes, so it must be a string or something like that. Whereas if it just goes, bink, bink, you know, then the trick is in the audience's head, and that's far more exciting. And I think that, I think there's something there for film, but I just read it last night before I went to bed. No, but it's like, I think it's a great analogy, because it is all smoke and mirrors, and, and that often, often, you can have the audience going like, whoa, how they do that?

So they're thinking about the technique instead of being at all because reality was torn, you know. So, yeah, you know, it is, it's a very good analogy, and I'm sure if we sit long enough, we can, you know, we can have a sort of a one-liner that can hit us stronger, but that's what we do. And technique is not, it's only technique. And we, for some reason, we glorify it, but totally technique is boring, learning about it, boring. So the less you can show it and talk about it, even when I talk to operators or directors or focus pullers, I rather do, you know, if you're going to talk about technique, let's do a sports analogy, you know, or something where, you know,

if you go, you know, it's a past yard, 20 or, you know, weight outside the big box, something like that. And, you know, it seems like we all have an aversion to mention technique because it's supposed to be it's like the sutures of um you know of a scar or um you know the stages of a coat they should be hidden yes yes that's no i think i think you're on to something there with the uh fixing that analogy up because it is i think i think the reason that people are kind of addicted to technique now uh is simply because film has become far more filmmaking has become far more accessible, you know, before it was this magic that was happening elsewhere and it was

expensive and difficult. And now, you know, everyone has a camera. You know, there's plenty of education out there, you know, beyond the DVD extras. There's books and American Cinematographer Magazine and YouTube and all this. And I think everyone's, there's way more people starting than there is people who are doing. And the people starting want to learn technique. And not only that, even at the very, at street level, you get on TikTok and there's about a third of the videos are how to make TikTok shots or videos or, and, you know, TikTok's great that you can do. They call it content for a reason. You know, I found, I started checking that because I have young kids and I have one kid who's glued to his phone. So I went to see what the hell was it. So I, you know, I found this Colombian family. that kind of almost sing and they give recipes, like the recipes of very basic remedy. You know, if your stomach hurt, boil a little radish with, and they at the end, they say, long live the country, you know, the field, the countryside. So that is the content that TikTok is for.

And then all of a sudden you see a guy with his phone, you know, sliding it through with a napkin on the tape. and then they're dropping water on a little glass just make us lick or make it look like the sun is in somebody's hands you know they're very simple um you know aesthetic shots but uh but still at an amateur level and I don't mean amateur in a in a derogatory way right just people that do this for fun there is a fascination with the technique and and we're forgetting about the content which is, it's not really how we're telling the story. I mean, it's very important, but what is the story we're telling?

And the story is generally a medium to say something, you know. You know, I don't know. You know, don't betray your friends. You know, there's generally something very simple that stories want to encourage us to think about, maybe. Yeah, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. And I think I think you're right It is a

When you don't have a story to tell Making something shiny Is the most accessible Or scenes the most like I think people You know there's there's an element of ego to it perhaps like Oh no one takes me seriously But I want to do this

So I'm going to make a shiny thing Instead of an ingratiating thing You know a good story versus something like that But we are fulfilling And you're and there's a point your learning curve where you have to, you have to master the technique, or if master the technique sounds a little pompous, you have to deal with the technique and learn it. And there is a, you know,

there's a point in life to be fascinated with the shines of a, you know, of a biscuit package. But, and, you know, when people make living out of biscuit packages, and I don't mean to this it, But it's certainly not meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, like you said, there's there's reasons for everything. Like if you, especially, and this is going to come off derogatory, but it's not because I would love to have any commercial gigs. But, you know, you need to, you need to pay the bills.

You can't, they can't all be, you know, Oscar winning films. But to lose sight of the importance of story, I think, has become easier, unfortunately. Mm-hmm. well we're unfortunately we're we're kind of running out of time here so I'll let you go but we like to end each podcast with the same two questions although I've been editing them they've been changing a lot but the first one is just to simply ask if there is a something that you've read or a quote or maybe a piece of advice that you've received that is stuck with you over the years there is uh yes

There is many. There is many. And it's a good question. And there's always that, unfortunately, it always comes into my head when I'm trying to explain something about. Like, you know, like that guy said. But the one that comes to mind right now, and I don't have the quote of verbatim,

it's a French Jesuit. said that he or she who felt at home everywhere certainly reached a higher point but the highest point was reached by he or she felt a visitor even at home and in the last years when I've lived as a traveling you know vacuum cleaner sales man. That's come to my mind that it's important to, I guess it calls back to the ability to see things with fresh eyes as if it was the first time. You know, see your lover as if you were just meeting him or her. And I think in, you know, even to bring it down to episodic television, new day in Sandy's house. Well, it's the first time you see it. What are you going

do the first time you see it. Yeah. Rather than go like, oh, we know we go to that corner and shoot that window looks good and repeat patterns that have been somehow success. I coined this phrase, but I, so I'm just going to take credit for it. I'm pretty sure I made it up. But what you describe, I've described as compulsive filmmaking, where you know it looks good. So you just set it up that way.

