Frame & Reference Podcast - 57: ASC Museum Curator Steve Gainer, ASC ASK

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference podcast, Kenny talks with Steve Gainer, ASC ASK about his role as the curator of the ASC Museum. This is a cool episode with some amazing stories so make sure to enjoy! Follow Kenny on Twitter @kwmcmillan Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny Macmillan, and today we have a very special episode with Steve Gainer, ASC, the curator of the ASC museum. ostensibly Steve came over to talk about this show Puppy Place that he shot, but instead we got not the longest podcast I've ever recorded. I have chopped those down, but it will be the longest you will have heard. It was just story time with Steve, and I don't want this to sound like it's a bad thing or that I'm making fun or anything. I had one of the best times ever because A, I didn't have to do anything.

But B, it's just fascinating. Just fascinating stories coming from Steve. And, you know, I ate up every second. The time flew by. I think my second question legally came in at like the hour and a half mark. So Steve is so awesome. And like I said, it's, I felt like, I don't know what I felt like. It was just a lot of fun listening to him, you know, talk about his history and just people he interacted with.

and stuff he's done, and, um, this is super rad. So, uh, I'm going to let you experience it the way I did, which is just to sit back and enjoy. So here is my conversation with Steve Gainer, ASC. So the way that we start up all these podcasts is just by kind of getting a quick lowdown on how you got started artistically. Obviously, music seems to be a big part of your life. But, um, were you always a visual person or did you kind of, uh, come into it from a different skill set or how'd that come about when i was in eighth grade i had a photography class and we had a little twin lens reflex that everyone was given in the class you know they had one 20 film i think in it and yeah spool it around and go around they said you know okay

go take artistic photographs so you know i went out and shot a bunch of stuff and nothing came out there was there was nothing on the roll yeah i didn't have a light meter so i don't know how i'm doing and i don't want to stop to set the lens at. So that got me thinking. I'm like, all right, this cannot conquer me. I'm going to conquer this. So I managed to find somewhere in my parents or my grandparents' house a little Yoshika still camera. And I got some 35 millimeter film and I started shooting and I still didn't have a light meter. But I reasoned enough to bracket exposures. And I kept a little logbook on what I was doing. And so after two or three roles, I started to see what was working and what was it working in daylight at a certain shutter speed. I could go to a certain F-stop

and I would get a reasonable exposure. And I played with that for a couple of years and I forgot about. And so then, you know, I'm out playing in heavy metal bands. And when I finally got out here to Hollywood with the band, I was, we were talking about doing photos. And I was like, well, I think I can take some photos, you know? So I went to a pawn shop that's actually still there. I saw it on Highland the other day when I was driving by. I was like, oh my God, a guy tried to sell me a guitar when I went, no, no, I need a camera. He's like, now you got long hair. You need a guitar. I got to get that. So I bought the camera and I started playing and still without a light meter. And I managed to get some reasonably good shots. And then I forgot about that. So then,

I reached the age of 26 and I'm sleeping on a friend of my sofa and I had a Marshall half stack, a Les Paul, and my clothes were like in a hefty bag, all right? And I'm sleeping on the sofa. And I sat up one morning and I said, my God, I can't do this anymore. Right. And the words of my father, that son of a bitch, we're echoing in the back of my head. You better have something to back that music up. You know, I'm like, oh my God. What am I going to do? And about this time, my roommate came out, and she was like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, I can't do this. I need a job.

And she goes, you know, this producer that I was chatting with last night said he's looking for a good PA. And I go, I'll do that, whatever that is. I'm in. Yeah. And should I continue that story? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

So I went over to this guy's house, right? And it's a, man, it's a mess. It's up in Beverly Glen. It's still there. And it's a mess. and I go in there and I'm like, look, I hear you looking for PA. He's like, yeah, I go, I'll do it. He goes, how much do you want?

I go, I don't care. He goes, are you in like recovery or something? What are you doing? And I'm like, no, I need a gig. And he's like, okay, you're the PA. So here's a list of stuff, go to the store and buy all this stuff for crafty and such. And we were shooting these infomercials. Now, this is a real oddity because they don't really exist anymore,

but what they were were like a half hour or hour long commercial. that proposed to be a host, like, you know, Johnny Carson or somebody like that, and a guest would come on with something that they're, you know, they're trying to market, right? Like, and, you know, today we have Dr. Vincent, and he's coming on with his fantastic new Zoom H4. And so then they would sell the thing. And so I'd PA'd, PA'd, PA'd, and I did a great job. And the guy, you know, the guy's a heavy smoker, right? And he's like, you want another job?

And I'm like, yes. And he goes, I don't you to clean my house. I'm like, oh, my God. Same pay. He's like, yep. I'm like, all right, I'll do it. So I cleaned his house. Now, I'm making a little money.

I'm making $60 a day or $40 a day, whatever it is. And I'm cleaning his house. And then I'm running to the store and getting supplies for shoots. And we're doing all these silly infomercials. And in the interim, I'm vacuuming down this hallway, right? And they had a room. And in that room was a three quarter inch edit machine, right? and because they shot on three quarter tape and the editor's in there and you'd put an

endpoint and you'd put an endpoint and you'd hit preview and the tapes would roll back and then it would show you what your edit was well you know i'm vacuuming by and pretty much worn the carpet out outside of the edit room the guy finally turns around and goes you want to come in and check this out i'm like yeah turn the vacuum out i go in and he shows me how the two knobs work and how you put an endpoint in and then how you record it and i'm like great and he goes okay goodbye so i'm back out cleaning, you know. He had this thing where he lived next door. Who's the mom in Poultergeist, the actress? You know, she's got like a three, three word name or something. Yeah, I'd have to look that up. Yeah, that's okay. You work on that. She had a couple of like

Great Danes and he had like a couple of Rottweilers or whatever, right? And so he had gotten himself into some sort of bizarre battle with her by her Williams. That's her. By throwing his dog poop over the fence into her yard and she in turn would throw his dog poop and her dog poop in it is so by the time i get out there there's like you know the the great pyramid of dog crap in the backyard i'm like oh my god you know so i dive into that a couple of weeks later the editor's not in and the guy comes in and goes don't you know how to run this machine i go yeah he goes, sit down. I'll show you where once he edits. So I sit down and I'm doing this. And pretty soon he's like, all right, keep going. I'm an editor. Right. Right. That's my film school.

Right. Vacuuming. So I'm editing. I'm editing, editing. And then now we're six months down the line. There's been several more shoots. And I'll never forget this lady. You could probably find her on Google. Her name was June Kane Miller. This was the subject of this documentary. I mean, the infomercial. It should be a documentary about it. And I'm editing in one shot, she's like this. And in the next shot, she's like this. So it jumped when I tried to cut it together because it didn't match.

And he hears me cussing away in the edit room when he comes in. What's wrong with you? I'm like, it doesn't match. Look, it doesn't cut. You know, the DP at that time, he didn't tell her what to do to match or the director didn't catch it. I don't even know if we had a scripty at that point, but I was going to say, yeah, not a chance. For an infomercial, yeah.

No, probably not. So he took another drag off his SIG and he goes, you think you said, I'm smart, you shoot the next one. So what I did was I hired the best gaffer I could find, the best key grip I could find, three ACE camera operators and camera assistance. I figured, how can I fail? If I surround myself with greatness, and to this day, I still do this. you surround yourself with great people, the chances of your failure are very, very slim. Because no matter how dumb you are and how many silly things you do,

they'll catch you, you know, and they'll pick you up. And some of those people actually are still friends with me. Now, this is a long, long time ago, okay? This is in 1989,

maybe. So, I'm shooting. Okay, so I'm shooting. So then, you know, I figure, okay, well, you know, I'll just, you know, hop down to Paramount and become a cinematographer and shoot movies.

Sure. Here's your application, sir. It was almost that easy. I was out there and around shooting some things. And I heard this guy talking and he goes, you know, if you go down to the Paramount camera department, they'll show you how to load film into the magazines for the multi-camera TV shows. And so I was like, well, all right.

So he gave me the number I called. And the guy who answered, there's a guy named Rudy Pahoy. He's still a really dear friend of him. I love Rudy to death. And I go, hey, Rudy, Steve Gainer, and so-and-so said, you'd show me how to load the mags. He didn't know who the hell so-and-so was. It could have been an exact, you know. The back lot of studio is a crazy place.

You know, there's all kind of politics and nut, nut jobs. But he goes, come on down. He goes, I'll call you a pass at, you know, at the gate on the Limon Grove. And I go, great. So I cruise down there. and as I'm walking in, now this is pre-9-11, of course. As I'm walking in, there's a guard there, and I go, hi, I'm Steve Gainer. I'm going to be working at Paramount Camera Department.

And he looked at me and he goes, hi, I'm John. I work at this gate. Nice to meet you. Went in, he showed me how to load the mags, gave me a quick golf cart right around the lot, and then dropped me off at the gate and goes, goodbye. So I walked out in the next day, I didn't have anything to shoot. So I went back down to Paramount. I looked and John was at the gate.

And as I walked through, I just waved and walked right into the studio. And went in the camera department, I said, where's the broom? You know, where's the room? I'm a, so. I've trained for this. Yeah, so I'm really good at it. So over, over the next three months, four months, I, anytime I wasn't working, I was down there. And pretty soon, they were like, where's Steve?

You know, can Steve go over to stage four and do this? And I hit a certain point where the head of the camera department called me into his office and he's like, all right, what do you want? what do you want you know why what's going on and i said i want to be a cinematographer and he laughed at me he's you you'll never be a cinematographer all right uh by the way this time i still had my long uh hair band hair right you know right um he goes what what do you really want to do and i go uh i want to be a film loader at the camera department he goes now that i can help you with so he put me in the union uh he got me with my 30 days and i got in the union and um so Within two months, the same guy comes down.

You know, it's always been some sort of father figure guy coming down and talking down to me. You know, this guy was like, you know how to run a film lab? I'm like, no, but I know how to read books, you know, and he's like, all right, well, we're going to open a film lab and I want you to run it. I'm like, okay, so Warner's had a film lab. So I went over there and I spent a lot of time with this very nice lady named Ursula over there. and she showed me the ropes and it's you know it's really not that hard we started out only with like a little c41 you know like uh what would you would shoot in your instomatic camera machines and then we moved our way into doing ectochrome and then black and white and then enormous dip and dunk black and white

everything we started we really started it going um and at the same time uh a very famous camera company who's pretty easy to figure out. The very famous camera rental company had moved into a new location in Woodland Hills. And they had a bunch of big black and white prints that they needed made for that location. And I did some of those. And when they were sending them over,

some of the executives were sending some of their personal stuff, you know? And I think they call that a G job when you do a little on the side type of thing. And by the way, during this time, I was still also doing G jobs for some of the time. photographers that I saw getting a view almost. Okay, sure. You know, what do you, anything you want, dude. So, um, sooner than later, that very famous camera rental company actually sent a camera package over on a

Friday afternoon. It said, Steve, go shoot something. Your friends at, and, um, right. Yeah. And, um, so while this happened and I was going out to the stages, by the way, and like looking at how the cinematographers were working because it got to remember, I was shooting before this with a, a three-quarter-inch Sony video camera or an Ikigami I had too. And yes, they both have lenses and yes, they both capture images. But there is quite a bit of difference in the nuance of shooting some lady trying to sell bananas on a stage versus a drama, you know, or an action movie or something. So I went to the stages. I watched them all.

