Frame & Reference Podcast - 55: "The Afterparty" DP Carl Herse

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

On this weeks episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast Kenny talks with cinematographer Carl Here about the Apple TV+ show "The Afterparty." You might also know Carl from his work on shows like "Barry", "Black Monday", and "The Last Man on Earth." 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 Carl Hurst, the DP of the show The After Party. He also shot Barry, but a little peek behind the curtain. This interview was recorded two months ago. There was an onslaught of interviews a couple months ago. And so it's, you know, there's only four weeks in a month. So now we've gotten to Carl. But well worth your time. You know, we talk about the importance of the home video era.

You know, I certainly talked a lot about that with DPs on this podcast, you know, DVD special features and all that. And how they inspired all of us, especially being able to see, you know, movies that weren't blockbusters necessarily. by going to a blockbuster. We, you know, we talk about the LED revolution, so to speak, you know, using visual effects effectively instead of to fix problems, but, you know, sort of like digital tools from beyond, you know, all kinds of, and obviously we talk about his work on the after party, which every episode has like a different theme and visual style.

So he got a lot of, a lot of reps in on this show, a lot of different work that He, a lot of different muscles, he was able to flex, so to speak. So, uh, excellent, uh, episode. I hope you'll enjoy it. Uh, please enjoy. This is, what a weird dismount. Uh, here is my conversation with Carl Hearse. Since you've heard it, you probably know.

But, um, our first question on this podcast is always just asking how, what got you into cinematat, or filmmaking in general, like was, you always a visual person or were you, you know, kind of taking a different path? No, yeah. When I was really young, I was, you know, an avid, you know, really into drawing and writing little short stories and stuff. And growing up in the Midwest, we didn't have a whole lot to do other than that go to video stores. And we spent a lot of time kind of wandering, you know, I love going and just wandering down all the different alleys and scaring myself in the horror section or running over to a good section or whatever. And, um,

I think the two things, interest kind of converged and I started, I was never like a comic book person, but I started doing these little drawn stories that were essentially early storyboards. And I think that kind of, you know, I kind of realized slowly that there were people making these films that I was really liking. And when I was like 10 years old, my mom was very uh she really wanted to push that creativity so she signed me up for this thing that was at the um public access station and the little town i grew up in where they would invite people and they'd kind of give them a little crash course in film production and so when i was like 10 i got to write and direct this little public access thing and kind of everyone else that was there

were adults are seeming to be adults uh and so i was kind of this weird kid that was trying to learn what was going on. And that turned into a few years of like just hanging around this public access station. The people that were really nice to me, they would give me raw footage and say, edit this or, you know, figure out how this would go together. And so I would just do that in like middle school. And by the time I got to high school, I really kind of, that was how I approached any project, any report. If I had to do a Romeo and Juliet report, it was like, I'm going to make a little short film or something as my kind of a way of completing this project. And so I was not the most studious kid, but I had a little world of very lo-fi filmmaking

going on with a couple of VHS decks and... Oh, geez. You know, my own phase and a CD player that you hit play on right at the part. You want the music to come in or whatever. And then by the time I got to high school, I was really... interested in enough that I want to start a film club and we were lucky enough to have a little like TV production course kind of thing that a incredible teacher this guy Jeff Van Davis who was like an old documentary filmmaker was working there and he really kind of opened my world up to realizing

that film was more than just entertainment and that it could also be art and we we kind of started a little film club and we're watching movies that were well beyond our years pretty early on and that, I mean, I always kind of, I assume that I want to be a director at that point in my life because I didn't really know what there was beyond directing. I watched all the little making of videos that I could find of Jurassic Park or whatever. And I understood that there was a whole crew of people out there, but I didn't really know my place at that point. And then I kind of realized over the course of that high school film enthusiast experience that I was really interested in the mechanics of filmmaking and the camera specifically. But when I first decided to

study cinematography in college, I really didn't know anything about lighting or the nitty-gritty of what all is involved and how much of your life is spent chasing schedules and working long hours and things. But yeah, I learned pretty quickly that cinematography was what I was excited about. And so then I focused for years on lighting and worked as an electrician and just decided to try to commit to learning that side of things, which slowly kind of led to now. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned the substituting videos for projects. I absolutely did that in high school. Luckily, I was, I mean, editing mini-divs, so I wasn't having to do a reel to reel or whatever deck to deck. But yeah, any, any time there was like a report or something. I was like, I can do a

