Frame & Reference Podcast - 60: "Wasteland" DP Neal Broffman

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

On todays episode Kenny talks with cinematographer Neal Broffman about the mini series “Wasteland." Neal is a documentary filmmaker who has shot films around the world including covering global health stories across East Africa, Asia, and South America. Enjoy the episode! Follow Kenny on Twitter @kwmcmillan Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello and welcome to this another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today I have the absolute pleasure of speaking with Neil Brothman, who is a documentarian who has done and gone and covered nearly every important, you know, the Gulf War, the fall of the Soviet Union, all kinds of stuff. And he's a multi-talented individual, you know, director, producer, videographer. So an absolute asset to any news organization that would be privileged to have him, such as CNN. I worked with CNN for about a decade. But the thing he's here to talk about today is his mini-series Waste Land that's on Paramount Plus about how waste is getting into the water. They highlight, I believe, five cities that, you know, are experiencing this level of damage. And so we talk about that,

but we also, you know, I was fascinated to learn about, you know, what he did at CNN, you know, some stories about being one of those more intense video journalists. Not that he's intense, but the work he did was covering intense things. And so on and so forth. So I hope you're as excited as I was to talk to him. I hope you're as excited to listen to it as I was to talk to him. There we go. And I think you're really going to like this one. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Neil Broffman.

But as you probably saw, the way we start all these is just simply by asking like how you got your creative juices flowing. Not necessarily how did you get here. But, you know, when, you know, were you always creative? Did you go through, you know, a lot of DPs and somehow, like, start as engineers or architects and then become DPs? Yeah, it's funny how many I know that we're actually engineers in college and, you know, and like lawyers who become painters. I was, my father was a photographer. And I grew up in his dark room. He covered the, the civil rights movement, marched at Selman and Montgomery.

covered a lot of Dr. King. I grew up outside Washington, D.C. in the suburbs in Arlington. And we were close enough that a lot of that, a lot of the social protests and social movements that were happening in Washington and in the country in the late 60s and everything. My parents would take me down on them, you know, and we'd go March and my father would take these photographs and I would sit there with him and watch him, watch these magical images develop.

It was really, you know, all growing up, you know, I can still smell the hypo and the fix and the glacial acetic acid, you know. It was just a really, it was a great time to be with my father and also to learn from him because he was a super skilled photographer. I mean, his work is in the Bronx Museum in New York and the permanent collection and the permanent collection of the High Museum. it's been in lots of publications. So he taught me a lot about, you know, from a little kid, I was always, you know, the decisive moment, you know, and his hero photographer is Eugene, you know, Eugene Smith and Brasson and Robert Kappa. And so along with that, you know, there was this social conscience that he was instilling in me.

And so I always felt this kind of, you know, a desire to do something with photography and moving in sort of that direction. And, you know, as a kid, I had a little Super 8 film camera and try to make science fiction movies and throw Star Trek models up in the air, you know, and develop, you know, have the film develop and watch them. And so I was always around. It was mostly still photography. And then when I went to college, I didn't study film or photography. I was an English major. And when I finished college, I started getting more interested in video. And I got a job working at some of a place, a little post-production house in northern Virginia,

and then ended up working for USA Today. They had a TV show, it was a sound guy in the studio. And then what really, really charged me and changed my life was I got a job working for CNN in their London bureau. And I moved to London. They hired me as an editor, Soundtech. And that was the job title. So CNN, they would, the sound guy, I would go out into the field, right? And we'd shoot the stories and everything.

And I would do the sound. And then we'd go back to wherever we were either if we were on location. somewhere, we'd go back to the hotel, to the workspace, or back to the CNN Bureau in London, and then I would edit. And as I was editing, I was learning that I'd be better off if I was filming because I had this kind of, you know, now I know what I need to do these things. And so I was really fortunate because everyone, it was when CNN at that time, when people were working for CNN, everyone was encouraged and almost required to do pretty much everything. And so I could, whenever I wanted, pick up the camera and take it out and shoot beauty shots

around London or go shoot a story. And so I was teaching myself. I spent hours watching other people as they were creating stories and shooting these news stories and features, mostly features. And so I became a cameraman at CNN. And through that experience, I was working with cameras every single day, and I just loved it. And we started going to, you know, I was covered the Gulf War, covered the war in Bosnia, covered the first elections in South Africa, covered, you know, pretty much any major event you can think of in a 10-year period. I moved to Russia. I was living and lived in Moscow for three years as a cameraman and the bureau there.

And so it was always kind of, it just became part of who I was. And I sort of changed. My viewpoint changed as we're going through those years. But I'll stop and let you ask something else. Oh, no. I don't want to just keep going. You know, that's funny. I had a.

just eight no i just had a conversation with um uh stephen gainer who's the head of the uh he runs the asc museum and my second question came at the hour 30 mark so so no so you can you know he set the tone um no but what i there was a few things i wanted to touch on and there one So it sounds like you were drawn a lot to documentary or let's say documentary style photographers early on and then probably especially going on. What, you know, it's fascinating because you always hear about, in reference to cinematography, these photographers who are not staging, lighting, they're not doing traditionally what we would think of as traditional cinematography. They are people who's, you know, street photographers basically. And I was wondering if you kind of expand on why those guys were guys and girls were so influential. You touched on it with the deciding moment.