And lo and behold, one of the guys, still a friend of mine who was makeup artist on Deep Space Nine, had come out of Roger Corman's place. And he goes, hey, you know, my friend over at Roger Corman is looking for somebody to shoot some second unit for him. And I was like, here's the guy right here, all right? Here's the guy. So I call me the cleanup crew. That's right.

I call my friends at the famous camera rental house and I said, hey, can I get another one please? And they're like, there you go. So I roll into Roger Corman right into Concord New Horizons in Venice with a ridiculous package, you know, everything, right? Their cameras, I get there, they had a bunch of old Aries, like an ARIBL2, BL3, BL4. They're taped together, you know, like there's things missing off of them. There's no hand grips, nothing.

So I come in with this expensive camera package, yeah, package. And they're blown away, you know, and the head of the studio is like, well, how would you like to work here? And I'm like, well, let's see. 60 bucks a day and nothing else and no guarantee that I'm going to work tomorrow or I have a five day a week nine to five studio gig full union benefits and at that point about a month of paid vacation a year right I'm going to do yours because I didn't I wasn't married I didn't have a mortgage and I didn't have any kids and I my mind said if you're going to do it go for it now

and see what happens you know you can always beg your way back to Paramount or whatever. They love me over there, you know. So I wouldn't tell the boss, right? And I'm like, I'm going to leave. And he's like, you got a ghost over there. Diffusion popped. He goes, if you stay, he goes, I'll give you three months a year paid vacation. And you can shoot a movie during that three months. I go, but you can't schedule a movie based on the DPs time off. So it won't work. So I left. And I went to Roger Corman. and I ended up shooting a bunch of features for him and second unit stuff for I'm sure movies, if they're still making movies now, they're still probably cutting some of my shots in.

If they needed a doorknob or a bloody knife sliding across the floor, and boy, I shot those. And, you know, it really moved from there. But once I'd gotten my feet as a cinematographer, an old friend of mine from Paramount said, hey, you know, I want you to shoot a music video with me. And I'm like, okay, and I had a bull X. So we went my bull X. And there's this unknown brand new rap guy named Master P, right? And so we shot a couple of videos for him.

And it became, he became very popular at that time. And once he became popular, so did my director, this guy named Dave Myers. And Dave, Dave and I shot, I don't know, probably 40 or 50 videos together, mostly for the no limit guys and gals. and we shot a movie called Foolish, which was. It's not on the recommended viewing list, believe me. And that catapulted me. One of the last videos I did with Dave is Kid Rock, Baw to Bah, which made Kid Rock this monster rocker guy

and made Dave a monster director and boosted my career through the moon. And I began shooting for everyone at that point. And so the music video world, great place to want to be artistic. That's your place because even absolute failures sometimes it looked upon as, oh, that's kind of an artistic shot. You're like, that's really not what I intended. But yeah, thanks.

You know, at least I know how to do it. So there were many, many, many opportunities of music videos to get as creative as I want. And at that point, I started collecting vintage cameras, motion picture cameras. And at one point, I had around 50, 30. 35 millimeter hand crank movie cameras, not wind up, you know, but actually hand crank cameras and hundreds upon hundreds of lenses. I still do. I have lots of lenses and stuff. And so I started shooting with these hand crank cameras a lot in the music videos because why not, you know, just to see what would happen. The very first time I did it with Dave Myers, we shot it and we went in

and looked at the footage that had been shot on a Panavision camera, and the footage had been shot on the hand-cranked camera, and he's like, I don't get it. You know, what? It looks just almost exactly like that. You know, what's the difference? And I realized that then I realized, well, silent movies in, you know, in their day, were extraordinarily beautiful pieces of art.

You know, they weren't wiggly and scratchy and crappy looking, and they didn't run too fast. they're in the beginning they ran at 15 frames per second and uh they were pristine uh first orthogramatic type negative then pancro and the the images were were mind-blowingly beautiful what's happened over the years obviously is the original nitrate uh prints and negatives shrank and so that made them difficult yeah yeah that made them difficult to tell us any and then uh and when they were telecine you know guys would throw it up not give a shit put it at 24 frames and it was shot at 16 you know so then you're looking like the keystone cops it's stupid right so i utilize my knowledge

of vintage cameras one day i heard that the asc clubhouse now the asc the american society of cinematographers is the dream for everyone right yeah this is the dream if you're a cinematographer and you're in the united states it's fairly well your dream that you want to be a member of the asc having those three letters after your name means that you've put in your dues it means that you're capable. It means maybe that you're an artist or that, uh, you know, at the very least, you're incredibly efficient at, and proficient at doing the craft. And so I'd never even been in the ASC clubhouse, but I heard they had a vintage camera collection. So I'm like, I got to go check this out. So I drove over there, you know, I'm in Hollywood. I drove over there. And I

rang the buzzer and they let me in, right? So I walk in. It's really dark. And I see some figures, you know mingling in the back and I see some vintage cameras so I just kind of walked over by the cameras and this guy goes can we help you and I'm like uh yes sir I'm I just wanted to look at the vintage cameras and he goes please leave and I'm like okay that ended up that was Stanley Cortez and yeah and he was known for being a bit of a crank but he was he was talking to Vilmosch Zygman, which, you know, to me, Vilmush is seminal cinematographer, the 70s. I mean, you know, deliverance. Come on. He's amazing, amazing. And close encounters, you know, amazing. We were talking about aliens earlier. No one else knows what we were. And so,

but I didn't give up. So I went back and they weren't there. And I hung out for a while. And someone walked by with a lens. And they go, I don't know where this goes. And I go, Oh, that's a technical color lens. It goes with the big blue technical color camera. And he goes, how do you know that? I go, I collect cameras. I go, by the way, who handles all these cameras? And he goes, I don't know.

No one does. You'd have to talk to Victor. I go, Victor Camper. I go, Victor Camper. And someone behind me went, yes. I turned around. And it was Victor Kemper. Victor Kemper shot Dog Day afternoon.

Victor Kemper shot Pewie's big adventure. The guy is versatile. Okay. And a big hero of mine. And he goes, why don't you sit down? And when I'm done with this meeting, I'll come out and chat with you. This is at noon.

I'm sitting there and watching the clock. It's like an old movie. The hands are going around. It's five o'clock. And he walks out and he looks at and he goes, oh, you're still here? I'm like, yes, sir. And so we start talking.

I tell him that I'm interested in taking care of the collection. I'm not trying to get a membership or any of that at this point. I hardly shot any movies. For anyone listening, don't ask for that. Yeah. Right. And so he said, okay, well, I'll run it by the Board of Governors. we'll see. And I'm like, thank you. Now, I've since learned that the board of governors at the

ASC, and pretty much at any corporation or business or non-profit, whatever it is, it's a treacherous kind of a slimy slope to get involved in because it takes them a long time to make decisions. You know, you've got, in our case, we have a grouping of incredibly talented artists that are all sitting and that are opinionated and that are trying to make a decision on one little thing, You know, and it can take sometimes months. So six months later, my phone rang. I would have given up. I'm like, oh, anyway.

And he goes, okay, I spoke to the board. And they'd like for you to come in and talk to him. So I went into the board meeting and sitting at the board meeting were a bunch of the DPs that I'd done G-Jubs for Paramount in the photo lab. Yeah. Yes. And they're like, oh, Steve. I'm like, oh, okay, okay, sweat, stop. And so I became the curator of the ASC camera music.

museum, which I've done now for about 20 years. And a bunch of my cameras have moved in there. I don't, as you can see, I don't really have room for them. And plus, what are you going to do with an old film camera right now if you don't have the budget to shoot a much film? Yeah. It's a great dust catcher, you know? So my primary focus in the past eight years or so has really been on lenses. And one of the things that inspired me the most is early on in my career, I read an ASC book that's called The Light on Her Face. It was written by Joseph Walker, ASC, who was Frank Capra, a cinematographer on almost every film Frank Capra ever shot. And Joe was a lens nut.

And he invented his own lenses. I have several. And he invented the zoom lens. He invented the spot meter. And when I would do music videos, since I lived down in Hancock Park, I would drive, usually drive past Sunset Gower Stages, which is the old Columbia Studios at 2 a.m. when we were at. I'd roll down my window and go, hey, Joe Walker, because I knew no one had done that in, you know, 50 years or whatever. And one day, early on, 1998 in the infancy of eBay, I bought a leather camera case on eBay. And right in the beginning, eBay, believe it or not, you could click on

someone's profile and see their phone number, their address, everything. I guess after, you know, 10 or 20 people were murdered because of that. They stopped doing that, but are stalked. So this guy shows up at my house that sold me this thing and goes, hey, I want to take you down in the Long Beach and show you this vintage camera. And I'm like, all right. So figuring that he would either kill me and then find me and, you know, San Pedro floating under the bridge or whatever.

So he took me down there and there was a camera and it was a Mitchell camera. And it, in fact, belonged to one of Joseph Walker's camera assistants who had become a cinematographer later. And I saw a photograph of that guy, Al Keller was his name. And behind Al Keller was Joe Walker. So the guy that owned the camera store that had this camera came over and he goes, so you want to buy this camera? I go, not really. I go, but you see that old guy in the background? If you ever had anything that belonged to that guy, I'd sure love to buy it.

And he goes, you mean Joe Walker? And I'm like, and he goes, I own his estate. Oh, damn. And I'm like, really? Okay, can I see it? And he goes, why don't you come over to my place tonight? So I drove with this guy back to Hollywood, got in my car, turned around, and came back. And this guy had a huge barn, and there were all these stacks of different things.

I really should have paid more attention to what were in the other stacks, too. I just didn't. But there was one stack that had yellow tape, and it said, Joseph Walker, ASC. There were legal boxes. And I opened the first legal box, and there was a hand. made metal mat box with a huge iris in it and it was stamped Bavaria, which dated it clearly to the 20s or earlier. And I just closed the box and I go, how much? And he goes for that box, I go, no, the whole stack. And he goes, well, here's the story. When Joe was about to die,

he knew that no one in, you know, 1981, no one was interested in old camera stuff, let alone an inventor's lenses and things, right? So he gave them to Al Keller, who was his assistant, his old assistant and said see if you can find somebody so joe died and then like six months later al died so his widow was stuck with all this crap and she contacted the guy that on his camera store and said look find somebody that knows who joe walker was so he goes you're the only guy that i've ever met that knows who joe walker was so excuse me how about how about 750 bucks for the stack here's the check about it yeah No, I'm driving as quickly as possible away from Long Beach with all this stuff in the back.

Now, you're, believe me, when I say I had 50 cameras, having 50 cameras means you have 5,000 things, right? A camera, as you know, is not just a box. It's magazines and lenses and belts and cables and batteries. So my apartment was pretty full and I was about to get married. So I was hastily going through my stuff and putting as much. much of it in the ASC as I could. And I got to Joe Walker stuff.

And I'm like, okay, I got to go through the shit. So I started going through it. And there was just, there were 600 lenses, right? All kinds, vintage lenses. It's just amazing. And there were all of these different things that he had in there. One thing was a tweed box. And inside of the tweed box was a wooden box that had a lens on one end and a meter in it.

And I'm like, well, I'm going to close it. Got married, moved into our house. house and all this. And then now I'm really trying to get rid of stuff because now, you know, her stuff is here too, right? So you cohabitate and you find that you have to lose some stuff, right? So that's how you end up with the music studio. This is how you end up with your own studio. The man came. Or not, you know, sometimes you don't get that. And I have friends that don't and they're not as happy as I am. So, uh, yeah. So I go back through this stuff and I open that Tweed box. Now, I've been at the ASC now for, I don't know, six years or something like that.