video version and my teachers. I was like, wow, that's incredible. I always got like the same thing, not very studious at all. Yeah, yeah. But got lucky with some cool teachers to let me do my thing. Yeah. Do you remember sort of maybe not the exact film, but the kind of, you know, of films that kind of brought you from thinking of movies as entertainment into sort of a higher art form so to speak i mean i think it was stuff that kind of crosses between entertainment like i remember like the cohen you know i'm we're talking like early 90s and and it was really like the cohen brothers the early p t anderson stuff that that was like had you know uh good cast good stories and and that kind of then was like the first step towards like oh what is beyond that and

then you're looking at yeah Kubrick or Robert Altman movies or whatever and um but i think it was it was that kind of that you know it also like everybody it starts with or at least everyone of my generation it starts with some Spielberg and Lucas and that kind of stuff James Cameron and watching diehard movies and stuff like that but uh but then i think i was you know growing up in this interesting time where independent films had, there were a lot of them, they had some decent budgets or some really amazing people working earlier in their career that brought really new, interesting ideas like Soderberg and stuff to the table that,

that made it feel like, oh my God, there's real people doing this. It's not just this otherness that's happening out in Hollywood. It's like, oh, there's people all over the country. And I remember when that documentary American movie came out, there are people, you know, I grew up in the Midwest, So seeing people that looked and talked like my uncles making films and stuff was so just like jaw dropping. Like, oh, my God, these are people in like Milwaukee doing this. They're making, and granted, it's arguable what the quality of that stuff is.

But the film, you know, that's the kind of stuff that made me think like, wow, this is a real career path. And I was lucky enough that my parents were very supportive of it. And they were like, all right, that's what you want to do, which I think is based on talking with others who I work with. That's not always how the conversation goes. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I often attribute any success I have to having a supportive mom and, you know, in different capacities. But definitely, like, there's definitely a difference between supportive and hands off.

And maybe I landed in the middle where, you know, they were like, yeah, if you want to do that, you figure that out. You know, it's a lot less like, let's help. Yeah, yeah, for sure. it's a weird it's a weird path i think no one really knows how to react to it they're like you want to okay interesting right we've talked about it before on this podcast but do you maybe have any sort of tangential insight into why that era of like 90s films was so i mean obviously it's formative for the people who grew up in it but they but they seem to have endured longer than just nostalgia you know there seems to be a specific craft or um mastery of the art form

within that, not just that chunk, but specifically there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think there was a time where studios were making more movies, and there was a little bit more ability to get your movie made at a decent budget level, even if it was kind of fringe. But I also, you know, to go back to the home video thing, I think I just grew up in a period where films that weren't necessarily going to be a knockout of theaters could still do really well in the home video market.

And a lot of stuff was discovered in that market that led to those filmmakers, being kind of appreciated and, you know, worth investing in, in a way that I think didn't quite exist. I think there's always an art house world. And there's obviously the Kurosawa's and the Kubriks before even the 70s guys and everything. But I feel like we just got this, or, you know, again, I look through it with my own, like, nostalgia, but I think I wound up kind of growing up in a really interesting time for independent film. Yeah. No. The, the, definitely the, and I've, I've heard people talk about that. I think it was Matt Damon on Hot On Once was mentioning how like that, yeah,

deep, one of the main reasons why we don't see indie film so much anymore is because of a lack of DVD purchases. People don't tend to buy Blu-rays and DVDs and stuff, which is wild because I'm definitely a hard media type. Like, I'm a special features nerd, you know, that was definitely part of my film education. I mean, that was the best, too. That was another thing that was so special about. that period especially when DVDs started coming out is that they would package them with all the making of stuff and as a you know teenager at that point it was just fascinating to be able to see all you know how behind the curtain a little bit yeah they they definitely made that's actually an interesting point you kind of touched on it earlier but how do you think was sort of that era the sort of dawn of film being accessible you Because that's something I've heard a few folks talk about in regards to YouTube. Not YouTube, but like maybe content generation for that thing.