Some people might not know that reference. But and why that influenced so many DPs. That's an interesting question. You know, if you go and go and look at some of the early documents, documentary filmmakers. When I say early, I'm talking, you know, 60s and, you know, going back to the early 60s, you know, with D.A. Pennebaker and, you know, Frederick Wiseman and, you know, this observational approach. And, and that, I think, had a huge influence on a lot of, a lot of cinematographers. I'm guessing, because I remember in, when I was living in London, I became really, sort of fixated with dogma 95 large treas and the whole idea of no you can't bring in artificial anything and you can't do these things but of course as a journalist you're ethically bound not to do those things anyway and so um the the whole observational approach and then combined

with a hands-off approach uh was was really kind of of defining, you know, this, and very liberating. I mean, I go on for some of the non-documentary work that I do, I'll go on shoots and, you know, well, we want to do this or we want to do that. And I, I don't, you know, I don't know what to say because I can't, that's not how I work. I'm much more, you know, there to, it's, I feel it's artificial enough that I'm there anyway with a camera. And so then for me to inject myself into a scene, I can't do that morally or ethically with the documentary work and the majority of the work that I do, but then to try to force that into it. So I think that this whole movement, these early documentary

photographers, and the influence they may have had, particularly on that whole movement in the 90s, you know, everything has to be handheld, right? And you can't add music. And you can't, you know, all of these, these really strict requirements, they were stripping it down back to a, an approach that was almost like a documentary. And I think that was kind of the goal, you know, and they made some interesting films doing that. Do you think that was in some way of response? I'm kind of drawing an analogy to modern times here, but do you think that was somewhat a response to how polished everything was starting to look in the cinema? and there was kind of this idea of, you know, a lack of substance, so to speak. Yeah, I guess it's come kind of come full circle.

I think we're kind of back there. There are some really great films, but, you know, I mean, these big franchise films and things that are, that's exactly what they are. Yeah, I think so. But, you know, if we look at, if you look at documentaries today, you know, the tools that are available to people are, have, you know, they're relatively affordable for most people. who are serious about the work they're doing and have some funding and, you know, can support themselves or support a film, that documentaries are now looking more and less and less like

the observational films, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the Monterey pops and, you know, the ex-libris and, you know, and more and more like movies themselves to the point of creating reality also, to much more hands-on approach. So while documentaries, They started in this one space, a space that I just live by, and I just love, they've evolved into something which is more like much more highly polished. And films, I think, we're trying to, I think that's what those guys were trying to do, was trying to smash it a little bit. But, you know, ultimately the power, I think, for those, for the studios, I mean, is in the hands of the people who are making the, you know, the financing. So, but you get some really beautiful gems that pop up. every now and then that are, you know, wow, that's, that's how that get past everybody, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently and especially having these conversations is like, I get, I guess I'm old enough now where like, I can start to see like, you know, I lived through enough of it that I'm starting to see fashion come back around, you know, like, uh, whether that be literal fashion or, um, taste in movies and music and that kind of thing. And so I'm trying to wrap my head around where we are at now analogous to maybe the 70s or the 90s because those two, those two eras of filmmaking seemed very unique, you know, direct director centric, you know, because right now I've seen a lot of people's, you know, air out their grievances and say, oh, every film that comes out feels like

a movie made by an AI that's just checklisting all of these things, you know, that are supposed to make us money you know yeah yeah um yeah i mean yeah you're right in the 70s i mean you had you know some that that's sort of there there was a a roughness to some of those films that then as the technology changed in the 80s you had much more you know back to the future films and things like that which are really fun and great great great fun to watch and everything um but yeah so you do it is cyclical i think um that's the word i was speaking of yeah um so yeah so uh it was I was talking about, you know, the whole, you know, when I was at CNN, this whole hands-on approach where everyone had to do things. And we were using these, you know, we were using

big cameras and big decks. And we would, it was a huge operation. You know, when we would go to Somalia, it's been a lot of time in Mogadishu covering the famine there and the Operation Restore Hope afterward. And we would go and we'd bring these big, big edit deck. You know, these, each one weighs 60 pounds in a mixer, and we'd go with a satellite uplink and go and set everything up. And it was, it was just big equipment, you know, and as one of these, one of the great changes over the years has been how the equipment has become smaller. I was going to ask about that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know, smaller, more manageable in your hands. And so when I was a kid, I'd always loved holding a camera.

You know, my dad had a, you know, range finder, I'm sorry, two and a quarter roller flex camera. And I'd look at that as, you know, images upside down and you're trying to go backwards. You're trying to figure it out. But it was when I would travel with CNN, I always had one of his old vintage cameras around my neck that he gave me and a Luna Pro light meter. And so if I was, you know, doing sound, I always had that camera there. and the light meter is all manual, you know, all made out of metal. There was a thing in my hand, and I just, you know, it was incredible. And so, you know, 10 years ago or so, things started to get back into that place where the camera is in your hand.