And I was, you know, I was even in the letterhead of the magazine. It says museum curator Steve Gainer. They'd actually, I'd been shooting some features. They'd done, I'd shot bully by that time and they'd, you know, done some features on me. And in the magazine. So I opened this box and I pulled the thing. I'm like, what in the hell is this thing? And I look.

And in the paper lining of the box is a note. And I pull this note out. And in two handwritings, one which was Joe Walker's earlier handwriting, it said, my comparator, makeup meter, this was the original spot meter. Oh, wow. And written in his really old handwriting, it said, for the ASC Museum, question mark. That's amazing. My mind exploded.

I'm like, what are the chances that this stuff, just this dexie, mattress is going to float around Southern California, not go in the landfill, end up in a barn in Long Beach, and I'm going to be the one that goes and picks it up. And two years later, whenever I finally open it, it's going to say for me. And so I rushed it over to the clubhouse, right? And in one of our display cabinets, I cleared a bunch of stuff out and I just put it there and I put the note up and all because it was meant to be. did it have anything to do with me yelling for him at the studio later? Hey, Joe Walker.

I don't know, man. Maybe I touched some sort of spiritual bond or something, or maybe it was just that I was so focused on him and his legacy that, you know, it's just a rare occurrence. I don't know. I think something's up there. I mean, for ASC Museum, I'm the only curator. And I'm the one person out of millions, you know,

and there are loads of other camera collectors in the world, you know, and then camera houses and stuff, I don't know. So from that point on, and like I said, that was about the time I shot Bully, which I'll briefly give you how I got the job, bully. Bulley was the first feature where I was ever noticed for anything because the Roger Corman movies were awful. Okay, it wasn't, wasn't anyone's fault in particular. The lights that they had were archaic. The equipment they had was horrible. The crew were a bunch of young people that didn't know what to do and didn't know how to do. And the actors were usually actors who were maybe slightly past their peak, you know, maybe heading deep into the recesses. So I was shooting music video and I flew to New York

City to shoot a Memphis Bleak JZ music video. And, um, the line producer on this video that I had shot, which was called Hootie Who for Master P. Said, you know, there's this guy named Larry Clark and he directed this movie called Kids. And he goes, he has another movie coming up. And he goes, I think you'd be really good for it. He goes, he said he wants it handheld, sweaty,

no makeup, no Hollywood look, just raw, you know, raw emotion feeling. I'm like, oh, well, that doesn't sound, you know, at that point, I'm like, I want to do huge diffusion, big puffy Roger Deakin's shots, you know, that's what I want to do. So, yeah, and all praise to Roger Deacons, by the way, my, my ultimate hero. I mean, and one of the sweetest, struck by lightning. Probably one of the sweetest human beings in the world, too, just so giving. We can talk about that later, but, um, I got to meet with the book signing the other month.

He's lovely, isn't he? Yeah, very, very nice. I could, I could feel James just pushing him forward like, don't be shy. Come on, come on. They're here to see you. Quit BJ. No, he's so wonderful. She is as well.

But so I go to New York and where Larry Clark lives. And so I can give them a call. So I call him. I call him. Larry, you know, my name is Steve Gainer. I really want to shoot your movie. Can I buy you breakfast? We talk about it.

Yeah, sure. So I go down to Soho and we meet for breakfast. And we're sitting there and he goes, so what do you think about the movie? I go, well, I feel like it should be like handheld and they should be sweaty and like no makeup. And as I'm looking at him, he's like choking on his eggs. He's like, you sound great. I want you to shoot the movie. Mailed it. That's how I got that movie. But it truly was a great experience. Larry is, Larry, first of all, is a great photographer. His entire life was spent in photography. He was, his mom was a baby photographer. And he from like age four onward

helped in her studio. So he gets it. And he went to V. Vietnam in 1964, whatever, and came back in 66 or 67, to Tulsa, where he's from. And everyone in Tulsa that had been his friends were on speed. They'd all started shooting speed and they'd all become, you know, older teens or in their early 20s. And so the whole scene was like speed freaks and orgies and, you know, late 60s, you know. And he just happened to have a LICA and started shooting these things. after a while he had a collection of these photographs that ultimately became the book Tulsa and that book projected him into the you know into the history books really

when I was working with him we used to joke at that point autographed copies of Tulsa were selling for five grand apiece and I'm like hey Larry I saw what are your books on eBay for five grand he's like I don't get a fucking money so we did that movie and then at the premiere at the Egyptian Gregor Rocky came up to me and said, I love your movie. Can you do that but make it look pretty? I have a movie called Mysterious Skin that I'd like for you to do. And I went, okay, sure, I can do that. So that's when I became involved with that group of people. And Joe Gordon-Levitt and I became really close friends. He is an incredible actor and an incredible human being. And if you haven't gone to hit record or hit record, however you choose to pronounce it, go there and check it out.

it's an amazing amalgam of different types of art and he drives that still to this day he's tweeting about it on a daily basis and challenging people so easily like four times a day i see like hey do you want to get into voice acting submit right here just do do it do it do it you know he's he's real he's the real deal and uh he's he's an exciting person so i shot that movie and i shot a litany of forgettable sorts of relatively low budget movies to 2008 was brutal. 2008 is when the writer strike happened. I had just finished shooting

the Punisher Warzone, which was my first bigger, it was like a $45 million budget, right? And I thought, well, I'm on my way now, right? I mean, I've shot a $45 million movie. These $20 million movies should run to me, right? And the writer's strike. Nobody works for a year.

And an interesting thing happened. At that point, middle movies vanished and there were either these super low budget movies that i didn't want to do or there were these 150 million dollars which i couldn't do right uh well i mean i could have but you know i would go to one of these meetings and it'd be like you know john toll would be walking out and i'm like right what am i doing here right because at that point everyone was desperate you know to find work and um so i worked on this really cheesy brucey brucey brucey Willis 50 Cent and Ryan Felipe movie. Yeah, called Setup. And while I was in Michigan shooting it,

this is back when Michigan was a super hot place to shoot, you know, then they ended the tax credit and that end of that. But, and, you know, snow was up like three feet and I'm talking to my wife on the phone and the baby's crying and she's like, I don't know what to do. You know, he won't stop crying. I got, I got to go do this. Did you send the check? I'm like, oh, and I get a phone call and this lovely person said hi my name is Lauren and I've just shot a pilot for a TV show on MTV and it's called awkward actually at that time it was called that girl like the marlo Thomas thing back in the 60s but you know they put the kibosh on that no no no no no money known to that girl so it became known as awkward and I watched the pilot and I read some scripts and I was

like, you know, this means that I could stay at my house. I live in the San Fernando Valley in Burbank. This means that I could stay in my house. They're shooting right over like, you know, five miles away off of Roscoe or whatever, you know, in the valley. And I could be home with my wife every night. And the pay is exactly the same as I'm getting on these feature films. Now, the only drawback really of feature films, two drawbacks. One, usually, they're not shot in Los Angeles anymore, right? So you have to go away. And that sucks if you have a family,

especially if you have kids in school or whatever. The second drawback of a feature film is they never start on time. Ever, ever, ever, ever. They're like, okay, January 1st, 7 a.m., we start shooting. And then December 25th, they call and say, actor availability problem. We're pushing to February. Well, what the hell am I going to do for a month?

You know, I got a house payment, right? television on the other hand say we're starting January 1st you better be there January 1st because they're rolling you know they have to they have to put it on movie they can get a different slot for it you know later or whatever it's no big deal um so I have shot mostly over the past I don't know 12 15 years mostly television and now that streaming has become the thing and since the pandemic and everything the lines have blurred a lot you know it's like you you look at some of the series that are out there, so-called series, and you look at feature films and you go, well, shit, you know, they're the same almost, you know? I mean, clearly some of them

have a lot lesser budgets, but the fact of the matter is, it's constant work. It pays good. And also in series, after the first season, usually, the cinematographer gets to direct cup, right? Oh, yeah. And that happened on awkward. I think I got the DGA and, you know, this residual, what is this residual you speak of? You know, I've never heard of such. I get paid after the job's over. Well, I thought I just was paid for the day I work. So, so that is, that is a big plus, you know, because on a feature, you're probably not going to start directing any of it unless the, you know, the director falls off a cliff or something. So we hope that doesn't happen. So I really have enjoyed myself, especially in these past few years. And that kind of brings us up to a couple of years back. I was contacted by my friends at Apple TV. And they said we have this new series at the time they were calling it Astro. Now, Apple is like very, very private with their stuff, right?

It's like anything that they have is as secret as the next iPhone. you know and they don't they don't like to talk about it there's no advanced PR it's just like nope it's here you know here it is so it was originally we bought john stew yeah it was originally called astro and now it's called puppy place all right and uh as it sounds it's a kid's show with dogs now what i didn't want this to look like was a presentium type of a kid's television show you know i didn't want it to feel like dog with a blog no offense to dog with a blog That dog is a smart-ass dog, all right? So, but I didn't want it to feel like it was just big puffy flatlight going across the stage

and people could run around and, you know. So my goal was to shoot it single camera and it's an all African American family. And my goal was to shoot them in a cinematic style, not in a style of how certain sitcoms on the networks over the past few years have treated people of color. i.e. blow them out, you know? I think that's ridiculous and it looks like crap. Uneducated lighting setups. Yeah, you know, it's it's like how fast do you need to get home, really? You know, let's try and make it look like something. So I had owned my own cameras, my HD cameras for some time. And I initially, the first ones I bought were the Sony F-55s. Those were nice cameras.

they're a little dated now. You know, I mean, you wouldn't want to run F-55 against a Venice. You know, their newer camera or the Venice, too, there's no competition. But at the time, compared to the other cameras that were existent, they were pretty damn good. So I'd own them and I was ready to buy some new stuff. And I was literally at a precipice where I was like, okay, I'm either going to buy a Venice camera or two or I'm going to have to buy an airy LF. Because, you know, an Airy Mini doesn't work because it's not exactly 4K. Right.

It's 3.8K, okay? Thanks, that does. Yeah, that's those couple of pixels people get to notice on their crappy 720 TVs, right? Yeah, sure they are. Yeah. So that's another story entirely. Personally, I have historically loved the look of the Alexa camera. It's a gorgeous look.

And the highlights roll off in just an incredibly cinematic way. My hero, Roger Deacon, use them. So that means they're great. And I dare you to challenge that. But they were, unfortunately, not 4K cameras. And I saw a blurb for Black Magic. Now, my experience of Black Magic to that point had only been in the Black Magic 4K Pocket camera, the Micro 4 thirds camera.

Right. And I'd done some really cool stuff with that. Remember, I have a lot of lenses. And that includes a lot of 16 millimeter lenses. Oh, that's, oh, man, that really, because, oh, that unlocks a lot for the, for the, those cameras having just a whack of lenses. It's everything. It really is everything because the cameras are very good. Those 4K cameras are very good.