I was talking to a cinematographer named Chris Ray, primarily shoots skateboard videos. And he found that they got less attention when he shot them like on Reds, really dramatic, you know, shot over style helicopter cans. He's like, that stuff looks great. But the stuff that pops the most is what he just kind of shoots, you know, simply skating with them. right and he mentioned that it was because of it was it seemed accessible like people thought like oh i can do that yeah i mean that definitely could be a part of it i feel like even like you're looking at um the way that mini dv was embraced by the film community like hey this allows more people tell stories more people are going to be doing it and therefore you've got these like wild

filmmakers showing up that you would not have heard of otherwise because they you know read Robert Rodriguez's book and decided, let's do it. That and the art of the cut, yeah. Or no, sorry, cutting edge. Remember that? Do they make you watch that documentary? No, what's that? It's Walter Merch's editing documentary,

but they made us watch it in film school, like, well, college, but probably once a year, at least, or one, you know, because there'd be like the editing class, and then there'd be like an advanced editing class, then they'd be like, all right, this is directing, But first, we've got to know how it's going to be edited. So we got this movie here. And we're just like, son of a bitch.

It's always the cutting edge. Yeah, yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, so do you, I've asked this before, but do you remember like a specific kind of set of special features that really like made you go like, oh, that's, that's the one. That's versus the sort of just high that you get from watching the behind the scene stuff. Yeah, I mean, definitely there was, I feel like there's just a whole generation people that saw the Star Wars stuff. and you're like, oh my God, what is this? And then I remember seeing a lot of, I could find like the James Cameron stuff,

like even the first Terminator film. There was a VHS tape floating around the town I grew up in that you could get at the video store. It was like 30 minutes, and you just showed you like, you know, young Arnold Smithers sitting in a car and how they did these different things, and it was mind-blowing.

And I definitely saw all that stuff way too early. But it, I think those, It was really, I think, the height of the special effects films before CGI took over, where you saw all this wild stuff happening on a really big scale practically. And that was just, I think, fascinating to me and fascinating to everybody that ever saw it because you're seeing now so much as, you know, behind the scenes, it's like three people standing in front of a field of green with, like, one chair or something. And back then, it's like 99% practical helicopters and all sorts of crazy stuff going on with maybe one element of VFX happening, if anything, you know.

Are you on? Oh, go ahead. No, no, you're good. I was going to say, are you kind of on the practical's always better camp or have you come around to the VFX resolution, as it were? I'm definitely into doing as much in camera as possible, which I think NADP is. going to say. And I think, you know, what you don't want to do is try to fix things. I think what I do really appreciate that we've been doing more and more on the productions that I'm involved with is using digital technology to give you invisible tools like erasing some Dolly track or hiding a light if you just need to shoot a super wide shot of a room and you got nowhere to put a light. So you stick it in the ceiling and then shoot a plate without it and they remove it later. which I'm in a very fortunate position to be in, that they can throw a VFX person at that for a day

to fix that kind of problem. But I have not yet and don't necessarily look forward to a world where it's just people standing in front of a field of green and trying to figure out what the lighting and, you know, visual approach is going to be because I really try to approach lighting as if, you know, everything needs to be in the room when you get there for the most part.

And then you're just supplementing it and using that to, be expressive however you want to be in yeah that actually brings up two questions one um how have LEDs change the way you work because some people are kind of uh hesitant on them sticking more with traditional sources oh no i mean they're they're incredible it's really the the things that besides the flexibility you get with them the speed with which you can work with them is just like you can't there's no comparison i mean the fact that we can have every light on set wireless some of them on batteries and they have full range of color options.

You know, it's particularly like the show, I just, it's airing now the after party. We, you know, every episode is a different film genre, but we would block shoot all that stuff. So on one day we'd be switching between a John Wick movie and a romantic comedy and a thriller and being able to build all of our lighting into our set and our environment

and be able to very quickly switch between looks so that as soon as the actors are changed over, now we're in this totally, new world, new genre. The set looks different. The tone on set feels different. The actors can respond to that. If we were running around and trying to gel 100 lights, it just wouldn't. I don't think a film, you know, a show like this would be made, honestly, on a TV schedule. It just couldn't happen. So the LEDs and the technology now, some of the lights we're using that are, you know, beyond the RGB, the eight channel color, you know, ETC lights that are out now

the new leakos, everything. The color depth is just incredible. You can get a deep, deep red. It doesn't look clippy and weird or too, you know, electric or artificial. It's the kind of organic colors you get now are just amazing. And so you can, you know, we still use tungsten all the time, especially shooting on the lot, you know, you're trying to do giant window sources coming into a set. You're going to use, you know, large frontal or HMI stuff. And the fact that now all of our, you know, I say, like, within the set lighting, everything that's on the floor inside the room you're actually shooting can match color-wise to those tungsten units is just amazing.