And so it's like, it feels to me when I'm working, it's like an extension of your, of who you are. I mean, it's very, it's very, I don't want to say emotional, but it has, there's a connection to it, you know, and so, you know, like we're talking about before, I have my C-500 mark two. I had to C-300 when it came out, the C-300 mark two, and it came out, now the C-500 mark-2. And that camera is so incredible to hold, you know. It's very tactfully pleasing box. I think it's, I think it's, you know, people have different opinions about ergonomics and things like that with cameras. And people get used to whatever they're using.

But I have, I just kind of attached myself to it and it to me. And so for the first years that I was using, and I would always, it was always just built up, you know, with a lens on it and everything. And that's all I would use. Everything I had no, I don't use a shoulder rig or anything like that. As we started, as Elisa Gambino, my producing partner and my wife, as we started to do more long format and more observational work, I got an easy rig. And so I can 10 hours with that camera on an easy rig, you know,

and it's just fantastic. So it really streamlined everything for me, you know, where it's always there. It's always ready. Press the button. You know, I've got everything set up. And I've been using it for so long. It's very second nature to me.

So, you know, which is crucial, anybody who wants to go and create a film or even take a still photograph, even a still photograph with their cell phone. If the technology gets in the way of the heart and the ability to express yourself, you know, then it becomes an impediment. Yeah. And so being technically fluent with the equipment is pretty, pretty crucial. yeah that's uh i've said that i've shouted that from the rooftops of the uh place i've been given on pro video coalition but where it's like nowadays especially because every camera is so good you know you're arguing about five to 10 percent improvement in any given camera you know the ergonomics are so crucial and just like the second you know it's like um like playing drums or

driving. Like if you have to think about shifting, you're going to, it's going to be a horrible experience. But once that's second nature, you can suddenly, you have so much control and it, it's more fun and, you know, all that kind of thing. So, yeah, the, I mean, you're looking, you know, you're looking, you're looking out or you're looking, you know, through your viewfinder or, but you're not thinking about buttons and things because you know where they are and you're in this moment. I mean, it's very similar to, to editing. You know, if, if you're sitting down in of your premier pro and you're like looking to see what oh how do i do this or how do i do that you know you have to be able to just do it without thinking and so it's um you know but that it's it just

comes with doing it yeah well and that was actually so uh puget systems they make um i i have one oh yeah okay yeah so they they lent me one of their higher end rigs and then i went through the whole process they like interviewed me what are you shooting you know what are you editing blah blah blah we're to make a rig specifically for you, they sent it to me, lent it to me for like three weeks or something. And I remembered the number one experience I had with that rig was I suddenly didn't hate editing because it was, it was seamless, right? Like everything I wanted to do was immediate, playback was immediate, full resolution. There was no little hiccup. Like, I didn't realize how long waiting for like warp stabilizer to do something. You know, and you pick up

phone because you know it's going to take a minute or two so you're like what's on Twitter and then you get out of that flow state it's the worst same thing with cameras same thing with I'm sure sound although I don't really work with sound but I was I'm reminded I was talking a while back to Kirsten Johnson you know camera person and Dick Johnson is dead and a bunch of great document she's also a journalist and it was amazing to me because when the 5D came out I remember my film school was very excited about it because they were like the look the look and the ergonomics i was like we can't use that there's like so many things on a on a dvx or whatever that allowed you to run audio in built in ds um all this stuff and then the 5d was annoying as hell to me

and i was like i don't care if it looks good it's annoying to use didn't they film portlandia wasn't the first season of portlandia i think done on 5ds i maybe i mean but yeah Yeah, and then obviously that episode of House, I just talked to the deep here that show because he also did Grayson Frankie also C500 show. But Kirsten Johnson was like, yeah, well, it was nice for me because I was in like war-torn countries and I no longer had a bazooka. I just had a camera and I could film with that and get like the footage that I needed versus drawing way too much attention to herself with these shoulder mount E&G. style things. And I was like, that's a lot more interesting than my perspective. Like, yeah, I'm trying to get shot. It's like, okay, yeah, that's a good reason to want to use that. I mean, it was tough. You know, I had a 5D when they first came out. I mean, when there was, people were

starting to use them for, for production, film production work. And, you know, it was a, it was an effort to do it. And so, so then when the C-300 came out, it was like, okay, now we're going into this really serious place and it was just amazing yeah when kind of going back to the the photo stuff i've talked to a lot of um dPs who started you know as darkroom rats as i i got to do it in college but you know it wasn't really part of my uh coming up or whatever what about the dark room what did the dark room teach you about cinematography because everyone has an interesting answer I had a dark room here when my father passed away in 92, and when Elise and I moved from Russia back to the States, I moved the darkroom from the house where I grew up in Virginia. I live in Atlanta, so moved it here and put it down in my basement.

