Frame & Reference Podcast - 59: "Grace & Frankie" DPs Gale Tattersall & Luke Miller

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

On todays episode Kenny talks with Gale Tattersall & Luke Miller, the cinematographers of "Grace & Frankie.” Enjoy the episode! Follow Kenny on Twitter @kwmcmillan Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

I don't know. So the way that we usually start this show is just kind of by asking how each of you kind of got artistically started. Not necessarily like how did you become a cinematographer to this point, but just like, you know, were you always creative? Were you always in film, you know, film school questions, all that kind of thing. Like what got your creative juices flowing? We'll start with Gail. Hi, I'm Gail and my whole career started because I had a love of photography ever since I was about 15 years old and I was very lucky I had access to a dark room so I was able to go and play for hours developing and printing and stuff like that and I think that taught me so much valuable information about composition and contrast and image making.

And from that, I developed into making a short film about the American philosopher and architect, Buckminster Fuller. And I fell in love with cinematography then and went to the London Film School. So that's really where I started. And so it was just by happenstance. I didn't design it. I just fell in love with image making, you know?

Yeah. Were you constantly, were you like a big darkroom rat? Or were you more about just kind of taking the photo, figuring out more compositional? I was a big dark room rat because I felt that that's where you could actually create magic. And I think that's led on to realizing how much of once work as a cinematographer, even now, you should do on set

and how much you should do in post because, you know, as a production is running when you're actually shooting, that's the most valuable time on earth. And so if you spend five minutes going to the bathroom, it can cost thousands of dollars. Quite literally. So the more you can decide what you can

do in post with one person, the more efficient you can be as a DP, and I think I'm getting to the point of having confidence in allowing things to fly on the set. And then correct them in post is kind of where you need to be, and that's terribly important. Yeah, no, I mean, I've said for a bunch of weeks now that, like, cinematography has definitely become a art form that has one foot squarely in post and one foot squarely uh on set especially now with all the digital capture being so uh you know not specific but paramount to the thing what about you luke what uh how did you get kind of started so i kind of got started i think i've heard this story from a thousand different filmmakers but making you know short films in high school um yeah i convinced a teacher it was like

i think it was an english class but i do an essay and i don't really like writing said well how about a How about a short film instead of an essay? And at the time, that was, like, not really a thing that you did. It, you know, kind of took her back. She's like, what are you talking about? I was like, I'll just make a short film instead of writing an essay. And that worked out really well. And I found, you know, I got some friends together.

And as we were making it, I found I was always kind of the one behind the camera. I was setting the shots, you know, and figuring out how to edit on a VHS player and that kind of stuff. So I was sort of like, there's a little bit, like, mix between that. And then there's a show that really got me interested in filmmaking. called movie magic that used to be on the discovery channel and they just showed like special effects explosions and miniature work and all this kind of crazy stuff that really caught my interest of like oh there's actually people that that's their job they just make movie magic that sounds like something for me yeah no i did the exact same like down to the uh hey i don't want to write

this english paper can i just like reenact uh this story in a luckily we had you know mini tv at time which is a little you know being able to figure out how to finagle that into a computer was less uh difficult than the doing the you know pause yeah do another deck start you know that whole thing which i only had to do maybe twice in my life yeah it was definitely cumbersome edits and sometimes there'd be like a big fuzzy you know static screen in the middle but you know it was it was a start and i think we had a fight scene we had a car chase um stupid stuff you know you do in high school yeah totally did you guys have really sort of strong influences growing up was it like uh specific artists or or films maybe that kind of really got you going in my case i when i was 16 i left

home and um i ended up um finding a mentor that was into art and um photography and stuff like that So I was very lucky. You know, and I got to appreciate, I was living in London at the time. And, of course, you only have to walk a few blocks, and there's an amazing art gallery. And, you know, and so I was always inspired by painting and filmmaking. And, you know, that whole process. So I was very exposed to that.

So I was very lucky, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I would say my childhood, I don't want to say it was devoid of art, but like art really wasn't a big part of it. It wasn't really until I got into college that I really started

appreciating things. But I do remember like a couple of films seeing them as a kid that like really drew me into the idea of filmmaking. Like the sound of music for some reason was the only movie I could watch if I stayed home sick from school. Like I don't know. It was like clean enough or something.

Oh, like allowed to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it was also like five hours long. So it basically took up the whole school day. So I probably watched that a bunch of times growing up. But I like, I watched it again as a, you know, as an adult. It's really good filmmaking. Like it still holds up. It's just, you know, it's beautiful, you know, large format. It's like a lot of the things I really like and gravitate to are in that movie. It just, you know, I guess it had a stronghold early on. But, but really it was it was more once I got into college that I got. more into seeing the world around me, I guess you'd say, you know. And you went to film school as well? I did. Yeah, I started going to a school for computer science, and I went for, you know, a semester and I thought, I haven't learned anything. I've, I'm teaching people things. I don't know what I'm doing here. I thought, I'll go to school for something that I don't know what to do.

You know, I don't know how it works. And if I fail, I could always, you know, go get a job in IT. And so I went to, I tried Columbia College in Chicago. They had a great cinematography program and really really fun love with lighting there they had really you know they had a little stage that we could use they had real lights real film cameras and i know i guess that's pretty common now like film schools at every basically every school these days um but like that you'd hope so but changing yeah i when i went to film school we had like two dvxes and then eventually the five d came out which gale will have to get to uh and everyone was always fighting over the five d and we were just like begging the film department like can you buy that red one and they're like

absolutely not we don't have that money yeah so when i was there it was all almost all 16 millimeter and like the the thing we would fight over would be they'd get a panavision 35 millimeter camera in like for a couple months out of the semester or something um but so i was really heavily into actual film chemistry and all that stuff and then kind of like right after you know just like learned everything about how it works just in time for no one to use it and for it to kind of fade into the forgotten land. Yeah. No,

and actually, Gail, to your point, I've noticed that a lot of, uh, really established, uh, filmmakers all started with painting and I know,

or like paintings, not all, you know, are painters, but, um, it's kind of fascinating because whenever I'll read like older ASC magazines or,

you know, older books or whatever, it's, they're always talking about like study the masters, study painting. And, uh, I don't quite see that as,

um, as much. these days people don't really go back that far it's usually like study the masters of film do you um still see value in in uh studying paintings and and how that can i i um for any um persons has ambitions in the film industry such as a camera operator or um you know a dp um i think there's nothing better that you can do with your spare time i mean um I think in a way, you know, of course, there are a thousand great DPs out there that have probably only ever used digital and never ever had the luxury of being able to use film.