You don't think about it. And you just jump in and shoot it because you know it's going to work, which sometimes you do need if you're on a time crunch or something. Yeah. Yeah, you're, you know, it's, and I guess they call it the comfort zone, don't they? Yeah. And, you know, funnily enough, and the Kaminsky is one of those, I've devised a series of steps to push the whole circus out of it. One of them is I love shooting cross coverage.

So, you know, you got the experience operator who's generally when I put thing in the left and, you know, go through the handbook of cinematic composition. which is a load of bullocks and then all of us and there's a camera in the show so well negotiate make it you know put in the other side figure out put a pork out and all of a sudden you see a fresh frame that you've never seen before and they get there because they've been pushed out of their comfort zone so we I think we all need constantly to be pushed so that's why and I recently worked with a director you know something like shit hit the fan and I was like well it's talks, but man, what an opportunity to come up with a solution.

And in a way that, you know, art is really problem solving. You know, you want to get to a, you want to get somewhere, but there's, you know, there's obstacles to sword and there's nothing worse than obstacles you know how to sort. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I had just a couple podcasts ago, I was talking to, which will date this podcast, but I was talking to Jeff Cronin with, and that, and we had mentioned how, or I had mentioned, and he agreed that that group problem solving that you get on set is kind of addictive. It is.

I think, you know, and corral sports are like that. And I guess it goes back to, you know, right before the cave painting or right after, it was chased the antelope, you know, it's, um, you know it's what makes us the species we are cooperation um so we are collective problem solving is pretty much what we are as a species compared to others yeah yeah yeah that's that's awesome uh second question uh do you have a film that you suggest people see that is not one of yours um oh i i rarely suggest people to see a film that I've done. Even if I don't like him, even if I want to detriment to that people, you know,

there's, I, you know, I've, I've been fortunate to do some decent filmmaking, but, you know, there's, there's, you know, there's really good things out there. You know, one of the ones that I like the most is Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samurai. Oh my goodness. I just watched that last week. Isn't it a piece of a fucking massive? It's fucking amazing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Yeah, that film, the composition and the lighting in that film, especially for being, quote, unquote, as old as it is, is incredibly modern and incredibly sharp. Really, really enjoy that film. And that phrase, there is, there is no worse loneliness than the tiger in the jungle, except perhaps that the one of the samurai. And then it's a, you know, it's the story of a hitman.

It's a, you know, it's a gangster movie. Alandellon, you know, it's, you know, it's like, you know, it's a beautiful face, expressive. He's, he doesn't, you know, he says three words in the whole film. Right. It's still making it at its best. If there was, you know, I mean, there's, you know, the Tarkovsky's the sacrifice.

But now that since we're talking about the samurai, the Samira has an echo in the States with Brian O'Neill called The Driver. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's a Walter Hill movie. And then Nicholas Griffin did drive, which it seems to be, and then they did baby driver. So, you know, it's, that's one, just one branch. Yes. And usually great films like that are notopous when small.

yeah no it's uh it's i talk a lot on this podcast about being part of a lineage and it's funny you bring that or the oftentimes the second question isn't suggest a movie it's if your film is in a um double feature what's the other film but that's actually you've brought up a great point you should if if you wanted to watch like two double features you could do less samurai the driver drive and baby driver all you know in one shot and get like different uh vibes on that kind of like neo noir um silent protagonist crime film. And, you know, and funnily enough, which brings me to something that might be interesting as a closure,

when you're, when you're, like in my case, in the Kaminsky method, you're trying to make a piece that will fit a piece that you didn't do. It forces you,

you have to dress as somebody else. And that is usually when you don't resort to the compulsive you know, to your comfort zone when you know what to do because it's going to work.

You're like, well, what would she have done? So, you know, Jojimbo is a western done by Corosagua. And then you see Last Man Standing being the Western, but it's like a Western, but it's like a 40s Walter Hill again.

It's like a 40s gangster movie. So it's really, it, you know, it's really, it happens often, but often what I'm trying to say is breakthroughs can happen when you're trying to do something that's not your natural movement. Yes. You know, one of the guys who sort of in the 40s

made Mexican cinema go to international, the international level, had seen Einstein's footage when he came to shoot Kevuea Mexico. And he was like, of course, what we are. So, you know, it takes, it takes us getting naked to really find your skin. And then once you find it is yours, you have to do what the snakes do and shed it again. And again, and again, in order to always have fresh eyes like this. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a, that's

fantastic. That's a fantastic way to put it. Well, I guess we will end on that because that's a, that's a really good way to do that. Thanks so much, man. This was a really fun, fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much. Thank you for the interest.