And they create a really pictorial sort of image. So if you team them with a vintage lens that doesn't have too much fungus or whatever in it that will still focus, then you can get some very. very interesting images. And I did and I love, I love that camera. And I saw the blurb for the 12k, the mini 12K pro. The Ursa? Yeah, I'm like 12K. Who the hell needs 12K? But, you know, does it, will it not, will it sample at 4K? You know, so. Right. The answer is yes. And another unique factor of it was that there was a new sensor that was not a Bayard sensor. So not, the pixels weren't in layers. The pixels are laid out in to end. So there's like red, green and then a clear, I think, or something, or red, green, blue, and a clear. And so you've got 12K worth of pixels, but then it

just shuts some off for 8K and shuts more off for 4K. And so I contacted John over at Black Magic, and I'm like, look, you know, I've got this Apple show coming up. I'm interested in the cameras, but I don't want to just blind by the cameras. And, you know, basically any camera or lens, manufacturer will have loaners that, you know, you give them a certificate of insurance so that you're not going to run to Mexico with it or whatever. And even though running New Mexico sounds fun, but not to steal a camera. So he loaned me one and I shot some tests and I was really impressed. It's a super 35 size sensor, right? It's not a giant sensor, which meant that all of the 35 millimeter lenses that I have and I have a lot work with it. Anything.

is PL mounted. I changed them out to a PL mount. So even my full frame lenses still work with the Super 35 sensor. You know, they're not just full frame lenses. As a matter of fact, you're using the sweet spot in the middle of the lens. You're not playing with a harrowing outside edges, which if you're shooting wide open could get fuzzy and weird, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I have, I have some vintage cooks that were rehoused by TLS in London. And they're fantastic company. and the job that they did on my cooks is amazing. So I had the cooks, I had a bunch of zooms, and I've since kind of peppered in a bunch of modern stuff.

Like, I've worked in, if you look, if you Google me, you'll see some videos and things that I've done with the Korean company Zine. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Yeah, they have, you know, their full set of full-frame lenses, and I discovered those, oddly enough, I have in the past and hope to very, shortly again since my show just ended. We're with the director Joseph Kahn. Joseph Kahn is a super

brilliant guy, man. He is a great artist and he is the most studied, creative guy in the commercial world that I've ever come across. And I mean, he takes, you know, any movie, he'll take the movies that he truly likes and he'll reverse storyboard the movie. So he understands the process. That's super. I mean, I was like, oh, wow. Yeah. I was like, reverse. storyboard. Yeah, yeah. And there were already storyboards before. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And recreate storyboards for whatever film it is and study them so we can figure out how the scenes are constructed individually. And it's pretty brilliant guy. He told me, he goes, you know, there's this new company that has these lenses and they're really fast and they're full frame. Check it out. There's Zine. So I got in touch with them and I got a set.

And then I did some promo work for them. And when they came up with their new lenses, the carbon. fiber lenses. And now they're just about to release another new set of lens and some anamorphic stuff too. So they're, you know, they're on fire. I bought a couple of these little short zooms by the company DZO. Yep. And I knew that they were going to have to be garbage because there were only like five grand for two zooms, right? A wide zoom and a longer zoom. And, you know, A.B. Camera. There you go. 16 to 55 and then like the 50 to 250 or something like that? 50 to 125. And yeah, 125. Yeah,

125. Yeah. And so, which is plenty for a television set. If you need to go 250, I'll throw one of my old cooks on. You know, I've got the, I've got the big old hogs, the slush pumps. Damn, they're good. They're surprisingly good. You know, I mean, are they a $50,000 lens? Well, no, they're not a $50,000 lens. They don't feel like a $50,000 lens. Maybe they don't look like a $50,000 lens. But I tell you what, coupled with a brilliant camera like the Black magic, they look great. And they really speed things up. You know, before COVID, I was shooting just with Primes. Once COVID hit, I didn't want the assistance going in and out of the set so much, you know, especially initially it was a big deal, right? Like, initially it was like, you know, vacuum

lock, you know, they were in a, the actors were in a safe room, right? Yeah, yeah. You had to run a keycard and pass, you know, I'm in. Okay, great, close it. You put the pest control tent over it. Yeah. So, so, so I bought those little dZOs and they ended up being some of my favorite lenses of all time simply because they really speed you up you know i do setups super fast one camera i keep full time on a ronin two the ronin two sits on a dolly okay so i've got one dolly that has a ronon on it operators outside the set with my master wheels operating that camera second camera generally a camera i have on a dolly in the room and uh because someone needs to speak to the actors. You know, if they're missing their mark or whatever, or if we need to change

an eye line, rather than screaming into the set, the A operator is there to say, you know, hey, can you actually step on that mark instead of, you know, on my foot? Can we, can we work that out? Taking the wheel on the dolly. Exactly. So, so that's my current setup. And, you know, ultimately though I would love to just have Ronans or whatever iteration comes up next I mean you I don't know if you've seen their chicken rig yet or whatever the yeah yeah the the the Z four or whatever it's called the yeah exactly 4D they brought me a prototype of that you know I shot I work with the director named Joe Lynch often a wonderful guy and uh we went to Serbia and he he called me once he goes I've got a movie we're going to Serbia it's really low budget I want to do it

handheld. I was like, oh, again, you know, bully, super, all these handheld movies. I'm sick of them. My back hurts. Yeah. So it does. So I go, well, what about the movie thing? You know, I hadn't even really researched those yet. And he goes, yeah, that sounds great. And I started researching and they were like kind of expensive. And I saw this thing for Ronan and is a Ronan one, right? This is designed for DSLR. Yeah. And there were these cats that made extension arms for them. So you could theoretically use them with a movie camera. Note, F-55 with anamorphic lens. Maybe a little too much for that, right?

Maybe a little heavy, yeah. I was in Serbia. I had two of them, and we shot the whole damn movie on the Ronans. The first movie ever shot entirely on Ronans. When I got there, the Serbian camera crew had already, I'd already done one movie with over there, they come to me and I go, and here's how we're going to do it, the Ronans, you know, and they're like, and they start speaking in Serb. And they look at me, and the one guy goes, which is not possible.

I go, you got to change your attitude, bro. We got to make this happen, man. So we did it. So ultimately, I'd love to have two remote cameras, right? So there's not so many people suck enough air on the set. I feel like it's good, especially for the actors, because, you know, anytime there's someone that's, like, really laser focused on you for whatever reason, it's a bad thing. Assistance don't do it anymore. They're no longer in there pulling tapes.

and set the marks and all. They're back watching a monitor with little red dots on it, keeping you in focus, right? That's how it is now. So there doesn't need to really be anybody in there except for maybe a dolly grip, you know? And if you can knock a sandwich out of his hand,

then you can get the move done. I'm teasing. Love my dolly grips. Love every single one of them. Sorry, guys. But so ultimately it's come down to this. Right now, I'm shooting with the Blackmagic 12K cameras. I absolutely love them.

I've shot two series for Apple on them. I can't mention the new one because it's still in the cloak of secrecy. But Puppy Place, eight episodes are on Apple TV Plus, and we've shot 16 episodes. They'll release another eight, I think, in September or something. It's a really pretty show. I'm very proud of it because I captured a beautiful lifestyle of a fantastically talented and witty African-American family in a cinematic way for a TV show, not in an overlit,

bogus sort of lighting decision, but in lighting that has meaning to it. Why is there a light there? Because there's a lamp over there. Why is there lamp there? There's a window there. That's why. Sometimes there's a secret light

that just has to be there for whatever reason, especially with the dogs, because the dogs have these jet black eyes, and I'm like, oh, my God, I can't see the dog. The obelight comes back into play. Well, you know, if you ever, hear anybody that comes out and you know like well where's that light supposed to be coming from you know where's the music coming from yep yeah right there's music on this show where's that coming from

right i don't see a stereo so um so i intend uh whatever my next project is uh to shoot also in this now we've shot a lot at 8k um anytime their visual effects we shoot 8k and they love it the visual effects guys absolutely love it got a bunch of frame to move around also if there are if we're really super super low on time it's just not possible to get wide medium and close all in two camera setups i'll shoot a wide and a close and then shoots close in 8k so that it can punch into an ecu and and still look great and i don't think that i've shot anything in 12k we tested it you know and uh the gigs were flying just like, wow, you know, we need some big drives to do that.

Well, that's a super sampled 4K looks great because that's, I think, isn't that kind of why they built that camera wasn't necessarily for 12K? It was for like the full cut down 4K. Yeah, well, I'm telling you, it, to me, to my eye, it definitely has the qualities and the beauty of the Alexa sensor. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that, but it does. no one pays for this but it's you know but i mean the cameras what is it a seven thousand dollars or something it's yeah yeah and you know uh the only Alexa you're going to buy for seven thousand is one without a sensor you can you can pick up a classic on eBay for i was looking at them recently for like six to eight but then you're dealing with those s by s cards it's the old

bun it's built like a tank but also weighs a tank and you're not going on netflix no yeah Yeah. Yeah. Personal project. Send it. Go for it. Absolutely. Like I said, they're beautiful cameras. I love them. And that's why I initially was so attracted to this camera because the look wasn't necessarily because of the price itself. I had already speced out and was prepared to buy other more expensive cameras. But I canceled that sale. And I couldn't be more happy. I have three of these Black Magic cameras now, by the way. So it's, you know, I've spoken a lot about how it's got, because I like write camera reviews for Pro Video Coalition.com and, uh, and other shit. But in this sense, it's gotten hard to review cameras because they're all, quote unquote, perfect. There's all really good. It's really ergonomics now. It's like, do you need body features or stuff? Because like, the images are just so clean. And then once you get in the great, you know, half of your foot is a DP. is in the grade. Right. So as long as you have a nice data set, as Steve Eveland says, I got to stop. Hey, it's the famous DP Peter Anderson calling me. Oh, there you go.

Sorry, Peter, if you watch this podcast, you'll see that I dodged your call. We'll clip it for you. You can just send him it. Great. I do want to talk about the good and the bad of the camera, though. I think it's fair. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm giving a review because I've worked with them now for a couple of years.

yeah i have not yet touched one so this is actually i've done the the pocket 6k the pocket 4k had a few gripes about the shape but overall the uh the um image is outstanding especially at that price that that is a different a different sensor though that's a bared sensor and even the pocket 6k pro is also the bayard sensor but um the the only drawback the only drawback uh is i got spoiled okay in between the first apple show and the last Apple show that I did, I was called by the same person that called me to do awkward. She had a show called on my block.

And she had actually called me to shoot that series initially in the very beginning. And if that had happened, things wouldn't have ended up the same way they are. It's funny how things go. And you think, oh, I really want that. But then when you don't get that, you're like,

but then other things happen that are great, you know. So, and then she called me just in the right time. I just stopped that show. And so I shot the last four episodes of that series. and they were shooting on the Venice camera. And the Venice camera, it's a beautiful camera. It's a monster. Okay, it's a hog.

When you put that on to a Ronan, you're like, oh, yeah, you're doing something there, right? I also heard that the Rialto sounds like a good idea until you tried to rig it up and then it's like, oh. Yeah, I don't need all that. But so what spoiled me, the only thing that spoiled me, and I've spoken to Black Magic people, the thing that really got me was the dual ASA, ISO.

Oh, sure. You know, because that 2,500 ISO, it looks really, really good. And you can light with windows, basically. You know, you can stick a light mat up to give a little top light and push light into a window and then a bounce card and you're lit. So, and apparently the Venice 2 is 3,500 ISO, I think, right? The Venice 1 is 825. 825.

Yeah, 25. I think the new one is either three or 35. And fantastic. I'll take all you got. Give me all them ISOs. That spoiled me a little bit because, you know, I am lighting exclusively with LEDs right now. And I don't use any hard lights. The only hard lights, hotlights I use are ARIMAXs for day exteriors, you know?

And if I'm on a location and I need sunlight consistent throughout the day, I'll hit it with ARIMAX's. but otherwise it's like vortexes and airy lights and that such and i just picked up the uh kino diva the 20s yeah oh my god like i personally i think those are up near the top of the charts better than the sky panels they they meter way better than the sky panel like they'll see i was getting tlc eyes of a hundred yeah i i use the 31s a lot you know and those they're just gorgeous lights Frieder did a great job of that. He's an old friend of mine, that Frieder. He made a lot of money on fluorescent tubes, you know, and good for him.