And I hadn't done a lot of darkroom work in a couple of years. And going back into it, the thing that is amazing to me is, first of all, when it's dark, you're rolling the film, okay? So that's one thing that sort of you're in your own mind and you have to stay very calm. You know, you can't rush things because you can hear the crinkling of the film if it's not on the spool correctly.

So it teaches you, it taught me to sort of just take a deep breath. You know, you can't, I can't film something if I'm freaking out about, if I'm missing something, my God, there's so much going on. I can only get what I can get. And working in the dark room, you have to be very patient with your developing. And then if you're doing your prints, your prints are, okay, I need to, you know, work on this area of the print a little bit. I have to burn this in a little bit here. I have to do a little dodging here. You know, the little tricks, you know, warm up the developer as you're on your paper and physically, put your fingers on it

And do these things to work with the image. That and looking at your image through the enlarger onto your easel. And as you're, you know, the easel has four sides, right? So you go this way and this way. And as you're cropping and framing. Okay. So not everyone, not every image is a full, full frame image because not everyone can take a full frame image anyway. And most people don't see it when they take the picture anyway because some is missing.

So cropping, how do you crop your image? And that teaches you how to, again, when you're out filming and also editing. So there's a very similar process that goes on, I think, in actually creating a still image to working with a film camera and to editing your final product, what you're doing. I mean, because you can do really creative cropping in your, you know, with your film, with your video, you know, to, and use parts of the screen. You know, if you have your screen as the canvas, then you can use multiple images on screens, you know, and you can do all these things that we see people do. And I think the darkroom helped me a lot with that and composition. Still photography is really hard, really hard. I think still photography is much, much harder than moving images because you have, you know,

160th, 250th, 500th, whatever of a second to say everything in an image, you know, and we get 24 frames per second and it's moving and, you know. You've got context in the edit. Exactly, exactly. So, no, I think that one, one, one does inform the other, the still photography and the dark room work. Also, when you're editing, I mean, you also have to be very patient, you know. I used to edit in this room. This is, I'm in Elisa's office. And my edit was back in that corner over there before I, before I dismantled my dark room and moved my edit room downstairs.

But I would sit here editing over there. and she, you know, was on the phone and talking and the same sound bite, you know, over and over again as you're editing, you know, you're playing it back and you're watching, you're playing it back and it's, you know, to the point where it would drive anyone who's actually not in that process or in that headspace, crazy, you know, you know, so she put on headphones. I tried that for a while. Instead, I moved, but that, that, yeah, that's, I've all, I've thought about that a lot, not like, not like, not like deeply. but I can only wear headphones editing because I'm like terrified that I'm annoying and just that location of the appropriate place to cut the aunt aunt and aunt just someone hearing that over and over again where I know it makes sense but they don't I'm like they probably think I'm insane

like this isn't editing I know it is it was I mean I'm lucky now that I drive the cat insane maybe yeah yeah you know It's funny because I think we might be outside of this now, but for a while there, there was a lot of people who, I think, were very stuck on the idea of the image needing to be made in camera, like wholly. And with digital. You're talking about stills. You're talking about stills. No, video. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, where it was any post-processing of any kind was cheating in some way. And I think now that visual effects have become so ubiquitous, I think maybe that's less true or maybe more true. But I always found it funny because I was like every photo, every video, every movie you've ever seen has been manipulated heavily and whether or not you notice is what you're mad at, not if it actually happened, you know?

Yeah. No, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. especially with 4K, 6K editing HD, you know, it happens all the time. Or, you know, if you have to incorporate cell phone video and, well, why does it, you know, or someone else's footage, which it doesn't really look good, well, how do you distinguish it, or make it look worse, really separate it from your footage by, you know, distressing it and adding renoisse or filters and things like that to, you know, make it not,

don't try to make it look better, make it look a little bit worse because then we know that it's the provenance of it is, you know, from, it's, you know, found footage or, or what have you. Yeah. Well, and like as an example, going back to still images, like the, the photo that I think a lot of people associate with the decisive moment is that guy like jumping over the ladder and the water and his foot's not quite touching. Yeah. It looks like he's, and I'm sure you've seen it, but there's more image to that. That image was cropped. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. The full image is maybe, it's ever so slightly wider. And there's just some stuff. There's just a bit of a dirty frame on the left hand side and a little bit on the bottom. So he cropped it out brouss on, brouss on, cropped it. And so you get, and it becomes the image, whereas when it's a little bit wider and you have that dirty frame, it doesn't look as good. doesn't feel the same. Yeah.