But I think the very actor, it's kind of why I was referring to darkroom work, because it taught me much more than I could possibly learn by, it taught me much more than I could possibly learn just by working digitally because digital is a sort of rather esoteric kind of non-existent thing. It's pixels which don't actually mean anything in the real world. Whereas grains of silver that get exposed to light and then with the chemical reaction will go black if they've received light, I mean, that's a very tangible and tactile kind of experience. And when you can get into a dark room and use your hands under an enlarger to dodge a blend and hold back something,

and it's a process that makes you completely understand the values of contrasting shapes and tones, such as, you know, putting the bright side of somebody's face against a darker thing in the background and vice versa. So these are incredibly important lessons, and I don't know how you get those in the digital world. And I think, you know, because in reality, if you take a digital camera, if you have patience and you twiddle the knobs long enough, eventually a picture will turn up, and then you're a DP. You know, by the very nature of the fact that you can shoot an image, you're a DP. And I think, you know, luckily there's not too many of those around, but there's a view of them.

And, you know, and I think they've missed out on a whole process, which is terribly important because, you know, real analog photography, I think, is what it's all about. And digital is only a way of getting around that. And we, I really do feel that we jumped into digital before we were ready because it was, It was an economic factor. You know, my goodness, this is cheap. You know, this is producers and UPM saying, use this. It's, you know, we can shoot wherever on a piece of plastic,

and it's amazing. And, you know, you don't get dunk, dunk, clunk, dunk, when the thousand-book magazine runs out. And, you know, and I think it's, I mean, obviously it's improved enormously, but we jumped in too soon. It's rather like if you compare an MP3 sound recording to, you know, something on a 12-track tape. There's no comparison to somebody with a good ear. And so everything's raising towards being cheaper.

And sometimes we miss out and have qualities up as a result. And, I mean, for example, just in our colour suite, we used to have Sony monitors to judge the color and there were CRTs, you know, cathode ray tubes. And then color quality was absolutely superb. But they cost about $35,000 and they're not particularly nice for the environment. So then they all jumped to flat screen LCDs or LEDs or whatever they were when they came out which are about 1,500 bucks, but no different than any monitor that you or I could buy. So, and I still think we suffer in that area because when we go into our colour suite, you know, we have two monitors to look at.

One is an HD, one and one is maybe a representation of what you may see at home, if you're lucky. But they're completely different, and there's no real standard. So it makes it pretty hard. But, I mean, I think digital now, in terms of digital capture, has, you know, is quite viable versus film. But there's obviously still a lot of very high-end DPs and directors that still can insist on shooting film, which I think is really, really hard to beat.

And, you know, with the convenience of digital, where you can twiddle a knob and you've got 12 different ISOs that you can use to your own pleasure or, you know, change from daylight to tungsten balance film just by flipping a switch. These are things that are, you know, wonderfully helpful. And, you know, but I still think we have a ways to go before you would say, my goodness, do people actually use film?

It looks so crappy. We haven't got there yet with sensors. We're getting close. You know, I mean, that's my, I mean, we all have our own subjective and personal points of view, but that's mine for sure. I mean, Luke, do you want to add to that? Well, you know, I, for me, like I said, I learned film and then all my experience has been digital. So it's like this, like, fond memory or some kind of theory that I didn't really, you know, get to grasp on to as much. and so I often wonder like how much of this is like hazy memory of me thinking oh this was better before

and how much of it is really actually better but you know something that you often talk about which is when you shot film not everyone got to see the image until a day or two later and you mentioned that quite often and I I have the same feeling like being able to see exactly what you're shooting while you're shooting it is both good and bad at the same time um but i i feel like in the last few years the digital cameras have they're no longer leaving something to be desired like they're just different than film they're not less than anymore they're just sort of different and and i think that's that's remarkable because for many years it was you know oh well if we're shooting this on film it would look better or this highlight would fall off nicer or whatever

but I feel like I haven't had that thought in quite a while, maybe five years or so. It seems like things have really improved lately. I mean, it is difficult because the cost difference is absolutely enormous. And of course, that's what actually drives everything as the mighty dollar. So unless there's a very specific reason, we're not going to be allowed to go backwards any time soon. Yeah. You know, it's funny because there's a, I completely agree. That is the one thing, though.

You got to really, to get the, I'm going to start at the beginning of this sentence. You know, we all have this, as you were saying, this kind of nostalgic memory of film. And so there's a lot of people, you know, that being the gold standard, there's a lot of trying to replicate film, you know, the quote unquote film look. I hear about it all the time online and whatnot. And I've noticed that that used to be a shortcut to mean high quality, right? Because we were shooting tiny sensors, DV, VHS, whatever. And now people are trying to replicate photochemical film with its flaws. And it's often people who never worked with film.

But they want it to have that weight. It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently because it's an interesting sort of psychological tick that people seem to have now. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think there's been a huge push to use older lenses that have a slightly less than perfect look. Because when we started on Grace and Frankie, it was tough because the cameras felt almost like. they were designed for medical analysis. It was so detailed and so, and it's like the last thing we wanted, you know, we needed a softness and a sort of a gentleness to the image and not something that was incredibly

sharp and electronic looking. And that's the way I felt about cameras when they, digital cameras when they first started being adapted, sorry, when they first started being adopted. You know, so it is obviously huge leaps and bounds away and it's in such a short period, what in six, seven, eight years. The improvements have been incredible and profound, you know, so it's a good thing. Yeah, I did want to ask, before we get into the Grace and Frankie stuff, like, like I said, my film school, I was in college, you know, watching lots of episodes of house. And like I said, our film school just got that one 5D. And I remember when that,

that was it helped me, that season finale that you shine to 5D. Yeah, that, um, was a huge sea change for us because finally we, uh, I wasn't a big DSLR person at the time for video. I still wanted, the full body and all that, but many of my classmates saw that as, and I do now in retrospect, saw that as sort of a verification that the tool was good enough that if you put something good in front of it, it would be, I suppose, accepted by audiences. I was wondering if you could kind of explain, especially, you know, how far we've come now, or not explain, but just talk about what that shooting experience was like, especially compared to shooting film, but also maybe what you would have done differently with today's tools if you had to do the same thing.