Yeah. The, I've pretty much every DP I've interviewed in however many, it's been 56 at this point, has mentioned their love of the Titan tubes. The Titan Tomb Cdney and everyone's care. They're hard to argue with. They got great Wi-Fi. They're fast. they're you know there it's a great i i feel like what you you need to know how to control it because

they can kind of go everywhere and we've all come up with our little rigs and little grids and things to keep everything tidy and flagging itself and everything but yeah it's amazing and you know it it just lets you get the light where you want the light to be it's it's not like you have to just you always have to light from the far side of the room because that's where you can't see now i can have two things jammed into a corner right where the practical lamp is that you might have seen in a wide shot and now that can become my source without taking over the set and hanging bounces up everywhere and doing crazy tetracing of leco bounces and stuff and yeah yeah yeah all the uh the gaffers must absolutely love the uh iPad apps for some of these things

just being able to stand next to camera and go yeah change that yeah and and to be able to stand with the director as well like on the after party you know we're we did a lot of tests beforehand we We came up with all of our looks, but, you know, Chris Miller and I could walk through the set with the gaffer and say, okay, let's look at, you know, a John Wick kind of action vibe. And then we're dialing in all our colors and everything. And then he can say, like, I was thinking maybe it would be a little more green or maybe there should be, you know, an element of teal or some, you know, maybe it's not blue. It's cyan or whatever. And just on a slider or with the hit of a button, you say, okay, do you like this and get like real time response to it? then move on, save the look, and then start working on another look.

You know, it's, it's a very nice time to be it. But I do feel like the speed that we're now expected to work is kind of in line with how fast we can work. Whereas you used to be able to ask for a cut to change a scrim out. But now it's like, you know, you just have to between takes, make all your little adjustments. And usually while that's happening, the actor saying, oh, the lights are. And you're like, no, no, no, just you're fine. Right. Yeah, it's, it's interesting that the faster we can work, the faster you're kind of expected to work.

Yeah, it's that, I don't know if I've mentioned it on this podcast, but there's an adage that's always ran through my head, which is, or maybe not an adage, but just kind of an anecdote, which was like, you know, we, at some point, there's a people are making pins, like lapel pins, you know, and they can make 100 a day. And then something happens where they can make 200 a day. We'd expect in a just society that they would work half the time because that way they could do the same output. But now they work twice as long. They make twice as many pins and a bunch of waste happens. Or maybe the quality goes down, you know. I think that's what you're kind of always fighting.

And it's something you're also just fighting with all the tools that you have limiting yourself and not, you know, I think the scary thing about the Titans is that you can do anything. suddenly everything you see is pink and teal and crazy colors everywhere and cues and dims and things. And it's like, you know, you also have to accept that the world is not like that. And unless you're doing something that's intentionally expressive or you want to be expressive in a certain way, you don't need to lean into the craziness and all the infinite possibilities that we now have with all the tools, the cranes, the ronins, the cameras that can shoot, you know, 5,000 ISO.

So you got to rein that in and limit yourself a little bit. Otherwise, you'll go a little crazy, I think. Yeah, I mean, it kind of naturally goes against the idea of having a palette, you know, and making a actually perfect example would be this show. Like those limits create the, in this case, genres that you're trying to evoke versus using all the tools all the time and making it look, quote unquote, interesting, you know. Yeah. You had mentioned the John Wick episode or influence for that for Brett's episode, is that his name? Yeah.