And, you know, you can speak to, like, the ethics of editing, especially when it comes to documentary. But, like, every, there needs to be a framing, not a literal framing, but like an emotional, I suppose, framing to every image. You can't, there's no visual anarchy. It's not like, what am I trying to say? Doc, I find the, I find there's an interesting interplay between the avarice of making something and documentary and like where that that line becomes fuzzy you know yeah um yeah i mean that

you have to first of all you have to get the image so if you're only if you have the wrong lens on especially with documentary work you know if you have if you don't you know if you've got you know you're 16 to 35 on or you're you're a prime lens you know a 24 millimeter prime lens and you're sitting there and you've got something's happening further way and you can't get but you need you mean you have to you have to get the image and so I view that as you know if you're not you're not changing you know if you're not changing the meaning and you're not injecting yourself into it that mean there's you know there's no there's nothing wrong with that you know if if the wide the uncropped version of Henri's photograph has

some guy telling him, okay, this is when you take your step, you know, he's like, okay, then it's, we have a stage thing here and, you know, he's not cropping out the artifice, he's cropping out the, the barrier between what he sees and what he wants to present. And we all do that. I mean, that's the nature of creating something. As long, I, though I'm really super, super strict about any intervention, though. I really, this is something that I sometimes sound like a broken record, but to create something that isn't there because I feel it should be there. I mean, this can, you know, if you have scenes in documentaries

where two people are sitting down and having a conversation about a subject that just happens to work for the subject of the film you know a mom talking to her child about something you can very clearly see that these things are okay well i need some footage of the two of you together so why don't you sit down and have a conversation about this by the window yeah i look i mean i'll tell you a story i was uh when i worked for cnn and when i when we had moved here to Atlanta, and I was out doing a profile on, what's his name, Tom Daschle, who was the former, he was the majority leader in the Senate, Democrat from South Dakota.

And so we went out, and he was just about to ascend to the leadership position. And so I went out and spent three days following them around South Dakota. of and there was a and we had full access to him like you know put my wireless on him and got him doing all these things and always very fly on the wall you're just just observing him and at one point we were driving from one location from like a beef jerky factory to someplace else and there was another camera crew there from a big network and um the guy said would you mind if i ride with the senator, you know, I want to get some shots inside the car. And I said, sure, no problem. You know, Dashel's still wearing my wireless mic. I'm in the car. We're in the car

following. And we're driving down this, you know, long, flat road and they're, you know, rural scenes. And the guy, the cameraman, the photographer says to, says to Dashwood, says, you know, would you on, you know, looking out the window and, you know, maybe having a bite of that beef jerky or he was setting up this shot of, here's the guy, he's about to be the most powerful man in the Senate, and now he wants a contemplative shot. And he created it. And I mean, things like that are horrifying to me. They happen. And we got to the next location, and the guy, the cameraman, came up to me, said, man, thanks a lot. And I said, sure. I said, you get that a nice contemplative shot of him looking out the window.

And he looked at me and he realized, you know, I heard. And it's just, you know, it's not my role to be the policeman of other people. But, you know, I heard it. So I pointed it out to him. I didn't say anything else, whatever, you know. Who cares? In the end, on the news, you're watching. But when you watch the news, when people are watching news, or if you're watching a documentary,

it has to be real. And so that's why I love observational film, observational documentaries, more than anything. I'm not a huge fan. I watch them for nostalgic reasons of films about music, you know, music stars and entertainers. But when I step back and look, and I do enjoy them and they're really well put together. I loved Amy. I thought it was just fantastic. The entire film, not a single interview on camera.

This is just brilliant, you know? That's, that's, no one wants to watch people talking in a film, right? Right. In a documentary. That's how I've always felt. So this film was like, came out and it's like, oh my God, you never see the person who's doing a talking, any of it. But, so this observational approach is, is really super important to me.

And, and when, when we made Welcome to Pine Lake, which was a feature documentary that we filmed outside of Atlanta. which is on Paramount Plus. It's about a town outside of Atlanta that was governed exclusively by women. It's a small city, 750 people, tiny. They have the municipal judge as a woman, the mayor, the entire city council, the chief of police. They have it all. It's a beautiful little place.

And so we spent, you know, a year and a half going out of the city council. there and filming and filming and filming and you know there's a little bit of interview in there but generally because it's super hard to get everything without some a little bit of context so but i'd like to i like to focus on that that approach to filming um you know and these cameras make that possible i was going to say yeah you definitely have to uh back in the like i suppose probably super 16 days uh there had to be perhaps a little bit more urgency with getting that contemplative shot or whatever because it's like if we don't have it we'll never have it like we don't have enough film right well someone says

go go go you know take take your uh you know your your c 500 mark two and go shoot an observational documentary in raw you know can so you're you're going to need some hard drive space 500 gigabytes for 15 minutes of you know it's the nature it's just there's just there's nothing you can do about it. But so, yeah, you know, you have to pick your tools. You're, you know, and what you're doing. But yes, you're right. So we do have a luxury that we can roll and roll and roll. I do try not to, though, when I'm working, um, roll unnecessarily. Sure. So, so, you know, give the editor a break. Well, I am the editor. Oh, give you. Yeah, even worse. So I'm also composing, you know, I know, I know, I know,