Sure, when we shot the famous 5D episode of Harris, it wasn't because I wanted to be some kind of radical monster that was trying to do something different. because there were an awful lot of naysayers when we were setting it up that said, oh, you're crazy, it's rubbish, you should use this or do that. And the reality was our sets were all three feet tall. And if you took, because it was a collapsed car park, if you took an airy with a thousand-foot magazine on there and put it on a head, it actually wouldn't fit in the set. So, you know, we had to find something that was very tiny.

And for a while, there is actually a 35mm camera that's designed to fit in a tube and the magazine goes behind. But, I mean, they're just one of them and they're not sync sound and, you know, they're not blimped. So then Jason LaFeret came out with a movie called Ravory, which just blew me away. and I was told it was shot on a DSLR and the cannon and I just thought this is insane and I thought it was beautiful and so I thought well surely we could make something like as good as that work and so we did tests

and I mean I still get twinges of pain from the focus pullers stabbing knives into my voodoo doll because they hated me because it was the greatest nightmare of all time for a focus fuller because, you know, we basically shot with cannon stills lenses that don't stop when you get to infinity, they just keep on turning. And so trying to control focus was incredibly difficult. So we had some major difficulties just sort of, you know, and because it was a full-frame sensor, we were suddenly shooting was incredibly shallow depth of field

and that made it really tricky but it was incredible that you know we could take this tiny camera and create images that were good enough to go on a network TV show even though I think the compression then was age 264 which is pretty crappy now

but and the weird thing is that compression I think it doesn't matter a dam when you get in on clothes shots like this you don't actually notice it at all the only time you really see

it is in wide shots where you're looking at lots of tiny details and so it was the wide shots they gave it away a little bit but as soon as you get into this you know you really can't tell because you're not expecting to see more than that

and so it worked perfectly for what we were doing and we actually initially we thought we'd just shoot the certain scenes in the car park with the 5d mark two but we ended up loving the look of it so much that we shot the whole episode um and um you know just because we loved the shallow depth of field and it just it was just serendipitous that everything fell into place it was an episode where um house was in his own head and in his own world and to separate him from everything with severe focus was kind of wonderful because it isolated him as a human being and took him out of reality and that's exactly the underlying theme of the episode.

So it was a kind of wonderful experience, but very, very tough. And I suppose now, you know, there are much more. suitable cameras that shoot 4K that would, you know, I mean, we used a C-70 Canon, which is a fantastic little camera. It's just like a fat DSLR, shoots 4K, shoots 120 frames a second. I mean, it's kind of like, my goodness, it's just getting really insane. You know, so there are some wonderful, tiny little cameras around now that would have done the job much better and not forces into that compression algorithm that, you know, it was a little bit damaging. But what I love more than anything was because of Vincent and his work and then because

of House, the thing that made me most proud more than anything else was a fact. But my goodness, here we are. we've just discovered or been part of the democratization of filmmaking because a kid can get his dad to buy him a camera for his birthday

and get a lens and then steal a bootleg copy of some editing program from somewhere and suddenly you're a filmmaker and you can do this at home and you can do it with your friends and you can make a movie and tell

story and you know 10 years ago 15 years ago not possible you know it costs you too much in terms of film and you know even um i mean when i was a kid my dad used to shoot home movies at the weekends with the boleks i mean can you mention how much that would cost now shooting 16 mill film um so um you know this democratization of um the filmmaking process i think um giving this gift to kids the kids that wanted to grab it uh to go make movies that could actually be done for nothing almost um that was kind of like um to be part of that makes me probably more proud than anything you know because inevitably um great PPs and great great directors and great editors are going to come out of that world because they had that opportunity, you know?

Yeah. No, you know, it's interesting you mentioned Vincent because I remember he was seen more as maybe just in my circle, but like an internet guy. Like we knew him from articles and stuff. So Reverie was like, that looks great, but that's still an internet guy. And then House was like, oh my goodness, it's on television. Like, I can buy this on DVD. This is crazy, you know. It was a very, very interesting seminal moment. Luke, do you, where, what were you doing about that? I think we're about probably the same age. What year was that, Gail? Hi God, you know, you're asking somebody with a memory like me.

I think it was like 2010. 2010. So I was working my way up the Hollywood Lighting Department ladder. Just watching, you know, sort of like watching other DPs on set, learning. but I think I didn't learn about that particular episode until I started working with Gail and he told me about it. So I just wasn't really on my radar. Sure.

What, you know, I've interviewed a few people who came up in the lighting department two episodes ago, which will make this weird timeline of podcasts make no sense, but two episodes ago, Jeff Cronin with, you know, he came up as an AC. there was uh which is not in the lighting department i started that sentence and realized i was wrong um but anyway there's been a few guys but i'm wondering what sort of thing you i mean you spent how many 63 episodes gaffing grace and frankie um what before you hopped into dp what are the sort of important things that you learned as a gaffer and as a lighting technician uh that you think uh coming up in that realm made you a better DP very

versus people who just stuck to camera first. Because I definitely was a camera first guy being a giant nerd. Sure. So one thing that I always did as I was coming to the line department was pay attention to what the guy with the camera was doing and try to think about it like as I, you know, what would I have done here? Or a lot of times if I was gaffing,

I might nudge the D.P. on the shoulder and say, you know, did you think about this? So I was always sort of like getting in their rice bowls, so to speak, or really collaborating heavily. which i didn't stop with gail on grace and frankie um but i think one of the advantages is that a lot of people that come up to the camera side of things are so busy doing the camera stuff and focused on the camera stuff that they may not have the time or the extra mental power to see kind of what's going on with the lighting and think about why it's happening

and so when they get the reins of the camera and it's their job to design the lighting sometimes it's like almost like a starting over they don't really have the you know they have to really lean on their gaffer at that point so i think that's one advantage is is just sort of like the lighting stuff is like i got it down pat's in my back pocket i don't really even have to struggle with it or you know what i mean like when i started shooting i had to worry more about talking with the camera operators talking with the director which kind of came naturally i guess or whatever, you know, from just being around the same people, you know, I was lucky that I came up or made the move on a show I was already at home on. So I didn't, I wasn't meeting new people.