How are you going? First of all, like, what were some of the influences for the other shows? And also, how were you kind of changing from the base look for the investigation into these, was the camera package changing, where are they just color and light changes or are they full? I know like the sets or the like clothing and stuff. Clothings? The clothing and stuff was changing a bit. But yeah, can you walk in a bit? Yeah, it was we carried basically, you know,

the two main things we had to figure out how to do was have all these unique film genres, but also have the whole season be an arc where it's not just a million different things. Like everything has to be kind of, kind of has to make sense. We have our like, we call it the like parlor mystery look, which is our main present timeline, which is Detective Danner and all these suspects and the interviews and all those things. And that needed to have its own kind of look that was more clinical and straightforward and less expressive. And then all the flashbacks had to be

different in their own ways, but also kind of similar. So you'll see in the first three episodes, all the looks are anamorphic looks. They're all a two, three, five aspect ratio. But in the first one, which is our romantic comedy, which is, you know, the touch tunes for that are like Hugh Grant movies, basically, anything that's like warm and fuzzy and, and mostly shot. And backlit. Definitely backlit. That was like the funny thing that came up. We didn't realize until we were doing it. We're just like, this is like, to me, I always hate when you add a backlight just for the sake of adding a backlight. But in this instance, it's like everyone needs a backlight.

That's just the aspirational tone of this look needs to be that. And we shot in studio mode. We had some crane work and mostly longer lenses. Like everything was like over 50 unless it had to be wide because of the room you're shooting in or something. And then, you know, when you switch over to the action movie look, we're still anamorphic. It's still that aspect ratio. But now we're shooting all on the 28 and the 40, the really wide, crazy. crazy anamorphics. The camera's pushing in with the actor. It's much more subjective. It's following

Brett because he's slinking around everywhere and suddenly we're more in a handheld and steady cam environment. And then kind of going into the musical, which is more of a like a mixture of taking like a la la land and then adding in some Justin Bieber music videos or something that's a little more contemporary or like an eight mile rat battle type vibe or something like that. we're staying anamorphic but it's more about multiple cameras pushing in and out and a glassier movement stuff like that yeah we're let's see we're there's still one at the time of this recording there's still one episode to go there's um there's two more that have come out there's actually three more but the most recent one is animated which i did not have so much to do with

other than the contemporary timeline though it's incredible incredible animation and very much in the Lord Miller wheelhouse of like convergence between reality and animated world. But the fourth episode was kind of a David Fincher thriller kind of thing with Alanna Glazer telling her story. And that's where we saw departure from as part of this arc that we're creating. We left anamorphic. We stayed in the wide screen aspect ratio, but then we shot with H-series Panavision lenses.

We carried four sets of lenses, so I got very lucky, and Panavision was very kind when I pled with them to give me all their lenses, but we basically carried- Let me take your whole stock. They gave me some grief about it, but yeah, we had the Primo Artis for our kind of contemporary look. We had H-series. We had some Aria Ultra Primes, and we had the T-series, animorphic. So in that fourth episode, we kept the wide aspect ratio, but we went spherical, which is more of a nod to Fincher and his version to anamorphic and that's where we really did try to be more subtractive whereas the first three episodes with lighting it's all additive it's adding a backlight it's adding you know in the action movie it's putting tiny bright sources everywhere to create

anamorphic flares and you know the music video is just craziness everywhere but then with Chelsea it's all about you know for the thriller episode it's all stripping it darker creating mood shadow with rain and the movement of, you know, rain on a window or more slow, foreboding camera, you know, pushes and stuff like that, which then, you know, that kind of completes the first half of the season in terms of this like anamorphic look, which is all based more on what happened that night. And then in the newest episode, we jump back in time to high school. And now we're with all of our characters in high school. We've jumped so much farther back. that we decided to go the opposite direction and we went with like a 185 aspect ratio we shot

on zooms the inspiration was originally like a can't hardly wait or those kind of like you know y2k party movies but when we just after casting they kind of realized that the reunion needed to be mid 2000s and so chris and i were talking about like well okay well so what what's the difference between a y2k and a mid 2000s teen party movie and the thing that i kind of kind of pitch to him was the how popular found footage movies were at that time so yeah we decided and Chris was very cool about it but we added a character who had a video camera and we made that part of the look so you know the main look is zoom spherical we shot rather than in full frame we shot with the um so many venous cropped to super 35 mode which was another thing we did a lot was

jumping between a full frame format and a super 35 format so it's just a smaller sensor We use lightweight zooms and much more handheld and then kind of combine that with some very low-fi video stuff to help tell the story through like a found footage sentiment. Right. Yeah, it must have been a lot of fun to be able to on one project really stretch kind of all of your visual muscle, as it were. Yeah, it was really fun. I mean, it's a crazy amount of work, but it's also. It's a cool reminder. I feel like I always have to tell myself while I'm lighting or, or, you know, doing whatever on set that we are in a vacuum. Anything can change. The window can be

drawn. It can be open. The table can be on the other side of the room. We can get rid of that practical, add another practical. Like you're always working in a world where you can really do anything until you've established it. And I think in this instance, you had to change things to keep it interesting because we would retell the same story three times. And in, you know, version one, we want to feel like one thing, an action movie in version three. We want to feel like a thriller. And so what are you adding or subtracting or manipulating to get you there? And that it's a lot of fun. It also requires a lot of enthusiasm from the gaffer, from the camera assistance, obviously from the art department, costume department, everyone. And something that Chris and Phil did you so well at Lord