We needed it. You know, when he came along, they literally would take fluorescent lights apart, take the ballast and just wire it to the pins. And that's how they would run around with loose fluorescent stuff. Yeah, they just attached it to show cards, right? They just like taped it and they were like, here you go. The Corplast stuff, you know. and he was off to the races

and he's a brilliant man and his LED lights are gorgeous there are a lot of them out there now frankly the S-60s now seem not so good, not so strong they're fabulous, the idea is great

and their ability to emulate police lights or lightning strikes or TV or whatever you want to do. Kinos do that too now though. They all do now. With the new 5.0 Furb where that they just recently-ish. They honestly all do.

Light panels has recently dropped a prototype of their light, which looks remarkably like either of those. Yeah. It's on my floor back there. I can't show you guys right now, but it's really, really bright, really bright. Really bright. I was like, holy Moses.

And I look in the LED array, whereas if you look at like a vortex or something, you see a trillion small pixels, there's like a bunch of large or pixels. And man, they're smoking bright light. So, you know, it's just going to keep going to go on that. Very, anything you want. It's completely.

No, sorry. Yeah, not, not Kelvin. Like, does it get real hot? There's a bit of heat that comes off of it. I mean, you can still touch it with your hand. It's not like a mole 407 where you're going to leave your fingerprints on the light. But, you know, it has a heat sink on the back and a fan like most of them do. And it's a prototype.

they're just like here take this run it for a thousand hours shoot some stuff with it and give us a feedback so that's awesome i love doing that you know it said you review stuff i review stuff i don't do it uh online or professionally or anything i just give them some feedback and say you know this this is great that's i mean that's the goal that's i would much rather have input on a product than tell other people about the product because like that's the i love making things for me like i have a 3d printer i'm always like if something is isn't rigged correctly. I'm like, I'm going to make a version that is correct for me. You know, like storage, anything. I'm always like tweaking or building on top of existing

stuff to make it mine. So to give it to the product manufacturer themselves and be like, this is what would make it better for me. And then to have that product given to you is like the dream. I think early on I was inspired by Eddie Van Halen, you know, who made his own strat, right? And sawed his Ibanez destroyer up and made it a shark. And all these, I was like, I had no idea you could do that with a guitar. You know, I looked at my last ball. I'm like, where's my saw? But the same thing goes for all this stuff and what you're, to what you're saying, you know, it's great.

First of all, it's great to experiment. Yeah. I love, what I loved back in the day, nothing more was experimenting on film because film is so variable, you know? And whereas with HD, when it's under, you can, you just see it. You know what I mean? And that's what it is. And really, there's not much you can do. And when it's way over, there's not so much you can do.

But with film, there might be something still there on either end of that extreme, you know? And so that was a lot of fun to experiment with to ruin film. I mean, they used to do that thing called bleach bypass where you would come out of developing tank and go riding in a fixing tank and miss the bleach. And so all the silver stayed on the negative. And that's how you got, it looks like traffic. You remember that movie? You know, and get those where the color is skewed, you know.

And saving private Ryan famously. Right. And very expensive process too. They figured, hey, we're not going to use the bleach. So that means we can save about 100 grand in chemicals a week. And we'll charge more. Excellent.

Perfect. We like this. Yeah. So. You know, what's got? What else? I wanted to ask, because I had heard that you at one point at least were watching Blade Runner like five times a week.

The new one or the old one? The old one, but I'm sure the new one as well. Yeah, it's Roger again. Yeah, just top of the, Roger, notice me. We'll drive by his house. Roger. Apparently I live not near him, near him, but in the same sort of general L.A. area. But I wanted to ask, because something that I've noticed with certain filmmakers or people who create things,

that the fans of that product tend to know more about the product than the person who made it because they are, you know, Star Wars fans know way more about Star Wars than George Lucas. Right. So I kind of wanted to know, like,

what did you learn about absorbing that much Blade Runner? Like, what are things that that taught you or that you could pick apart or things that maybe you carried on into your own filmmaking career? You know, first of all, Jordan was incredible. all right and um if if you haven't seen that film i have but if you haven't seen it watch it

and absorb it and uh it is his i guess what i learned from him was how to be bold and how to be fearless because if you look at his cinematography especially on that movie he is fearless. Everything that he did was cutting edge. Even from like, you know, the gorgeous shots in, I think it's, it's not Terrell's building, but it's in the original Blade Runner building where he's interviewing that guy that ultimately freaks out and kills the guy. The light that's coming through. Interrogation room. And remember, you know, I'm very guilty of this, by the way. I tend when I'm watching movies and really watching the summertime, I turn to the volume off. Sure. Yeah, yeah. My wife does not like that part of it at all. Okay. She doesn't

just doesn't get that. And I'm like, look, I don't want to be distracted by that. I want to just look at the images. But if you, if you look at that film, frame to frame to frame, it's a masterpiece. And he is so fearless in what he's doing. I don't know if he was aware at that time that he was ill. Maybe he was or not. But, but it looks like. I found out on Alien 3. Right. It looks like the work of a man who does not care. What happens? He wants to just go for it. And it is.

And it affects me that way. I can watch it. When I watch it, I leave, I'm pumped up. I'm like, yeah, man,

I can do some great stuff like that too. You know, just one light. That's all we're using today, boys. One light, you know, and then cut to 10 minutes later.

And I'm like, okay, give me a little fill over there. But, you know, that was, that's a wholly different thing. That I am a,

gigantic fan of animorphic. Okay, that is, I've shot three or four films myself in anamorphic and a billion music videos in animorphic and commercials. And I, if I could only shoot an animorphic, I would. There's nothing wrong with Spiripa. I think it's beautiful. I don't understand why the ASC and the Directors Guild and everybody else, the producers is going to let Congress decide that we needed a 16 by 9 frame to be the catch-all frame for

everything, you know? Right. It's like that didn't fit anything that was being made at the time. TV was 4x3, feature films, most of them were 1-8-5, right? Where's the 16 by 9? Where's the 178 in any of that? There's not, right? So it's cool.

And at least it's a rectangle. It's not a square or, you know, even early. earlier films were more of a postage stamp type of thing it's not that but the anamorphic frame really separates and to me when you see it says this is cinema this is cinema and you're if you're forced to compose i don't know why you'd be forced to but if you're composing in an anamorphic frame it's endless the combination of ways you can stack the foreground the background and everything else is going on in action because it's such a nice wide frame. The trick is, of course, is finding a set of lenses and enough lighting to shoot with that so that you don't

have to shoot that aren't things wide open. Because mostly, most of them, there are a few exceptions, but most of them fall apart horrifically if you shoot them open from, say, T4. You know, They're, like I told you, I had that vintage set of cook spherical prime lenses that are from the 40s and 50s. And the 18 millimeter is a gorgeous lens. But if you shoot it at 2.8, it looks like you rub Vaseline around the outside. And I ask about it and people go, oh, well, that's the cook look. I'm like, I don't think so. It looks like someone put a donut on the outside of my lens.

So you just can't shoot that lens at a 2.8. You know, you need to shoot at a 4. Same with anamorphic. They soften up a great deal. It's just the mechanics of the glass itself. So I'm sorry, I'm trying to segue away this back to Jordan. But, you know, the way that he utilized flares, the way that he utilizes lenses, his composition skills, everything about that film is fearless. And, you know, it is a favorite of mine, but I don't know that it's necessarily my most favorite film of all time.

As far as cinematography goes, and this is going to be a bit of a mind blower, one of the top five, let's say there's top five, one of the top five is Miller's Crossing. Okay? Sure. Now, this is Barry Sondentfeld. Okay, now Barry Sondentfeld.

I have his book. Excellent. What do you got? Oh, your mother. Oh, yeah? It's way over there. But yeah, call your mother. Nice.

He, Barry Sondonfell, great cinematographer if, you know, obviously misery, stunning piece of work, right? When Harry met Sally, even though it's a rom-com, It's still really beautiful. You know, Blood Simple.

I mean, his work speaks for itself. His car commercials that he's directed and shot since then, also just stunning stuff. And, of course, he directed a bunch of big blockbuster movies himself. Men and Black is in my top three. Yeah, I mean, you know, why not? But his work on Miller's Crossing is really, really, really good. And I got to talk with him. When I was at Paramount, he was doing.

he was doing Adam's family values sure and uh I saw a roll come through and it said Barry son and felt I'm like wait a minute what is this and there were baby pictures and I'm like all right give me five eight by tens and five five by sevens of this immediately right and I sent him and his assistant comes in she's like you know a New York uh PA type to be fair not for you to keep right right yeah have a look at him she goes she comes back and she goes Barry wants to know why you did that. I go, well, because I think he's a great cinematographer and I'm a big fan. And she goes, all right, I'll tell him. She's like Eeyore. Right. And so they, several times he would send stuff in, especially once he figured out he could get some freebies. You know, he sent more stuff in. And I,

at the end of Adam's family, she came back in. She goes, all right, Barry wants to meet you. And I'm like, really? And she goes, yeah, he's over at the trailer. So I hopped on my little Paramount camera. bike, you know, and I ride over there and I'm sitting. And he's classic, man. He's smoking a stogie with his feet kicked up on the porch of his trailer, right? Smoking. And he goes, so I hear you want to be a DP. And I'm like, yes, sir. And he goes, I got some advice for you. It takes a long drag. And I'm like, you know, leaning over the handlebars. He goes, just overexposed and you'll be fine. I'm like, I run a film lab. And we sat there and we talked for, I don't know, an hour and a half or two hours. And we went in deep about Miller's Crossing. And it's great stuff. It's long

Lindsay, beautiful stuff. Other movies, obviously Deacon's catalog of work is just incredible. And I'm not sure that I necessarily have a favorite, even though some of the things, you know, I was initially drawn to the beauty of things like Bart and Fink and Hudsucker, you know, or Shawshank, those films really drew me in because of the beautiful type of cinematography, but then he went and he did Dead Man walking and it kind of spun my head. You know, and I'm like, well, you know, this is me talking. Well, that looks like, you know, that doesn't look, you know, and it took a friend of mine to talk me down off of the ledge, you know, they're like, look, it suits the subject.

And I'm like, oh, okay, let me get down off the ledge. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to jump. So, and then his later work, you know, no country is fantastic. I mean, let's face it. I love the guy. I love what he's done. Skyfall is, you know, brilliant, right?

The best looking James Bond period. I mean, it's just, it's brilliant, man. The scenes with that mansion at the end and all is, oh, my God. The fog outdoors and all that. Yeah. Yeah, just ridiculous, you know. And, you know, and look, only he, only Roger, after. being nominated eight or ten times for Academy Awards would win for a day exterior movie.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, you know, and I'm an academy member, and I had seen him at Academy Award shows several times. And we'd always, like, be in the line at the bar, right, before the show. And then I'd be like, Roger, you know, I wish you the best. You're going to win this year. And he wouldn't win.

And finally, I'm like, I'm not going to say that to him anymore, you know? Yeah. I don't think you wanted me to either. And, you know, then, and he was nominated for some incredible movies. One year he was nominated for two movies, you know, at the same time. So, wow, wow. What is it about his work that, like, because it is another version of fearlessness where it's so understated. You know, I remember hearing him kind of joke about how people were mad at him for not lighting Shawshank.