I was just filling a void that was there, you know, at first just for a couple days at a time when Gail was scouting. So I think that's kind of the main thing is just having, having a really good handle on lighting. That way it's not bogging me down when I'm, when I'm doing deeping. Yeah. What are some things maybe that you've learned that people should not do when trying to achieve a cinematic look with their lighting? You know, obviously we've got our far side key and all that kind of thing. But any sort of moves that you saw that ended up not being effective that you noted? Well, like, for me, I think the far side key is a nice starting point a lot of times. but some people get afraid of breaking that rule.

And I want the light to come from the window or from the source. And for me, it doesn't bump a lot of people. For me, it's distracting when your close-ups perfectly lit with a far side key, and the front's falling off into shadow. But you know that the window is on that shadow side and where's that light coming from? You know, for me, it kind of subconsciously takes you out of it. So I don't know if that's good advice or not because, a lot of people are doing really well with just following that formula but i think it i think

you're going to get more truth to your lighting if you light from with some motivation that comes from something your your lamp that's in the shot or your your window that's nearby or whatever so i think i think falling too far into a formula if i had to put it in just like a short sentence is a mistake that i see some people making but again the nice thing about the formula is they're still going to look good. And I hear a lot of people say that. Well, you know, as long as they look good, it'll be fine. And a lot of times that can be true. Yeah. The, it is, well, and now, too, you can actually, in some instances, light with said practicals. You know, I've seen a lot more taking away of light than adding light these days. That actually brings

up a question for both of you. How were you approaching lighting for? for film versus lighting for digital because, you know, the digital sensors are so sensitive. Is it just a matter of throwing as much neg in there as possible to try to just maintain it? Or is there something else going on? I've personally never really considered lighting with a two different media, any differently, because, I mean, more or less, the dynamic range of a good digital camera and a film are fairly similar. I mean, around 14, stop, something like that.

And so the contrast relatively can be very, very similar. You know, I believe that it's all about shape and creating depth through shape from my point of view. And I think I think, I have, I wouldn't really do anything different for film or for digital because basically the image is the image. But I think what Luke was saying is very true.

I think, and it's also different depending upon what type of show you're making. We, you know, in a comedy like ours, which I actually really hate the phrase sitcom. I think it almost feels like an insult. Sure, sure. You know, because to me, it suggests terrible lighting. Every time somebody goes near a wall, there's four shadows on the wall, which irritates me enormously.

And so sitcom to me represents something that doesn't have any base in reality. It's just a kind of, you know, you almost expect that sound of a fake door on a studio too close. It doesn't have the same sound because you hear it bounce around off the ceiling and the studio and it all sounds fake. And, you know, I've all my life tried to create images and shoot digital or film that actually felt cinematic like a movie. And it's also more important, I think, in a comedy because it's not like you're doing very fast cuts like in an action film where the light can come from anywhere and you don't have time to study it. We're often lingering on shots with two people.

And then we cut around the other side where we linger on the shot. So you have time for the subconscious to pick up things like where the key light's coming from and whether it feels real and is this coming from the window or is the light coming from the practical that was at the end of the sofa. those things are terribly important because you create a kind of mental geography with light and I think it's terribly important to really be honest because even if you end up with the camera for a large part of the scene

being directly in front of the window which suggests totally flat and boring light I think you have to go there or go in that direction and cheat it a little bit because otherwise you lose the believability. I mean, so it's always felt great to actually try and do something that was kind of real and not over-lit and not lit from the wrong angles. And I should let Luke do more talking. Oh, I thought he was kicking it to you.

I thought you had to think. No, because I was going to say, go ahead. I got another. We're going to have a polite off. All right. Because I had read an older article in ASC mag about your guys's lighting setups on Grace and Frankie. And at a quick glance, it seemed like they were basically just saying, yeah, we just slammed as much light into this set as possible. because we wanted you know to to do our actors of favor as it were and but then you watch clips from the show and it's not as you're saying flat or anything there's you know plenty of contrast in the image and plenty of it's just incredibly soft so I was wondering if you could kind of walk us through that article was from I believe season for 2017 yeah early yeah so how did that how did those setups start and how did they change to now

Sure. Do you want to talk, Gail, or you want me to? No, you can get this one off. So probably what happened is, you know, when we gave that interview, we were sort of trying to describe what we were doing, but we, even then, I think we were still struggling to describe what we were doing on set because it wasn't something that we'd really, it was different from how we'd done things on other shows, and it was sort of, it's like how you, well, there's lights everywhere, and there's muslin everywhere, and there's light coming from everywhere. and to most when you just say that it sounds like oh it's probably really flat in front yeah but but ultimately what we were doing is we were sort of almost lighting the it's like the cast would be sitting almost like for a portrait where we were studying their faces and the shapes of you know how they were going to look and we'd do the best we could to

accentuate and fill in or do whatever we can to make it look great except for they were in a moving picture so they were going to walk around and move around and stuff but what we would do is we'd have light coming sort of from everywhere, but then we would balance the areas of light, the same way you might balance a key light or a fill light, if you just say three-point lighting. So our three-point lighting might have been 140 degrees of a key light, and then 120 degrees of a fill light, and then maybe a backlight, but then we would balance the relative values of all those amongst each other. and because of the way we were doing that you didn't end up with just the flat like light right over camera look but we still were able to sort of shape and adjust and work with our cast to try to make them look great without you know contrast in the wrong area or whatever and it also filled in the set a little bit more so you there are some shots with some shadows on the walls and stuff but they feel kind of natural and it doesn't feel like, oh, they just really blasted a bunch of light at the set.