the shots that I need. I know that if we're filming a scene where people are, you know, they're all doing something and, you know, they're having a council meeting or something, right? I know I'm listening to what's being said, you know, I'm not just pointing the camera. So I'm listening, I'm hearing Elisa, who was, who directed that film is, you know, this is, I got, I got what I needed here and then I can go pick up the shots that I need, but I'm not, I, I, I worked with a, I work very frequently with a sound guy who's based in Los Angeles and I spent a lot of years

covering filming global health stories in Africa, East Africa, South Africa and in fact I'm going next week to Malawi to do some film work there and Alex greatest sound guy in the world

the first time we work together he said I notice you know you stop rolling a lot He said, I don't see DPs do that. He said they usually, you know, or like during an interview, if we're doing an interview, the questions are going and I'll just sit there and I'll, you know, I'll say, hey, by the way, I'm not rolling. So let me know when you're done with the conversation that we can start up again, you know, that sort of thing. Or in going into a place where something's happening.

And he says, you know, you don't, you know, you doesn't usually see that a lot. because a lot of people go in, okay, this is the event, it's happening, and I've got to get everything, you know, and if you go with two or three cameras, then you've got to get everything times three. And so I'm just lucky that we produce the work ourselves, and it all stays literally in-house, and I can compose my sequences in my head as I'm going along. yeah i've i've said a number of times that uh being an editor because you know in college you end up doing all kinds of jobs and even after that when i moved to la like no one was going to give me a dp job right off the bat but i could find plenty of editing gigs and editing other people stuff

especially but just editing in general made me a better dp yeah you just know you know what you mean you know what doesn't work yeah when i was that's what i said when i was at cnn i was going i was an editor And I'm sitting there editing, and I'm like, well, wait a minute, this isn't, the, the person who shot this is not an editor and doesn't really quite understand what's needed to, you know, to edit a sequence together, you know, sequences. I mean, sequences, it's a very basic thing. And, you know, like we were talking before about so much is done now in the edit room, you know, that 20 years ago, 25 years ago, the idea of a jump cut was, Yeah. Oh, my God. Was that a jump cut in there? You know, and now it's a thing. Now it's a language. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's great. I mean, I remember watching Goodfellas, you know, Scorsese Goodfellas. And he has all these just amazing jump cuts there. They're so well done. You're like, wait a minute. Was that just a jump cut? But it's so perfectly done, you know? And so now everyone does it. But so, yeah, being, being an editor is super, super helpful and filming.

Plus, organizing, you know, I come back from a shoot. I offload the cards. I'm already putting it into the program, putting it in its bins, organizing everything, uploading sound bits to Trent for transcription, you know, and doing all these things that by the time I sit down to edit, I already, I already know everything I shot because it's in my head and then it's all and then we you know we're good to go be really hard to be an editor i think on something that um on a on a longer piece that that one wasn't involved in the production yeah i'd be i mean you'd have to obviously put in the time to to watch all the

footage uh that's the hard that can you imagine like a documentary is probably worse than narrative but yeah just having to sit there and just watch every because so many people don't do that so many people just jump into the edit and start trying to find clips to match you know whatever they're doing it's like no part of the job because part of the job is watching everything back you have to you have to I mean there's no there's no substitute for that um especially with a documentary you know I mean if you if you're on a set somewhere and you're doing a commercial or it's a something which is really small, even, you know, okay, but you have, you just have to, you have to look at everything. There was, I was, especially, especially with, so just the, the, uh, all the work that we did in at that, you know, over the years in Africa. I mean, you know, you get on the airplane and you fly 15 hours and then get on a smaller plane and you go somewhere else. And then you get in a car and you drive 10 hours to get somewhere else. And you shoot everything there. And you're back at the

room that night offloading cards. And I'm looking at footage there too, you know, checking, checking, checking. Did this work? Did that work? You know, because as soon as you do that all in reverse and I'm sitting in Atlanta having a cup of tea, I can't go back to the, to the, you know, hospital in Gonder, Ethiopia. Right. I have the woman to give birth again, you know.

I mean, you got to, you know, work with what you have. And one of the things that I, I, that's been a real game changer for me has been, you know, the ability to travel with the smaller gear and Pelican cases. So the C500, all that in one Pelican case and then all my lenses in another case. Elisa carries one on. I carry the other. And it's just so it makes it so much, so much, you know, better. you know so much easier once you arrive also going through uh customs you know right um equipment lists and things like that so uh but yeah yeah um actually there was two things

earlier when we were talking about uh observational films and you know amy and all that there's a 30 for 30 i can't remember which one it is but there's it's entirely uh put together from news clips from that day oh really yeah it's no no voiceover i think like Billy Corgan made it or something like that. Like, it's weird directing. But yeah, it was like a really big day in sports. Like a bunch of stuff happened at once. I think there was like the San Francisco earthquake happened at the same time or something.