And he's like, what are you out of your mind? There's tons of light in that film. like that's um here's what i think yeah go ahead here's what i think his secret is first of all it's his operating is impeccable and he doesn't operate for the sake of operating again like uh dead man walking was you know lit to serve the story uh his operating serves the story and his dolly moves or his boom moves and if you go back and look at them now you'll see they're very very controlled and generally very smooth and just make a point. You know, it's he's telling the story too, you know, and that's what a great cinematographer can do is take the director's idea that's been

in their head for rattling around for a year, take that idea and try and get it onto the screen and at the same time, accentuate. Now you can accentuate through the lighting or you can accentuate through the camera and or both. And Roger is great at operating. His lighting, and I bugged him about this a lot. And finally, he was like, what? I kept showing up like he'd be speaking places, right? And I'd be in the front row every time. And he'd come out and be like, he catches around and just goes, fuck. Yeah, what is this guy? Why is he here? You know, I'm like, so finally one day, I'm not kidding. We were at Digital Domain. And there was some sort of DP symposium, Malendavia was there, who was another wonderful, wonderful man.

And Roger was there, and he goes, okay, what do you want? And I'm like, I just want to learn how to light like you. I love the quality of light that you have. I go, and he goes, well, name a scene. And, you know, I drew a blank like a moron, right? And I'm like in Hudsucker in or in, yeah, in Hudsucker in the board room where all those guys are at that long board table and there's obviously a trans light at the end, but there's walls behind him. How did you light all those people even? And for a moment,

I thought that my hero was a mystic, right? Because he goes, watch it again, and you will see the light. And I'm like, this is fantastic, man. He's giving me like some sort of, you know, some karma thing, right? So I go back. And yeah, in the table, you can see the light reflected in the table, right? All right. I get it. But he also told me at that time about his use of shower curtain or half soft frost, which is a diffusion that cinematographers in the grips use to soften lights. And he would do multi-layers. Oh, good. I'm getting a free solar call on my old line line is over there.

Press 1 to speak with the energy specialist. So, you know, depending upon how many layers of diffusion you use, the light softens. It also reduces the amount of light, but it softens it sometimes dramatically. If anyone's watching, you can see the difference between 251 at the beginning of this conversation and a bare Kino now. It's not bad, but you can use a little powder. Megup. So this is a big thing, and this is a thing that I did. And for a while, my stuff really kind of had that vibe, you know, of like a book light or, you know, a book light is where you bounce light.

and then it comes off of the bounce back through diffusion. Or you can do just a multi-layered diffusion with a light going through now. Now that we have the LEDs, they tend to be a lot more diffuse than our older Fresnel type lights that we're all familiar with the hot ones. So it generally can only take maybe just one layer of diffusion to get the desired effect that you want. But he was using that half soft frost and for a long, long time, that's all I would use. but I would use like, you know, however many layers are five layers. The grips are like, you're out of your mind. What are you doing, right?

And then I had a push it through a bed sheet at this point. I had a friend of mine who did some job steady cam for Roger. And I was kind of laughing at myself. I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I used to do like layer after layer of this speech. And he goes, no, he goes, there were like these 40 by layers of shower curtain. He goes, I got lost in the middle of them. I didn't know where the fuck I was. I was like, is there two that way and three that way?

He goes, so, you know, diffusion is cool. By the way, it's something that used to be really popular, and I never really did this, but I would have loved to try to take styrofoam. And you can use thin styrofoam. You can still do it. But we used to work a lot with these maxi brute lights, which, you know, like a stadium light, it has like three or nine car headlight looking units. And then shine that through that styrofoam.

And, you know, the light is all broken up in the way. that it's traveling through. And it creates a really gorgeous, lovely, very smelly as it melts. For people listening, you're not talking about packaging foam. You're talking about the sort of craft foam. Yes, exactly. Translucent craft foam. That's right.

Like what's on, you know, a foam core, you know, so without the paper edging on it. It was literally just like some sort of styrofoam stuff. We did that for a long time. That was interesting. But like I said, what, not so great. And, you know, then there's a cloth thing. things. There's Muzz, which is a beautiful fabric that comes in either bleached or unbleached. The unbleached is a lot warmer, obviously. But that really soaks up some light. You need

some powerful lights to get through that unless you're shooting at a high ISO. You can probably get away with it. But that diffusion was wonderful. And now, after a long period of time, I'm finding myself again, bouncing lights, right, and doing the book light type of thing. So you bounce into a piece of foam core, and even with the LEDs, you bounce into the foam core, and then that bounce light comes back through a sheet of diffusion. You can't beat it. The rap that it creates on a face. And let's face it, that's really what it's coming down to is the face, right? I mean, you can light a building. Like, if you look at, if for whatever reason you ever looked at my Punisher Warzone movie, you would see that I did a lot of...

I watched a bunch of clips before this. I did a lot of building lighting in colors, yellows and purples and... Very blade runnery for some of those fight scenes in the... A little bit of that and yeah, well, you know, homage. And I also, by the way, you know, obviously I didn't invent all that, but I noticed that a lot of television stuff really looked like that the next year or two have to, there was a lot of colors that matched exactly. I was like, oh, okay, that's how that works. I wonder, I guess that's how Jordan felt. So, um, you can light a, some people, I used to

hear D.P say, I light the room and then the people walk around and throughout it, right? And that's all fine and good, I think, for like a drama or something. But if you're doing something where the people have to look great, you know, you have to light the faces too, you know. And Alan Davio gave me the greatest tip. I hope I'm not rambling too much here, but Alan, doing great. Alan Davio gave me just the most amazing tip at that same place, that digital domain, where I was bothering Deacons. He ran out of there, ultimately, you know, horrified by my presence. And Davio took over. And Alan said, look, get the biggest light you can get. Get it as far away from the set as you can and put your diffusion as close to the actor as you can. And that will be your

softest light source. And what that does, and I actually played with that a lot in a little movie that Ryan Felipe actually directed, where he was supposed to be kidnapped in this cabin in the woods. And all four of the walls were wild. The cabin was in the woods. Oh, excellent. And all four walls were wild. So whenever I was not looking at this wall, the wall was out, and the entire wall was a diffusion sheet. And so they could move around inside the cabin. And because the light is so diffuse and the light is so far away, if they moved, you know, six or eight feet in either direction, they didn't change in luminance. But if you have a source that's fairly close to them, they're really bright when they're near it and they're darker when they're

further away from it, you know? So that really worked great. And Alan was a brilliant man. He actually made me not want to be a DP at a certain point. I started shooting these thesis films for USC. And there's no nepotism in my family. No one in my family was ever making movies or doing anything, you know, other than drinking heavily. And so, uh, the family, you know, the family gift, the family curse. So, um, I shot some of these USC thesis films and, um, I'm losing my track of thought now. Oh, Davio. So I'm way out in the central California shooting in this ancient house that had these, uh, wooden walls, you know, dark wood walls. You know, dark wood wall. And there were...

We love that. There was dark furniture in there. And of course, you know, very white people walking around in there. And so the room looked kind of egregious because they were lit, but the room was black. And I had a card, Davio goes, here's my card. And if you ever have something that you can't figure out, give me a call. And I looked at like 1030, I'm like, I got to do it, right? Because I don't want to blow this scene.

So I call him up, he answered. he remembered me they said and he goes all right uh explain it now i go oh dark walls dark furniture white people he goes all right he goes you got any keynote flows i go yes sir he goes all right take them behind the furniture and glow the wall ever so slightly and he goes that'll give you separation from the furniture and then when your people come in and sit you'll be able to see that there is a sofa behind them and not just blackness and i was like like, okay, that's so simple. It makes so much sense. Am I really supposed to be doing this job? You know, I mean, I feel like a moron. But, you know, everyone learns every single day they go on set, you know.

And I really hadn't shot very much at that point at all. I'd never even considered putting a light behind a piece of furniture before. That didn't even occur to me. You know, I just thought I'd light the person, you know? And now we have Titan tubes. Yeah, and boy, are they flexible. And the Astera stuff is just, you know, really phenomenal. And its ability to do anything, you know, I mean, it's so cool. Initially, I was using them for before the LED wall thing really kind of took over. I was using those for my active light and when I was doing process trailer work.

Oh, sure. Yeah. You do a chase on them, you know, and you got the street light effect as you're driving. You know, what's funny is I, when those AX-1 tubes first came out, I went over to Stray Angel, which is a local rental house right by me. And we were trying to, they had just taken ownership of one of those. And we were like, how do we show what these do? And so we actually, we drove a Fiat 500 into the studio and set up a process thing just to demonstrate. Yeah.

And did a review in the car with the lights going and all that. it looks a lot better than a guy on a ladder with a light going like it's like stupid i'm like that doesn't look real at all so yeah that was horrible you know process trailers uh fortunately are almost history at this point you know thank god uh because no one likes breathing diesel all day long no one likes sitting on the generator on back up on the roof thing and your butt's burning and the director screaming into the walkie and the actors can't tell what she or he is saying and you have to stop for makeup and then the actors get hot and then they run the AC in the car or they're cold and they run the heater in the car but the volume walls uh really have been a game

changer you know the LED walls uh I mean that's really the way to do it that if you could afford it it's the only way to do it because it looks the most real you don't have a trailer going as you're driving along and you know you can't just clamp a camera onto a hostess tray and drive it off into the night and get what you want if you're not going to get what you want so um i in that movie bully i you know again to the learning i love talking about my mistakes because now they're fairly funny i don't cry very often right um in bully when um the the two boys are in the car and uh marty poochio uh uh the the bully punches marty pucio in the car when when he goes forward there's a that's sticking up that I couldn't see when I was framing it up because the actor was sitting there right no and as he leans forward to punch the guy there's a piece of speed rail sticking up from you know the the process trailers have speed rails that go for safety you know they have rails that go around and the key grip had left that particular one there and it's forever in the movie it's there still you know I was like are they ever going to do like a 4k version of bully because I go in there and just clean that up real quick

you know but no not so much so um but i'm really glad that we're not doing process trailer work anymore that's for sure i i quickly wanted to ask uh kind of going back to the uh color and lighting and now with LEDs and stuff is you know with with film that felt like mixing color temperatures when chosen uh was generally kind of dramatic and it feels like digital doesn't um see that different so much like you can get away with a lot more and i was wondering how you approach creative mixing of color temperatures and when maybe you would lean on either gels or something more like an RGB scenario to drag that separation out maybe? At the moment, because I'm doing television and we have the last show had kids and so you got to

go. You know, you got eight hours with the kid and they're pumpkin, right? And you're done, which is good in some regards because nobody really wants to work. We're 14 hours. hours a day every day. No one. And although my key grip occasionally says he would really like to get the hours, you know, but overtime. Because I'm just doing the LEDs, you know, I don't have that distinction of really being able to use gels on the hotlights anymore. And I'm not using any gels whatsoever as far as color on the sets. What I think makes it more effective is not having certain colors in your spectrum. In other words, the LEDs can do dramatic things,

and they can get some pretty, like, oversaturated colors that are gross. And, you know, I don't know if you ever worked with any of the really early LEDs. They were all, like, blown out, burned out, ugly looking crap, right? Yeah, yeah. But to me, as far as lighting a set,

it's what you don't put into the set. That is the good go-jus. You know, that's the good stuff. is like you want people subconsciously, I think, to want, you know, they're looking at this scene. It's a cold blue wash, right? And they're just wanting for warmth. You know, their mind goes, this is cold. This is perilous. This is sad. This is not, you know, and I wish it was a warm, sunny day, right? And on the other hand, when you're doing a day scene and, you know, you're I've really played with this a lot lately.

It's funny that you mentioned it, but the color temperature itself, I've found myself going a lot to 2,800 Kelvin, which is quite a bit warmer than... On the light or on the camera, on the light. On the light. Yeah, yeah. And just to get that extra saturation in that warm level, you know?