And it's sort of, because it started coming from everywhere, you've got the right kind of fall off on everything. And that's sort of how it worked. But like I said, I think we just didn't even know how to describe it ourselves at the time when we were interviewed because it was sort of being still being developed and still being figured out. And just it was working, but we weren't really sure quite why at the beginning, I think. Sure. I liked you had a little bit. to that, excuse me, I've noticed probably in the last five years that even newscasts on CNN have quite a lot of underlighting coming up. And of course it makes them look younger. It, you know, takes away a lot of lines and things like that. So that's the kind of basic idea. It's like

putting fill everywhere, but it's a little bit overdone in cases like that because you see occasionally if they pass their hand to grab something or grab a glass of water, a shadow goes over their faces. And so if we ever had that, we'd have to do the shot again and figure out another way of doing it. And it was really just to create complete softness so that the lighting becomes shadowless. But that was only really for the foreground, for Jane and Lily particularly. because it's almost like you've been presented with the crown jewels of Hollywood.

You've got Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. And it's like, are you going to make them look good or are you going to act fired tomorrow? And it was terribly important to make them look good. And that's the respect made it deserved anyway because they've been doing such amazing things all their careers that you have to take care. of them and make them feel good and feel competent because basically actors strip naked on a set.

You know, they bear their souls. And so the more confidence that you can give them in terms of that they're really being looked after in terms of the way they look. And we're not going to let anything through our net, our safety net, that they're not going to be happy with on dailies. and that's when you sometimes become very unpopular as a DP saying that was terrible I need another one everyone's going wow that was fantastic but you you know you know very well that Jane would hate it because of something we'd missed or you know so that's incredibly important too but there's also a huge separation between foreground where we did all this soft lighting and then background and the background was where we could create shape and contrast, which balanced out the flatness of the

foreground. And I got one day to thinking almost like Jane and Lily were almost like the filament of a light bulb inside a soft light. And so they became the filament because we were bouncing light off all the Mars right up to the edges of frame all the way around them. So they were kind of almost like inside a white umbrella, and they being the centre, and actually they're the light bulb. And it's funny, even with that soft Maas,

you'd be surprised how it actually concentrates the light to where Jane and Lily are, because all the Mars is actually focused on them, even though talking about focusing a piece of fabrics sounds insane, it actually does work. And, you know, because there are some pieces that aren't lighting the background because they're right angles to the background, but they're all on Jane and Lily.

So it does actually concentrate and they do become the lamp. And it's kind of rather an interesting concept. And then we'll keep the background's contrast just to create that separation, you know? Totally. Luke, what, you know, you guys, how many seasons is this? Seven seasons of this show? Seven seasons. Sick run.

How did the technology change? We'll get into the cameras in a second because fun fact, this webcam is a C-500 mark two. So I do want to ask about that. But in terms of the lighting, how did the fixtures change? Because that's like right in the middle of the LED sort of revolution, really taking hold. Yeah. So we were both completely stuck in the past and also a little bit. pushing the envelope on the you know the LED front for almost all the lights that landed on

the cast except for maybe some backlights we're all tungsten units usually we had a area's got a 2k open face light that we we set up 20 or 30 of them maybe in a setup our main our main thing or you know nine light phase or tungsten 10 k's 20 ks outside the windows um so we're pretty much all tungsten even up to the end with the exception of of we used LED space lights. We were, I think we had one of the first orders of moles, LED space light, which was by color. So that was like, that was a big change for us. Just if you think about jelling maybe 30 space lights over the beach, you just don't do it

because it would take a rigging crew a few hours to do to put quarter blue on. It's just not worth it or whatever you were going to do. Obviously with the LED space lights, you just dial in the color. Oh, it's a gloomy day. cool make it you know make a little bluer a little bit darker like that that was nice um so we did play with that and uh but and we had a few LEDs around um you know i used some uh asteras in the last season for some on camera effects and stuff everyone loves those every single dp i want to stare at a sponsor this podcast so bad because they get so much free advertising yeah i mean

just being able to take a light and not have any other parts and that you can turn it on and put it where you want it, you know, that's great. Now, I get anxiety about the batteries running out, but, you know, as a DP, just tell somebody that, you know, this is your job to pay attention to the batteries and then you can not worry about it as much. A stare technician. Yeah, right. But yeah, so, but we really just, LEDs were mostly for backlights and, uh, and space lights and everything that was nearly everything that was landing on someone's face was a tungsten element. And was that because of the sort of full-spectrum output of the tungsten versus LEDs, which up until very recently were quite spotting in that regard? Or was there any other reasoning?

So I think you've got a couple of factors. One would be we started with what Gales used to or what Gail's, you know, seasoned with. It was his style. And then two was, yeah, this full-spectrum-ness to, you know, our show is all about faces. You know, it's it's all faces. And so, skin tone is, you know, paramount. And so you've got the camera that has a lot to do with that, the color grading, and the lights. You know, you've put a sky panel on someone's face and you don't change the color in post, it's probably going to be fine. But when you start making an adjustment into some color that's not in that spectrum, you're going to lose,

there's sort of like a graying that happens or sort of like a color just gets sapped out. And for a lot of shows, that's fine because it just is, but our show is all about skin tone. and faces and laughs. And so for us, that was kind of important. And I also think that the, you know, the cast has been doing it for a while. And, you know, again, they have a way they're used to looking. They were lit with tons and units for their whole careers. And I think it was sort of like why change it if it's not broken kind of thing.

Yeah. You know, I actually, I read an article that Steve Yedlin, an interview he did when he was shooting Last Jedi. And he was saying that he shot all the old, you know, like Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and all them on film because that cadence is what they were used to. But then all the younger people, he shot digital. And I, you know, this is probably a generalization. But, you know, he shot all the younger people on digital because they were used to that speed. And that, you know, it all looks the same on the screen. He's a fantastic DP and color scientist.