There's just a ton of stuff. So it's an hour long, I believe, and it's just news clips from newscast. And I was like, that's a fascinating documentary. Because about halfway through it, you realize you haven't heard one voiceover. Except the reporters, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that, yeah. But it's literally as if you were just flipping.

through the news and the story just happened to unfold in that way and it's very fascinating. But I was going to ask kind of on that topic of how things have gotten easier. Maybe do you have any perhaps tips for people who are in the documentary space that can make their job easier, maybe some not shortcuts unless you have those, but maybe some things that you've learned over the years that you can do or even more importantly shouldn't do? as far as in which the production aspect like just getting the shots you need

working quickly and efficiently you know I mean one which seems really silly but a lot of times people you're making your film

but you need to get scene setters right so okay let's go some B-roll of street scenes and I've had in you know young people intern who have come and worked with us for a period of time, you know, through local colleges and things like that. And I'll often give them the camera and say, you know, just so they can practice. And, and, you know, if we're out on the street, so let's go get some street scenes, you know, we're here in Atlanta, we'll get some street scenes. And we'll put the camera,

bring the tripod and the camera. And one mistake that a lot of people make is they keep moving. Oh, no, it's better over there. Oh, no, it's better over there. know it was better over there so no just you've picked the reality people are only going to see what you film they're not going to see what you don't film you know that's called dreamovision that's you know you either if you don't have it if you don't have it but so you say i'm this is the place that seemed interesting for me first so i'm going to set up my tripod here and i'm going to spend 15 minutes here right just in this one location before i think oh that's a a better location over there. Then you can go and move, you know. I found that's like so

invaluable, especially if you're, you know, you're in a hurry. Oh, no, you know, again, it's staying focused, staying calm, but being able to get yourself just, this is where I am. And there's, there isn't another camera showing people what, what, you know, they're not seeing, what I'm right. Or I'm not. The other one is like going out and if you have a two stage tripod, this is like really, This is also basic, sounds really basic. A two-stage tripod, always lower, always raise your tripod from the bottom legs first, not the top, because it's already up and you want to go higher, then you have to reach all the way down to the bottom to then pull the camera up higher.

Something with C stands. Yeah, just start, you know, work your way up from the bottom. You know, organize, keep the gear organized, you know, put, I like to put my cameras together before I get to the location. Yeah, I do the same. Because as soon as I get there, then I'm like, I'm here and now I'm not working. I'm actually doing prep work that I should have done before. But I do, you know, people will show up on shoots and not bring their camera and open it up

and they spend 15 minutes putting it together. Same with like, you know, audio gear and things like that. You know, make sure your lenses are clean. Make sure they're all organized. Make sure your cards are formatted and ready to go. you know, um, those, those kinds of things. Have, have someone, you know, if you're going to get in a car and drive somewhere, make sure you're sitting in the right seat. Oh, no, we have to, I have to change them. Oh, I got in the middle, you know, I need to be over here or, you know, is it, does the back window

of the van not open? Well, maybe you need to be in the front of the passenger seat where you can roll the window down because you can't do it in the back. Does the car have a, a moon, a sunroof that opens up all the way or is it just a little bit, you know, and can I stand? up and do something through there so um you know don't forget to uh if you're using gopros to put a safety leash on it i was you know i went and shot a thing i was doing a we're doing a film for a nature center and uh i had the kayakers and doing whitewater stuff so i went down and i got this brand new go pro with a nice you know the strong suction and everything or the tape that they used to come with like 10 years ago stuck it on the front of this guy's kayak was

hit the roll button and he went out there and like 30 seconds later it's like gone so yeah those i've lost i well i shouldn't say i've lost but there's been a lot of uh it's funny how those just disappear you'll be driving somewhere you you park you look at out and you're like oh you're never finding that again don't don't leave your uh don't leave your camera on a tripod and walk away yeah you that was you know that was you know the way we, I shouldn't say the way we were taught that, but the way that was kind of instilled into me naturally was when I learned, I went to a film school before I went to college and we were shooting 16mm film. So we had that battery pack that sat on your hip. And so if the

DP ever walked away from the camera, the whole thing would go down. So everyone was just terrified to leave. Like it was like, you know, PTSD. Like even if you didn't have the battery pack, You were like, if I walk away, it'll fall over. Yeah. I remember once we were, when I was in Russia, I was there when Boris Yeltsin was still president. It was right. Actually, sorry, it was right when the Soviet Union was about to disintegrate. And we were doing these live shots on the roof of the CNN Bureau across from the Moscow River from the Russian White House and from the parliament building.

And there's, the camera was set up. It was really cold, of course. It's always cold there. And the wind was blowing, and no one was there, and the camera blew over. And one of the engineers saw, he was sitting down in the control room, saw the camera had blown over. So he went upstairs. You put it back up. And then he went back downstairs, and it fell over again and snapped the lens off the front of the camera.

Oh, geez. So always, you know, make sure your camera's on their tripod. But a shooting tip, a filming tip, is. is, and this works, I think, really well. Just, you know, a little something to keep in your head when you're going somewhere. Your shots are typically of your wide shot, your establishing shot, your wide, medium, tight, pan, left, right, tilt up and down, right? So you can get three shots in one if you are, if you say, okay, I'm not going to start and get my zoom and then stop.

and then I'll get this shot, then I'll get that shot. But if you start from your wide shot, right, and you hold it for enough to use as a wide shot, and then you can, if you do a pan or a push, or if you have a servo or whatever, then you have an establishing shot, you have a push. You know, so you start building multiple shots into a single move without having three separate shots.