Miller's, they kind of bring a team that's excited about it. And so everyone was really just into the process. And we had a whole cheat sheet that had, you know, anytime we're switching from, you know, we named our looks based on the character that the flashback is portraying. So we had like the unique look, the Brett look, the Chelsea look. And when we went to that, my cameras would say, okay, we're in Chelsea, we're in this format, or this aspect ratio. These are the lenses we're using. this is the filtration we're using because we usually switch filtration up a little bit and we would shoot different

ISOs. We kind of like the concept that Chris and I really try to run with was less about doing a lot and like a big like sweeping change and it was more like a death by a thousand cuts approach. Like we'll change the ISO, we'll change

the lens, we'll change the filter, or change the movement and of course the lighting, the costumes, the set might change a little bit and there and we'll be like the difference and so everything still feels like it's of the same world but there's all these tiny little like can you spot it differences um and so hopefully hopefully it worked oh yeah no it looks i mean the show looks great man i uh i was actually gonna you brought him up i was probably going to ask this later but um did uh uh working with that the lord and miller team

did they teach you anything that you're going to be kind of taking into your next few gigs um anything that you kind of learn from them? I think what they're really good at is having a plan, but being very open to changing things on the day. And that's something that because they had a cast of incredible improvisers and performers, it wasn't so, you know, shotlisted and storyboarded and so carefully plotted out, which can be scary when you're trying to keep it with a TV schedule and you're just burning through a million pages a day with a lot of cast and a lot of coverage. And the way that they, you know, the two major ways that they're helpful is that they're

very willing to adjust and improvise as directors and filmmakers, but also that they are the showrunners, the writers, and Chris is the only director. So you're not trying to please someone else or provide all of the pieces of coverage that a studio might want if you were shooting as an episodic director, alternating DP type kind of like classic TV formula. And now that was very helpful because we could do things like rewrite a character and like in a major way in that high school episode where now we have this new person with a video camera. We thought of it two days ago. Now we're filming it.

And and you can just kind of best idea wins. You know, that approach is like it's really exciting and refreshing, especially in the TV, base where it's less of an auteur's kind of environment for the most part. Yeah, it does, you know, that's actually never thought about that, that, because we've always, pretty much everyone I've interviewed on this podcast have all said how television seems to be the next, used to be the past, now it's the future, you know, all these amazing shows are coming out on the streaming platforms, but you bring up an excellent point that the things that made the sort of 70s and 90s great potentially could be attributed to.

to more auteur style filmmaking. And I never, I never really, uh, put that together. Yeah, I'm just having that single voice, which is, is very nice. Yeah. That's actually, that's, I'll have to think about that a little bit more. Because that's, that's, that could be the source of some, some good questions in the future. Um, was there a, uh, a look that you sort of, uh, gravitated towards, like, was there one that you were more excited about, uh, potentially? Um, you know, there's,

There's a yet unerred one that I'm very excited about. And I don't know how, I don't know when this airs, but it's going to be next week. And, uh, and, it'll be after next week. So you can leak it. All right. So there's a, uh, a flash, another deep flashback where we kind of revisit, uh, the detective's backstory. And that was, you know, we call it the gritty cop look. It's about her as like a young rookie cop in L.A. and that we try to lean into some like Tony

Scott type vibes without flying too close to the action movie world. And that to me was a lot of fun because it was much looser. The camera movement was very handheld, very, you know, moving through space. It was not nearly as carefully plotted out. And after, you know, we shot that later in the schedule just because of Tiffany's availability. And so after months of kind of kind of a more controlled approach. It was very exciting to get into like grittier, uh, more fluid space. But I, I think that the action space, the action scene is kind of the most fun because we're doing car chases, we're doing fights and all sorts of stuff that is just like outside of the normal,

like people sitting around at a table talking to each other environment. Of course, is going to be so much fun. And, um, and also as someone that, doesn't like to be too in your face with the lighting and the movement. I don't want people to notice it too much. It was fun to have an excuse to go big and be like, this is in the language of what we're trying to do. It's not self-aggrandizing. It's meant to be kind of crazy and expressive in a way that I think I don't normally approach something. Yeah. Actually, that brings up a sort of counter question, which is what is your approach to kind of that standard? For instance, the interrogation, let's call them scenes, the interview scenes, the base look.