But for that, for the onset work, he was like, yeah, we're going to do it traditional for the people who are used to. to that. We're going to do it digital for the people. I believe that you work, you know, work in the way that that they are used to. And, you know, for instance, we still rehearsed and we blocked and we rehearsed, we lit and we rehearsed again and we shot. And, you know, Jane liked that last rehearsal. She, you know, she liked to get into it. That's part of her process. A lot of people don't want, you know, they want to shoot a rehearsal or get going or whatever, but she was used to that sort of discipline of, you know, rehearse it, help everyone get the marks, know where we're going to be you know and so again with the lighting it's sort of the same same thought process at least when

we started and kept working well so yeah excuse me um i think uh one of the things that we um we also did was we shot to a pretty deep stop we tended to shoot around t4 for the whole show and um you know a lot of people now of course they'd like to shoot wide open to get more kind of character out of the lenses. But we, you know, I felt it was very important that we didn't have to keep going again because of focus issues because for our dear actors to have to go through makeup for several hours and then work a 10 hour a day and go home and learn five pages of dialogue. Last thing you want to do is to keep on putting them through extra takes because oh sorry the focus you know was just a little bit off here

or there and um so i think it was very important and even even the best focus pullers in the world is struggling around uh one four or two and um it was more important to um to give the actors um less technical reasons to have to go again so that we could just go for the performances and, you know, and I think that was a very important decision. And also, you know, in a comedy, so much of it is played in two shots, and you have Jane and Lily in a shot, and it's unlikely they're equidistant from the camera. And those tiny little focus shifts backwards and forwards, I find really irritating. And they start taking me out at the moment.

So, I mean, I'll even admit shamefully that, I shot at 11 or 16 even sometimes because if they were really at a great distance and the dialogue was kind of quite fast between them, like they were having an argument, you know, looks horrible to be, you know, doing this the whole time. And so by shooting at such a deep stop, even though the actual image itself wasn't the proudest thing for me, it worked much better for the actors and for the script and for the story. And so that's the kind of compromise that I don't mind making because really, what are you there for?

It's to tell the story and have the actors do their thing. You know, we are very much, you know, not at the top end of the pecking list. You know, we have to create pleasing images, but there are images that enhance the the story and help the actors and um you know so um so what we were talking about yeah no absolutely uh something i would add to what let me just add to what gail was saying quickly so we were shot we shot at a t4 but we also rated the cameras at 400 so we were shooting at a much brighter overall level than you know a normal show might be shooting at 800 or 1,600 probably 8 to 16 times the amount of light that a lot of shows are using these days so again a lot of like a strong

light coming in from outside the window and LED is just not going to not going to cut it yeah we're getting there but you know that we started the show back in 2014 we didn't have the the really powerful LEDs that have come out now and so we again tungsten is just easy you can turn on more power globes and it just gets brighter yeah and less expensive that's always something I always tell people was like if you if you're on a budget like and you can figure out the power situation and maybe the heat like tungsten's usually cheaper yeah i mean there's something um one other bonus about shooting at um such high light levels is that the iris of the eye and the actor shuts right down so you get much more color in the eyes if you shoot um you know at one two or at 1600

800 ISO or something like that. The Aris is just a big black pupil. And so you lose that. And I think that's kind of like, you know, especially in a comedy where you really want to see what's going on in an actor's eyes. It kind of worked really well from that point of view. And by the way, when LEDs first started coming out,

Luke would bring them on to set and I'd poke them with a stick for a couple of days. and be very suspicious because I've always actually I can't really prove it and it's probably just absurd and I'm just an old traditionalist but I've never trusted HMI's I think they're like incredibly powerful fluorescence and they don't have a pure spectrum they have bands of different colours

that somehow fool the eye into thinking that you're looking at a full spectrum but I think there are pieces missing and I miss those pieces and I can't prove it but I know something's missing and they don't feel right and so I tended to be a bit suspicious about LEDs for the very same reason there's something about a piece of tungsten

that's heated in a vacuum and first of all it glows orange and then it becomes white and almost blue that to me is I understand that that's light and it's but some kind of electronic thing that kind of glows because it's got some kind of diode thing in it. That's a bit suspicious.

I mean, of course, Luke has educated me enormously about how brilliant, you know, LEDs can be, and especially with the space lights and the flexibility and so on and so forth. But it took me a tiny while to kind of accept them. but having now accepted them and of course I loved them you know so I mean to be fair the up until like I said very recently LEDs were generally kind of brutal in the spectral output you know especially if you were trying to do like the blue ones were okay but the tungsten colored ones were generally lacking yeah I just got a set of these keynote flows Keno Flow divas that are just insane.

They like have camera luts in them so they'll put out the color spectrum that the camera's expecting. I was getting 100 TLCI. They're awesome. I don't work for Keno. Keno has really, really done their homework, and I think they've done a nice thing.

They're pretty late to the game, so kind of like time will tell if people pick it up and start using them, but they kind of stood back and did their homework. I was kind of impressed by what they were able to do. Yeah. And that's probably, why it took him so long. They're like, well, let's do it right. And it was like, bro, it took you

like a decade. You needed to be way faster. But yeah, I love those lights. I did, I did want it very technical podcast. It's kind of fun. I know you guys started on the epic for the first couple season and then moved to a C300 mark two. And now you're on the C500 mark two. And I was wondering, A, what made you choose Canon? Because you don't often see Canon cameras beyond documentary. They're very rarely in narrative. But also, uh, any tips, um, for me and anyone else who has to see 500 in, uh, you know, maybe exposing this. Anything you learned using it day in and day out, because I, uh, you know, I bought this thing right before the pandemic and it's basically sat here. I've used it five times on an actual shoot. I think, uh, from the very, very

get go, um, you know, Netflix, um, decided on 4K was it. So the camera that I obviously thought of and hoped to use was the Alexa, but it was only 3.8K and it was banned. It wasn't in the winner's circle. So the only cameras that were in the winner's circle at that point in time were the Red Dragon, the F-55. And I think we also, Luke reminded me that we did a test with a C-300 with a 4K box box. on it, you know, but that was very cumbersome and very expensive and not easy to use and prone to problems. So really we just had the choice between the Red Dragon and the F-55 for the first two seasons

and it was really, really tough. We had to use nets on the back of the lenses just to soften the image out a bit. And then along came the EC300 Mark II, which was something. which was 4K built in and we actually presented it to Netflix and said please please look at this camera because we're sure it's it makes all your specs I think they call it future proving this idea to do okay even though it seemed rather absurd at the time that you crushed the image down to almost nothing and squeeze it down a thin little pipe to homes all over the world where people watching it

on unadjusted monitors. I mean, that didn't seem very fair when Roger Deacons was perfectly fine shooting a movie on a 60-foot screen on an Alexa. I mean, what's that all about? Right. But anyway, we didn't make the rules. So then the C-300 Mark 2 came out

and it looked beautiful. And it was a beautiful sensor. and it was soft. And I've always felt that I've always loved Canon ever since the 5D episode and the fact that they could bring this gift to young filmmakers and enable them to make movies. I mean, I thought that was such a fairy tale. I mean, it's beautiful.