And the lights are so pure that you can do it, and it doesn't really stink the image up in a way that it would years ago, if you're shooting with a red one, you know, you'd have had an issue with that. But they make great stuff now. Yeah. And, you know, notoriously daylight loving those old, old original reds. 320 ISO, not really, but it's a 320 on it. It's like, it must be 320.

I was telling someone earlier today, I was when I was shooting super, you know, James was like, I want to do this all handheld. I'm like, and he's like, and I want you to operate it. I'm like, well, who's going to light it? Right? You know, so to me, it's not one of my favorite looking films that I've ever worked on. That's for sure. But the camera was kind of abysmal.

You know, there was a day when I would walk in and they'd say, okay, do you want Panavision? Do you want Airy? Do you want Primo lenses or do you want Zice or cooks? And then one day I walked in and they go, okay, so you're shooting on the red. And I'm like, say, say what? You're shooting on the red camera. Okay. Can I choose my lenses, please?

And they're like, yeah, you can still use lenses. You get the red primes. That's it. So the, yeah, the, really the new, changing subject a little bit, but staying with that, the new emulsion is really lenses, you know, because the cameras are so great that there's really a battle royale out there in lens land for all these top companies and smaller companies like something I mentioned earlier, who are really trying to woo people away

with some of their more exotic lenses. And I've just been given a set that I can't really talk about from a different lens manufacturer that they have experimented and experimented with coatings, and they've come up with a coating they feel as representative of a vintage lens, whatever that means. But I did a little test the other night where I shot a expensive, beautiful,

full prime lens, and this lens, which as its vintage thing, and then as, you know, a measure, I took my cook, my vintage cook and compared them. And what I noticed was the fabulous, expensive lens is clean, sharp, perfect, boom, there it is. It has a nice boca in the background, you know, resist flares fairly well. The vintagey new lens had something. I don't, not sure what it is, but it had a grit to it. It gave it a little bit of an edge, you know, made it feel more like, I don't know,

more like bullet or something, you know what I'm saying? Like, even though I know that was shot on cooks, but it gave it a grit. And then the cook lenses were just softer. All right? They didn't necessarily have which these are, by the way,

there's a Cook series two and three is not their magnificent brand new lenses. We're not talking about that at all. These are their their old lenses and all they really were were softer they that cook look thing is a thing and it is you know when you're with a even with a portrait lens of 50 or longer when you're at a 2-8 or more wide open they they get very soft and that is very desirable or especially was very desirable back in the 40s and 50s and earlier when they were shooting beautiful ladies and then wanted to get that glamour look and you know they'd take a piece of radial diffusion i don't if you ever seen this um joe walker's

collection no joe walker's collection do i have any of i'm sitting up here on the counter i use this place is a tornado it's covered in dust of course but um what this is it's an m it's called mpa it's it's a mitchell diffusion and i know you're not going to be able to see it but it's it has the these concentric rings in the glass. The glass itself is, it's not etched, it's molded. So they actually raise up. And right in the center is clear. So if you use this to focus on a person and you put the clear spot right in here,

all the rest softens up. And it softens up in a very unique way. It's not something that modern cinematographers or audiences I think are familiar with. It looks really, really good. But if they move here, then their eye goes out of focus. It looks weird. Stay there. You'll notice the shots.

Now, when you're watching Turner Classic movies or whatever, and you see these old black and white movies, when they cut to that close up of the girl, she's pretty much static, right? She's like, I love you. But she's staying right there. She's got that slash, too. That's right.

Don't move out of there. All of that stuff. And so, you know, back to the, But back to that the vintage coding thing, they might be owned to something because everybody wants to look a little different. And it's really kind of hard with all these fantastic cameras. I mean, the Blackmagic camera is gorgeous. Obviously, the LF and the Venice cameras are stunning cameras. The new red cameras are incredibly nice cameras.

This is a C500 mark two. Those are genius cameras too. Look how they're handling those highlights behind you back. This is completely blown. But it's not in, I will say it's not in the log. This is a lot I designed a couple days ago that I've been goofing off with, but, which is why I look extra pink. But you're under 100 in the log?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, here. Will it show on? No. No, that's too bad. It should be a way form on every, on every zoom. Right. It takes some menu finagling. I could show you the, Yeah, fuck it, let's see. Let's see. You can do it. I know I can do it.

But yeah, this, I've really been enjoying this. It's a great camera. You know what? Weirdly enough, I shoot it, talking about ISO, I shoot it at 400 more often than not, because I'm not finding that I lose any detail in the highlights, but it still, it just kills the noise. Because at 800, there's a little bit of shadow noise, but nothing too bad. So there's your let's off. And then I think we can go.

Yeah. I actually have locked into here. I have the R-E-Lut. So you can see that's with just the stock R-E-Lut. Yeah, it looks like every car commercial from eight years ago. Yeah. Just all were like, I'm like, how come they all look kind of blue-green? This is the, I've modeled the LF.

So it should be nearly identical to the LF view. Right. A lot of different experimenting I've been doing in color because during the pandemic, I didn't have any work. So I became colors. I get it. I totally get it. I remodeled my house. You know, we were like, we need to redo that bathroom.

And, you know, the pandemic kept. And I was like, I'll do it. And then two months later, I was like, why? What am I thinking? You know? And that was, no. And I'm still working on some areas of the house. But it looks, it's kind of cool.

And I still have all my fingers, which was the primary concern, you know. I don't want to be like Django Reinhart, you know, and doing this or playing slide for the rest of my life. That would suck. Yeah. On the on the lenses thing, I actually wanted to ask, as of this recording, which will date it, yesterday, the city lens manual came out from Jay Golden and Chris Probst. Have you been able to look at it? I have not had a chance. but they contacted me several months ago and requested permission to go to the museum

and dig through my lenses and take measurements and notes on a bunch of the vintage glass that was in there. And of course, you know, I love that. You know, Propp's a good guy. He's a lens affixing an auto and certainly he was actually working for a con before I joined on to con. and then he moved on to other pastures. And, but he's a good guy. And he does a, he's very thorough and quite academic. So I'm certain that the book is, you know, the bomb. I can't wait to get it.

I don't even have the new handbook. You know, I don't get by there. I don't think anyone does, do they? Oh, it's, it's there. I've been there and seen, seeing them sitting there. You know, I've just resisted my impulse to have one, you know. Yeah. But it's, it's there.

I've actually got, oh, you can't see it. Can you see it over there? No, it's fine. Some shit. The, I have, what is it? One, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. No, I'm missing five. So I need three and five to complete the collection.

Amazing. Yeah, that's, that's definitely a habit. I get bit by that bug. There are a lot of bugs in our, you know, like you're a drummer, I'm a guitar player. there's a thing called gas, right? Guitar acquisition syndrome. Yeah.

And the same thing goes for cinematography books. And I found the same thing goes if you can do it lenses as well. It's just I don't know why I have one, two, three, four, five, six, six sets of lenses sitting behind me right. Why? I'm not on a show right now. I mean, what do you rent them out at all? No.

No, no, no. I mean, if you need some, let me know. I'll on you some. Oh, I'd love that. Yeah, but I can't be bothered with trying to track people down and get their certificate of insurance and all that stuff. You know, I don't have a storefront. At the moment, that just doesn't make sense.

But what does make sense is owning your cameras and then being able to rent them to the production, you know, that's. Oh, yeah. No, that's a, and also how you can negotiate, you know, you keep your rate, but you're like, oh, whatever, I'll hack 50% off my camera or whatever it is, you know, and that sounds good. Yeah, and I've always done that. As a matter of fact, even when I was with Roger Corman, after I could no longer borrow Panavision rigs anymore, I think it's obvious what cameras are using. I think we've figured it up.

Yeah. When I couldn't borrow those, I bought a couple of two Cs. And I had them for doing, you know, whatever. If we needed a third camera, we were blowing a car up, which we seem to do almost every week. We're going to blow a cop car up. Okay, great. Go to Griffith Park, you know, put a foot of debt cord and five gallons. of gas and let her rip, you know. Yeah. So I would, you know, put the two Cs around. And then once

I started shooting music videos, you know, in the beginning, there really weren't a lot of video taps anyway. Video taps looked like ass, okay, off of a film camera, you know, I don't know how many times I would have a producer come up to me go, right? It's not going to look like that, right? I'm like, no, this is a horrible black and white. It's like 260 by 180. If, if, and it's black and white, you know, and it was probably slightly out of focus, too. And so, so I'd take the two Cs and shoot the music videos and the director would stand next to me and assume that I was getting what he thought I was getting, you know, which is the way it used to be done. Yeah. And there's still great cameras. I have, I have a couple of two Cs laying around in here that are, that I bought not

that long ago. I think I bought him at the beginning of the pandemic. This, the studio where Bruce Lee shot enter the dragon yeah return of the dragon yeah enter the dragon they actually had the two two seas that they'd used on all those movies and the studio clothes called shaw brothers studios um and uh someone

some representative had contacted me and said are you at all interested in these and I was like I'll take them and I also I don't know why I'm buying two seats but what am I doing I'm going backwards I saw this to see and I found out that it belonged to the guy who had shot with this camera, Jimmy Hendricks at the Isle of White show, his very last show, right? Oh, wow. He shot Hendricks and The Who was on that bill.

And he also had shot Bob Dylan at the folk festival when he played the electric guitar the first time. He got to boot and all with that camera. And I was like, I got to have that one, too, man. Come on. I'm, you know, it's like, Hendricks, I mean, this is, this is the combining of my loves of my life, right? Rock and roll guitar and cameras is just, that's it, you know, I've got a great shot of me. I toured with Jane's Addiction sometime in the middle of all this crazy career, and there's a great shot of me standing next to Navarro, and I've got my two-see, and I'm like, yeah, you know, and that also, being able to be on stage again, this time with the camera, So I had very little responsibility as far as, you know, actually having to pull off playing the song.

It was a hell of a lot more fun. And, you know, and I could get the same rise out of the audience as, say, Perry Farrell could because I turned the camera at them and they're all, yeah. And they didn't all have their own cameras. So no, no, now they do. Now they, you know, Dave probably has a GoPro tape to the headstock, you know, so why wouldn't you. But yeah, lenses. when I first kind of realized that there was something special in lenses was when I was shooting with Dave Myers

and I was shooting with a Bell in Hell 2709 camera and we did this song for Master P called It's So Hard Something Something about losing your homies And so So, you know, they were losing their homies So there was a shot of this grandmother at this funeral at this few funeral, right? And she had this hat, and the hat had a white band on it, right? And the sunlight

was just, it was like, you know, speckled sunlight coming through the trees. And a little bit of sun was hitting that. And this old lens that I had, which I think was a Zeiss, it flared in such a spectacular way. The headband itself kind of like stretched out like this. And I was shooting and I was varying the shutter angle as I was shooting and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And that was just, I was like, oh, my God, you know, the lens is really the thing. Yeah, the cameras are great and all. And the film is great. Back then, I'd be a film.

Is it Kodak? Is it Fuji? What am I going to use? You know, Fuji has better blacks. Kodak is overall, probably a better film stock, but less grain. Same with the lenses. And I started, when I started putting the lens collection together, I started, kind of losing my mind.

Like, you know, I've got useless stuff. And here's a big anamorphic projection lens that's just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. You know, and I'm like, okay, so I'll take this and then I'll get like a back attachment for this. And I'm like, what am I doing? You know, people are doing that a lot these days. Like, there's a whole YouTube, like, I shouldn't sort of limit this guy to just being a YouTube guy. But there's a dude who.