Like what kind of nuts and bolts are you doing to get those looks? It really starts so much with talking with, you know, reading and talking with the director, but also working with the production designer because, you know, the way that I want a space to be set up. It needs to be how the space presents it. And so what I mean is that like a term I use a lot of times in order to get the set decorator on my side is to say like I want the set to light itself. I don't want to come in with a bunch of tools and fill your space with my lights and move your furniture out of the way and see less of the space because I've got to get all the lights in like I want to work with you to create a space that is basically lit by the space with sconces

with practicals, with a window that's placed in the right orientation to the table, the characters will be sitting in. And generally, I think that's how you should approach everything. And then from there, you figure out how to be expressive with it. So if you want it to be a more expressive scene, you have to work with them to set those things up for you. If you want to, you know, if you want to make it a dramatic firelit scene, you know, make sure there's a fireplace in the room, or whatever you know i mean like and so i always try to approach it and when i walk into a a lighting setup you know my gaffer and i we probably to our own fault we always have to figure out like okay where is the light coming from like it might be a cell phone it might be sun

skipping off the floorboards it could be a car headlights out a window it could be whatever but you've got to find a way to rationalize it in your mind at least my mind so that i'm not just saying, okay, key, fill, back, like, whatever, over and over again, formulaic. Compulsive filmmaking, as I've called it. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's hard with the speed that you're expected to work, the stress and the pressure of it all is very easy to fall back on what you know is going to work. You've done this, you know, every time I've done a process trailer shot, we've lit it in

some certain way because I know it'll work. There won't be shadows of lights projecting through the window onto the actors, whatever. But I think you also have to kind of push yourself and remind yourself that there are a million ways to do it. And the after party is a good example of being forced to come up with 10 ways to do everything because you're like legitimately, I'll get fired if I don't present them with eight different looks. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a it must have been almost kind of meditative to have to like what is every possible thing I can get out of this. scene or whatever. You know, how can I do this so many ways? Yeah, yeah. And it's great. I mean,

I have an incredible team. The people I work with, I mean, the thing that I always talk about is I always say that I have all the good phone numbers. I have a lot of people that great camera operators, steady camera operators, gaffers, and I've been lucky enough to work with some filmmakers that are are open to pushing things and bring their own ideas. I mean, it's all based on what has been brought from the script and what the director wants to do really that inspires me and then I might have a suggestion that inspires them and it's you know it's super fun yeah the uh i was just talking with uh jeff cronin with but that episode that's gonna tell everyone when this was recorded but that's coming out much later but uh yeah he really hammered home how uh

important that collaborative environment is to the health of a film or or a show yeah Well, and it's an amazing place to work because everyone legitimately wants to do their best job because, you know, your resume is based on this thing succeeding and you pulling off what you're trying to do. So it's, it's cool to be in an environment where everyone wants to do their best, from the focus puller to the mixer to whomever. It's like, it's such a cool space to work in that way. Yeah, like I was saying, before we recorded, like I just worked on a, short over the weekend and it had been obviously like about two years since i'd been on a set and uh mostly doing editing and coloring over the pandemic but i had forgotten how um i suppose gratifying is the right word but uh sort of maybe addictive that that rapid fire problem solving

process becomes yeah i mean it's like a drug a little bit it's a little weird during covid to be down and not feel that kind of rush of like problem solving just challenges and and just flexing creativity a little bit. Yeah. Well, I know we kind of got to let you go a little earlier than normal, but I always like to end with the same two questions, although I'm modifying them as I go. But the first one is just maybe if you can remember something you've read or maybe a piece of advice that you were given that has really stuck with you throughout your career, or maybe even recently that kind of changed your perspective in an appreciable way. besides comfortable shoes i would say okay time out uh what are the comfortable shoes because i actually have an amazon list i'm the worst offender of this i wear boots at work and i just