You know, so I've always loved Canon for those sorts of reasons. And, you know, I love the censor on the 5D mark. and I even have the very, very fast full-frame DSLR. And I can't even remember the number and it's not even serviceable now, but it still takes beautiful images. You know, and I fell in love with them from that moment, you know, like the same full-frame size and just beautiful. But the Z-300 Mark II changed everything for us and it created amazing images. And their senses, even between the C-300 Mark 2 and the C-700 and the C-500 and the C-500 Mark 2, their senses have always had this beautiful quality, which is wonderful for skin toads.

And, you know, so that's how we got into bed with Canon, basically, because they were the first guys up there. And, of course, again, I got a lot of stab wounds in the back from the assistants. who hated it because, you know, there were so many things that they were used to on the Alexa, like menus that didn't have little smiley faces and, you know, things on the lenses that didn't have mountains to suggest infinity. I mean, it was basically a documentary or, you know, a news camera. So we had to do so much to actually make it user-friendly on a TV show. I mean, it ended up looking like an abomination with all the stuff.

It was like this crazy hedgehog with monitors and power outs and, you know, special boxes to split power and split video. And, you know, it was pretty insane. But having done it, it was worth. it because in the end, I'm selfish. And all I thought about was, I don't give a damn whether this sensor comes in a cardboard cart and we're going to use it, you know, because it looked beautiful. And so that was how that's all began. And I'm sure Luke has something to add to all of that. Yeah, I mean, I think when we tested originally the C-300 with the external recorder,

we were looking at our tests, the very first test we did, and we thought, well, that, we like the look of that, but nobody's going to bother with an external recorder on a television show. It just seemed like too much risk. So I think that was kind of, even though Gail had his, you know, first DSLR that he loved, I think seeing them side by side in our first initial test kind of had us hoping to use that sensor. We just couldn't until the Mark 2 came out. But I find it interesting if you look at our show and you go and you look at just any episode from the first couple seasons and then any episode from, say, season three or four, so your kind of age ranges the same. It's kind of surprising to me. I think the skin just looks better as soon as we change cameras. There's a marked difference. And for me, like Gail said, it was difficult for the operators and the assistants. there's, you know, sort of plastic bodies and if you put a 12 to one zoom and about 50 things on the back of a C-300, it looks ridiculous because you've got two inches of camera, two feet

of lens, and then two feet of adapters behind it. It's just sort of obnoxious looking, but, you know, it worked. And over the years, we just sort of changed, changed models based on sort of what was maybe the newest or what was, you know, the C-700 had a few more those menus that the assistants like and it was full frame which was fun uh which gave us a look around so the operators could see what was coming into frame and that and that really felt like a a a little bit more like a professional camera and so it didn't feel as much like we were using a documentary camera um and then like you said you're using the c 500 which we switched to in the end which gave us the option to record raw which was new to our show you know we had been recording in

some kind of a compressed format that you know so that was that was nice yeah and i ended up shooting most of my episodes in the full frame mode the 5.9k um and uh so so that was kind of a fun like a way to change the show a little bit without drastically departing from the look that we'd created over the years you know just a little a little different did you uh did you experience any um Aha moments with again, I'm just mining for gold here. Because I've found that like, for instance, on the, the C300, I would expose a little higher. You know, I remember one dude from Canon told me, he was like, just expose until you just about to clip and then bring everything down in post. And I was like, okay, and I kind of did that.

And then with the 500, I've noticed, like, I'm exposing skin at, like, key often. It seems to look better to my eye. But is there any sort of like things like that that you ended up discovering with the new sensor and the new body? I've never noticed that there was anything particularly different because I think Luke works in a similar way to me, but he'll tell you in a minute. I fell in love with the system of false color on a monitor called a Marshall, which is actually, very out of age and old-fashioned now, but what I loved about it was it broke everything into 10 points of IRE from absolute black to clipping. So, you know, in terms of colours, and I loved that. It wasn't like a transition from 50 IRA to 60 IRA.

There was a distinct border and a change of colour. So I could see exactly what I was shooting, and I could slide the exposure around because I'm really greedy. I don't want to throw away one piece of data until we decided to do that in our colour session at the end, which is why I'd often even shooting a night scene get a tap on the shoulder. And somebody would say, Gail, you know, this is a night scene. you know because if I if I exposed it like they wanted to see it and we didn't have a DIT because they never actually needed one we just had a very good canon reference monitor

and you know so and REC 709 and so even night scenes look way over bright because I'm not going to throw away the shadows until I decide to as long as I'm not losing anything in the highlights and nothing's clipping, what's the point? You know, it's like, you know, completely pointless. I mean, why not have it all? And then you can decide maybe you just want to window up

a tiny bit of detail in that corner because it looks too somber and dark and there's nothing there. And, you know, so it gives you the value. I mean, the tools to actually, going back to my darkroom days do your dodging and you're printing in and you know in exactly the same way

because the software in post now is so beautifully sophisticated you can do all of that in seconds with one guy and you know and it's I mean our colour sessions probably we have a great colourist called Roy Bassett used to be technical and now they're called some other weird thing like light stream something something I'll never remember I'll never remember it but um you know

he would do a pass and get everything looking fairly good so the longest we'd ever spend doing a color session and making things look beautiful would be maybe 40 minutes or an hour at the most on an episode wouldn't you agree Luke? Yeah I think by the last season we got down to about an hour

damn yeah now he he would get it very close and all that gail and i really would have to do is sort of like he describes of dodging and burning we just kind of get that oh i remember i didn't put a shadow on that shoulder when we were shooting because we were in a hurry so it was just take down that foreground shoulder a little bit or or you know bring out that person in the background a little but um you know we had that flexibility because we protected so much on set and we weren't really like pushing the limits as we were shooting. We were sort of

like Gail said saving all the data or shooting very safely and making sure we didn't really have, it very little that would clip either above or below, you know, your shadows as well we'd have a lot of detail. So then once we got in there with Roy, if there was anything

that we wanted to change, it was very, very simple to do because all the data is there. Yeah. I also, as you had mentioned earlier, the shooting at like 400 seems to be the magic zone for these sensors. I think it was, I think it's cleaner at 400.