Animorphic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I see, I'm all over that too. And, you know, and it's cool. That's, you know, going back to the Blackmagic 4K, the pocket camera, in micro four thirds, you can do some neat stuff with that too, you know, and there's some, like the little bolex, I think it's called anamorpho, the thing that goes in front of a bolex swightar lens,

it's just like the early cinemascope attachment that went in front of a regular prime lens. You know, you have to focus on both. that on that 4K camera looked mad it looked like literally like some sort of some sort of artwork it it looked like a Van Gogh or something or maybe perhaps even a Matisse in that it the the pixels and the way that things are breaking up and the way that that lens which is really old and the second lens in front which is really old and has all these elements and the balsam is probably separating somewhere inside there and all it just created the most impressionist sort of images I'd ever seen. And, you know, I've only achieved that with a modern camera by doing

this. I have a graphlex camera, and that graphlex, which is a four by five camera, and that graphlex is built onto an iris rod type system. And I take a macro 35 millimeter lens and put it on my camera and then put the graphlex on the front and then focus on the ground glass. right? Yeah, like the old lettuce and like Red Rock units from when we had the DVX and all that. Exactly like that. And then use that as my camera.

You have to flip the video image because, you know, it's an upside down image and all. But the image that's on a ground glass, this is one of things that appealed to me so much about film cameras, especially a Panavision camera, was when you looked in the ground glass, you're like, holy fuck, that looks better than what I'm

looking at out here, the projection of that. My RZ 67, whenever I'm looking in the top of that, it looks like everyone, I show people, they're like, why does it look 3D? And I'm like, well, because it's, it is. It's the world. I'm still shooting with a hustleblod, and I get that feeling, you know, every day. So that putting a graphlex or any sort of view camera in front of a film or a video camera, especially video camera now, is just the most dramatic thing.

Because when you're focusing on that ground glass, it takes it to a different level. Yeah. You know, it's something. that you don't see every day and it's beautiful. And to your listeners, if you haven't tried it, I mean, you got to try it. You got to at least check it out, even if you just get like, you know, an old Mitchell viewfinder, which has a lens in the front and a ground glass in the back and focus in on that. You'll see what I'm talking about. And it's gorgeous. Jackson Rose, who is the guy who wrote the first two or three ASC handbooks back in 35 was the first

one. We took in his collection recently of stuff. And one of them was a, Graflex, one of the graphlexes that you look down into like a leather, kind of a teepee type thing that comes up the top and the ground glasses down there. It's weird. They hadn't figured out the looking in the back part yet. You're still looking at the top. And I took his camera and I essentially really spent a lot of time cleaning the lens, cleaning the interior of the camera, clean the ground glass. Then I set it up and I took my old janky A7S camera, which I have a NICOR 55 millimeter macro lens for and started. This is a NICOR 50.

There you go. Beautiful. Let's come back to NICORs. And I shot some images in it and people are just like, what in the hell is that? How do you do that? How did you get that effect? That's insane, you know? Because it's 120-year-old lens and a ground glass that, you know, I grind my own

ground glasses for some of my cameras, but wow. The look of it, it's really cool. It only takes a couple of silicon carbide a 600 and a 400. I'm looking at them right now and some really thin glass and you can you just grind one side of it. It's

cool as shit and it works. But let's talk NICORs real quick and we'll get back on track or be done. I don't know. NICOR lenses are some of the best lenses ever made. Okay. I've got a full set because of my F2. then you know I have a full set sitting over here too I guess there's seven sets of

lens over here I'm about to send them off to have them rehoused okay who's doing that TLS no it's a white white house white point white point yeah sure um and so I just got to pull back the other day and I'm like okay there goes sorry honey no turkey for Thanksgiving it's going to be spam again so um the the images that I I, you know, I shot my first professional still camera after the rock and roll days was a Nikon. It was like FM2. And I started buying the Nikon lenses and I fell in love with that look. And to me, the great bridge between vintage glass and full frame cameras is the Nikor lenses.

Yep. I mean, I 100% agree. They're gorgeous. And they'll shoot full frame, clearly. And as a matter of fact, that's what we used to have at Paramount for our VistaVision cameras, the ones that they sent off to Greg Beaumont and Richard Edlin and all those guys that were doing Star Wars and all, was we had NICORs fitted to them. And there were NICORs fitted to them.

And there were some of them, some of the cameras had Hossabloid lenses with the shutter system removed. And we're using those like this. But I just really feel like if I get that set of NICORs in every focal length that I want, then I'm done you know I feel like that's that's me so well people are so people are so like oh we need the Canon FDs we need the Canon FDs and I'm like yeah that's a look but like no I see we're kind of giving away my secret now because like I I keep the that I primarily shoot when I'm doing like most things honestly unless I need autofocus I shoot on the Nycores on my C500 because and everyone always goes like what the fuck did you shoot that on it I'm like my

secret. Yeah. And an animorphx. I have that lettuce animorphx from a while ago. Slapping those two things together is a look. That's really cool. The NICORs, in my opinion, just can't be beat, man. They're absolutely. And I have my set is absolutely pristine. I have my old set that I'm not going to get rehoused. And then over the past six months or a year, I bought a new set off of eBay from Japan. They're not expensive. They take so good care of them. And yeah, they're like two to five hundred unless you want like the 81.4 or whatever it is. Right. Yeah, that one's the 85 one before. Yeah. Yeah. But all the rest, I don't want that one before. I like the two. The 85T2 is, or F2 is a great lens. But yeah, they, the lenses are mint. Absolutely. When they say, you know, you check the sellers ratings and all, they're good.

When they say it's meant, it's meant. And I have a full set that is absolutely brand new. Sadly, they're going to be yanked apart and stuck into new barrels, but I can't wait. And now when I get them, I'll have to let you check them out. Yeah, absolutely. Dude, I'm going to have to go buy a second set before we release this and everyone else. I know. They're going to be gone. They're going to be gone.

They're going to be like the cannons, the K-35s. Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to Alex Nelson of Zero Optic, and he kind of started on rehousing those nightcords and stuff. And I was worried about that because we were talking about it. I was like, oh, fuck, are people going to buy these up if we start talking about? Yeah, Alex is a great guy. Alex is also a lens genius, okay?

He is wonderful. And he and I had actually discussed long before this new book came out. I said, you know, there should be a book about vintage lenses. Whoops. You know, I guess I'll let that one go. But there are just so many things you can do when you're shooting. You know what I mean? And there's not that many things you can do.

You can sleep, eat, you know, pat your kids on the head, sign a check. and go back to work. That's about it. And I'm not knocking it. I love my job, man. I tried lots of other things. I did curb and gutter for a couple of months. That was fun. And I, for one week, I did sod rolling. Oh, yikes. Yeah, where they, you know, they come with the machine and they kind of like cut under it a little bit and then you walk behind it and roll. Oh, man. That was the bottom. When I hit that one, I'm like, okay, there's got to be something else. Yeah. The hanging drywall is definitely an eye-opening experience.

Oh, God, that's brutal. That's hard to work, man. If you could do that, more power to you. I did it. I did a day. We shot six pages. I was the second unit. We were just full cleanup crew, and I had an R.E.

Mini, and it had no shoulder pad. And I was just hand holding it the whole time on my shoulder. Came back with bruises. Everything felt pinched. It was all fucked up. And didn't recover for like five. I mean, my shoulder didn't really feel good. good for like five days. I would much rather do that than hang drywall.

Absolutely. You know, when when when I worked for Roger Corman, uh, we did a ton of stuff. We didn't have a dolly. So we did a ton of handheld stuff. And, uh, we were shooting with the BL4, a BL4 weighs, I don't know what, like 60 pounds or so. And then you put a thousand foot mag on it. So it weighs 75 pounds. And, you know, all day for 14, 60, 18 hours at Corman. You know, when you signed on a Corman, you were there for 25 hours for the day. You know, that's 60, bucks um and my back is jacked from it uh we we did a scene where uh it was the end of the night and the director's like please can't you just hop in the car and drive down main street here in venice and let the actor drive and just get a shot of him driving i'm like oh all right let's do

it go out he's it's you know whatever midnight he's zipping down main street he gets a little pothole and freaks and hits the brakes and i went through the windshield with the camera So I'm laying on the hood of the car. He drives me back because I'm through the windshield. They drive back to the studio and everybody runs up and the director runs over and goes, is the camera okay? I'm bleeding out of my head, right? He's like, it's a camera okay. Jeez, priorities.

Well, of course, and, you know, an airy camera couldn't go through hell. You know, they're bulletproof. Those old BLs are bulletproof, man. drive a drive 10 penny nails with them so for sure well all uh i've been thoroughly enjoying myself we'll have to uh do a part two or i'll hang out or something yeah please but uh we'll we'll we'll let you go i end the uh podcast usually with the same two questions we've kind of blitzed both of them but uh i'll say uh if you can recommend this will be the two questions if you could recommend a a film perhaps education book or a film book that you think people

read and a film that today you think people should watch. Yeah, I think you should most certainly get the new ASC handbook. The American cinematographer handbook is required reading. It's addictive. It's technical. It's very, very technical. So, you know, but there are lots of nice pictures too. And it's a phenomenal piece of work.

And if you have that in your kit, you'll never be without the answers that you need. You know, they're always there. And the second was recommended film. Yep. Boy, there are so many extraordinary films in the world and over the past many years. But I would say truthfully, anything by Vittorio Starrero, Roger Deacons, the early works of John Toll, anything by Conrad Hall Sr., practically anything by Vilmush Zygman. Anything by Nestor Almendros. And really, it kind of goes on and on and on.

You know, there's so many great cinematographers. I mean, Gordon Willis's work is unsurpassed. If you look at Godfather 1 and 2 and then force yourself to look at Godfather 3, but just turn the volume off on 3. Just watch the imagery. You'll see that this man over a decade or more was capable of maintaining a look that you can't tell which scene was shot when, you know? Yeah.

So his work is incredible. Even his work with Woody Allen, even though that's a hot topic these days. His work with Woody Allen is astonishing. And, you know, I guess, and obviously Blade Runner, watch Blade Runner, get to that. But, you know, there's some other things.

There's a lot of, like indie movies that have a lot of weight to them that are really, really great. And I would say that, I don't know, you know, John Alonzo, who was an incredible cinematographer and a bit of a cranky dude to me a couple of times, but an incredible cinematographer. He actually shot at Roger Corbyn, too. If you can dig up any of his early stuff, it's interesting for me to see works of a cinematographer early in his career when he had no money, what he's capable doing, and then later in his career, if his career continued, where he has a lot of money to do things, very often you'll find that in the earlier, more difficult and lower budget

things, you had to be extremely creative to get your point across. Sometimes that creates things that are surprising, that are fantastic, you know, that you wouldn't have gotten, if you had $50 million or whatever to have the sets made perfectly and spend a lot of time figuring out what you were going to do in the lighting beforehand, you know. So I really enjoy that. I enjoy looking at the early works of people. Roger Deacons, back to him, did a lot of documentary work. And if any of your audiences ever in Los Angeles and would like to have a peek at the ASE Camera Museum, I actually have Roger's 16mm camera on display there. Yeah. And you can see he graciously donated it to us. And you can have a look at his stuff, as well as cameras that belong to Caleb de Chanel and other incredible cinematographers, you know, like Steve Gainer. I think there's one or two. Yeah, right. So, but hey, man, it's been a pleasure. I look forward to part two.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Peace out. Take care, brother. 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 matbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truaxe branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Pro Video Coalition.com or YouTube.com slash Owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.