i get oh no trip forward all the time but you know what there was a moment um i was working with a gaffron atlanta and i had just gotten berry which is the show i just wrapped and i'm very excited for everyone to see it comes out in april and um i was definitely nervous about because the show is a beloved show i've not worked on it in the past i wanted to come in i wanted to keep it propped up to the level it's at but also add to it and and and not be you know uh anyways i was talking to the gaffer about like my certain amount of anxiety about like how am i going to you know do this and he told me a story about how when he first worked as a young electrician on a john toll movie And he, you know, got to set.

He sees blocks and blocks of trucks and catering and all the different people and departments and props and everything. Just the giant, you know, circus that is a film production and made his way, you know, into the stage or wherever they were filming and, you know, finally got to the set. And at the end of all of this craziness, it was just John Toll with a camera and a grit with a two-by-two bounce board and nothing else like a table lamp. And I think the big advice that I took from that is not only that we're all humans that can actually do this stuff, but that even with all of the tools in the world, you should approach every scene in the simplest way that gives you what you're trying to express or what the director's seeking and don't be so bothered by the enormity of the process because it really doesn't matter. It's just what you're capturing in that moment that you're doing it.

It's every single thing is just getting filtered through, you know, the camera in that moment. so yeah i really appreciate it keeping it simple but not simplistic yeah yeah um second question is uh well it's hard so i changed the second question it used to be uh name a movie people should watch it isn't yours but i kind of like uh where it changed which is hard with a series but if if the after party's in a double feature what's the other movie oh man hmm imagining that it's a series. And we're talking about a past film? Any film.

I mean, it, yeah, if it's just on the bill, you know, it's on the new bev sign out front, you know, the after party followed by or before, I guess in your, in your head canon. I don't know. I mean, the, we really were looking to stuff like Clue when we were making the movie as our way of, but I just, that seems a little pretty far separate in time for that to be the double billing. Not really. That's kind of, that's how I always think about. I'm like looking at, uh, how a film, um, was informed by film. You know, like, something I, I, I really try to latch on to or, or be a conduit for is the, um, the history of the art form. You know, it's only how old's filmmaking? 120 years old. Yeah. So there's, it's a, it's a, it's a, um, young medium. So, you know, relatively, but it, it, it, it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, relatively, but it, it, it, it, it's, it's a, it. does seem like we're starting to forget some of the old masters or at least some of the where we came from not you and i specifically but we as a whole so uh yeah if you want to go as far

back as you know you want that's fine for the for the quote unquote double feature well then i think clue would be a good one because that was something i think chris really he wanted to create a new generation's version of that experience and i think we've had a couple of them But I think what those two are so good at is just creating a fun filmmaking experience. They're very creative. They have incredible artistic merit, but they also are willing to give the audience the best possible time in a matter what that means. And we have some stuff coming up that I think is extremely fun, but not necessarily what you would put on your cinematography reel in that way. But it's perfect for what the story is.

And it's perfect for, you know, riding this tone of kind of suspense and comedy, which is like a, it's kind of a hard, hard place to be. Yeah. No, it's actually one thing that I had heard about Clue that I didn't know what I should have is I thought it came out in the same way that you and I probably saw it, which is where you just get all the endings, but apparently in theaters, each audience got a different ending. Oh, really? everyone left the theater or like would talk to their friends about it later and be like,

oh, that's what? That's not what happened for me. That's funny. That's interesting. I was just talking to my camera assistant because we are watching the show with our wives and our wives all have their theories about who the killer is. And of course, we have pretty good idea. But we were talking about how interesting it would be if Chris could get so meta with it

that they actually, it's a different person. And whatever we filmed on set could be recontextualized and re-edited. and even the filmmakers themselves would be surprised. That would be an impressive feat that I would not hold past those two. That would be cool. And that, you know, that would push the art form a little bit,

which I think would be pretty interesting. Well, thanks again, man, for your time. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah,

I love the podcast. It's very fun. You've got some awesome guests. Thanks, man. I really appreciate that. And yeah, when you're,

when Barry comes out, come back and we can chat about that. We love to. Awesome. All right. Have a good afternoon, man. Appreciate it. You too.

Frame and reference is an Albot 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.