You know, it gets a, they say 800's the native, but it's a little bit noisier. I actually, I had one, I think it was a technician tell me that it's actually 200 is the native. 800's just where the dynamic range is distributed evenly.

Oh, really? So that's, I think so 400 is halfway there. I would believe that. Like, I would buy that. Yeah. So one thing I would do with the camera, since you asked about, like, you know, something that's tips or tricks, whatever. You can kind of do it on most cameras these days, but, you know, I was using some full frame prime lenses, and there's only seven in the set.

So if I was shooting full frame but didn't have quite the right lens size, then the camera, it's pretty simple, just make a switch to go to the 4K size in Super 35 crop mode. suddenly I had two sets of lenses basically but you can kind of do that on any camera people don't often think to because for whatever reason you just think that's my format but the C500 that was pretty easy to do and I think it was harder to do on the previous cameras we had on the C-700 it was more difficult or something

or it didn't crop correctly also the fact is that I don't think our cooks would have been able to do that I don't think they were designed for that's right because it was designed for movies and the same with the origin of Zooms we had which was another reason why for the vinyl 12 episodes

we not only changed our camera but we changed all our lenses to Canon lenses too yeah I gotta let you guys go here because we're about on time but I did want to ask kind of to wrap up you know you were working

as you said with two of the most legendary actresses in Hollywood as well as other people who are on the show. And I was wondering if there was anything that they taught you about filmmaking or any lessons that you took away from them that you found valuable. That's a difficult question.

I think I mean if you take an actress like Jane or an actor like Jane and Lily, I mean she's done so many big movies. and so it's kind of important to treat her with the respect that she's deserved and earned over her career and all the wonderful work she's done and the same applies to Lily.

So I think there's a lot of rush and hustle and bustle on TV sets and I think it's important to just go back, take a step back from that and treat the actors like they're on a movie set, you know, even though you have faster schedules to meet and stuff like that, but it's like giving them respect. And I would often talk to Jane or something about, you know, if she could turn her head a certain way, it would help the camera angle and stuff like that. And, you know, and having that kind of communication with the actors is terribly important as a cinematographer. And, you know, but I think, you know, Jane and Lily are both such class acts

that we learned a lot just from working with them. They taught us a lot about how they like to, what their process is. And, you know, they got on very, very, very well with actors, sorry, They got on very well with directors that were actors, directors, because directors fall into several categories. But, you know, some directors, it's all about the actor and all about the script. And I think those are the directors that they really love to work with because they felt they were being allowed to bring up their best.

And then there are other directors that going as far as directors that actually treat actors rather like props that look nice over here because the light's coming through the window in a nice way and whether there's any motivation for going to the window or not doesn't really matter a damn.

And, you know, so... The same school method of production value. Yeah. You know, so, I mean, it was an absolute honor to work with, you know, Jane, Lily, Sam, and Martin. I mean, they're all incredible.

amazing actors and um you know and um it was just a wonderful experience for me yeah look about you yeah i'll point it like a memory i have from i think it was the first episode it might have been the second one where um lily was doing a scene where she had to laugh and cry and get angry all in the same take and it was late and we'd done it like you know 15 times or something. And, you know, I didn't really, nobody really knew each other that well then yet. We'd all kind of just started working together. And I just found myself so impressed that she was able to do all that range and then reset and then do all that range again, you know, just like without missing a beat. And, you know, it's really an emotional scene, right? And I said, you know,

it was over and they'd wrapped and I just said, Lily, I was so impressive or, you know, you just, that was amazing like you just really blew my mind as you're incredible today that's just really awesome or something like that you know some kind of just expressed her how impressed I was with with what she'd just gone through and very loudly she just said Luke you did a really great job today just she probably didn't know what I was doing that day but just that sort of like appreciation for the people that were around her and the gratitude and I came to know over the years that she really paid attention to who was around her on set and who was on in the crew And if someone would come in and day place, she'd just stop on her way to go somewhere,

stop in the middle of a sentence, say, hey, who are you? Nice to meet you. What are you up to? You know, and that sort of like gratitude for the people around you and humility to treat people like humans or, you know, to treat people good, really. From just seeing from her example of that was something that really took away from her over the years. It's just like just treat people well no matter where they're at, no matter where you're at. I always remember that

the sort of gratitude and nice and that's yeah you know that's generally the the final two questions of the podcast are a little different but there's two of you so it's hard to do that but one thing that a lot of DPs have mentioned is like kindness and gratitude or the two of probably

the main things I've heard over and over that will give you longevity in this career versus you know technical knowledge or you know having seen every criterion movie, you know? I think I think getting angry and yelling at people is no longer a way to make it in this business. I think that that's sort of expiring, thankfully. But, you know, that was really a common thing for a long time for DPs to just shout at people or belittle people or blame people. And I think that that's fading away, thankfully. I know I never went faster because

someone yelled at me. And so, oh, yeah, no, you're not going to, you can only, you can only run on adrenaline for so long, you know, before you just get exhausted. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really enjoyed that conversation. And, you know, congrats on the show. And I look forward to seeing what you guys have next. Thanks. Really nice talking with you, Kenny.

Yeah, thank you ever so much. Can you do me a favor? Can you re-touch my image so it looks as nice as yours? Yep, I can do that. Get a Canon camera, Gail. Yeah. Thank you so much. that was such a pleasure and I'm certainly going to check out your podcast. It sounds very interesting,

but you know how it is in this life? We only get a certain amount of time to do lots and lots of stuff, you know? Yeah. Well, it's, I feel like it is a very LA-centric podcast, not because of the DPs, but because you need about the same amount of time it takes you to get from the west side to downtown or Burbank to listen to it. Oh, that's perfect. Okay. Cool. All right, guys. Enjoy the rest of your day. Yeah, good work. Thank you so much.

Frame and reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F-At-Arp box logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to ProVidiocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.

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