So you can, the editor then can pick it up in any place they want to. So getting multiple things. So being just being, a lot of it comes down to being efficient and being super careful, you know, and being

attentive to being respectful of the people that you're working with, that you're filming, you know, most importantly, you know, I think to leave and have done no harm and have the people that you just worked with actually want you to come

and, you know, hang out, have a beer afterward. You know, they don't want you to leave. They want you to stay, which is nice, you know, leave a good impression. Yeah, the guy. The talking about getting shots and stuff and, like, leaving enough for your editor, I find a piece of advice I'll often give, like, people starting is have, have that runtime counter, like, watch it, because what you think is a long take is probably, like three seconds, and then you're going to get in the edit and be furious with yourself

that you didn't give yourself enough, you know, head and tail to work with the clip. Like 10 seconds feels like an eternity. And I'll count. I'll count in my head. I mean, at this, the series that we just finished, we did a four-part series that we were hired to produce for Wasteland, right? Yeah, wasteland for CBS and it's on Paramount Plus. I wanted to have these closing, each episode is, it's all about waste infrastructure in the U.S.

We filmed in Iowa, one's in Mount Vernon, New York, one's in Lowndes County, Alabama, and one is down in Lee County, Florida, or Fort Myers is, and each one is about crumbling or failing infrastructure related to climate change, right? Okay, so I digress. I wanted to have a really beautiful closing shot at the end of each one. And so what you just said, watch the counter, okay, because the credits are going to go. I don't know how long the credits are going to be. And, you know, you don't know when you're going to actually, like I found myself,

oh my God, this is my closing shot, you know, in Florida, you know, this beautiful scene. Or in Alabama, it was in a woman's backyard with a straight pipe. that she has, she has no septic system and a straight pipe that goes straight into the field behind her house. But it was just the most beautiful composition. You know, and I didn't have,

this is, and that wasteland I filmed almost aside from the interviews, 100% handheld. And I was handheld on these shots. And so, in fact, the beauty of the image stabilizer. I was just about to

Were you using the EIS? It's just phenomenal. That combined with the image stabilizer on the Canon lens because they can work together. So I'm holding it, but not moving and staying in one place. It's one thing if you're moving with the sort of the ballet of how people move. You know how people move, you know, instinctively, right? But just a landscape shot that you want to hold for like a minute and a half in your hands. you know so um yeah so then and then it feels like five minutes but so to your point about the

counter when i'm doing shots like that i'm literally counting you know and even still i say okay i'm going to count to you know 150 and even still i go and look at the shot you know you know just another another 10 seconds why didn't i do you know just a little bit more um so uh yeah for going that's an excellent tip yeah for going handheld with this camera I am because I have like a bright tangerine cage I have the rails sticking out the back and then I have what is sold as a shoulder pad um angled up so it's like a chest pad and I'll just jam that into my chest and you can end up holding that with that soft pad there for a decent amount of time you know yeah yeah um I wanted to know how uh because we kind of

danced around the issue a bunch, but how do you, and maybe how should people, in your estimation, train their eye for good composition? I mean, it's... I know it's like a wild question because it's kind of central to image making. Rule of thirds is like everywhere. It's everywhere, you know? And so that's kind of the first, that's the first. place to start, I think, you know. And if you have that ingrained, you know, and for anyone

watching doesn't rule of thirds as you divide your screen up into thirds, you know, vertically and horizontally, and you keep things in the third and try to avoid the middle third unless there's balance on the left and right, right and left. So, you know, working and placing things in those things to get that feeling. I mean, that's a, that's a must, I think, to understand composition. And then when you have that in if that's ingrained in you you start to you look at things and you know through your viewfinder you're looking at the world that way and if something doesn't feel right it feels it can feel it doesn't feel right now some people like to make people feel uncomfortable on purpose and so they avoid that i did a a film a half hour short doc on martin par i don't know

if you're familiar with Martin Parr. He's a British photographer. He was the first photographer ever admitted to Magnum, the premier photo agency, who filmed exclusively in color and flash. Oh, because Magnum was very black and white. Magnum was all, you know, that was Brasson and Robert Kappa, all about black and white documentary photography,

you know, famines, wars, human, human suffering and triumph. you know, that's sort of very serious. And Martin Park comes along, and as he says, he's, he thinks that there is, you know, you can find the front lines at the, you know, at the grocery store. So, but he was, I spent a lot of time with him, and he doesn't follow these. His are very, you look at his images and so much is going on in the backgrounds and things. They're, they're a real challenge. He's an amazing photographer.

It's really interesting work. but he's one who he understands exactly what he's doing his his composition is his is his his his view he's able to to achieve it um but if if one is just beginning i think you have to have an understanding of classical composition uh you know to at least fix an image you know right to make it easier to clean up a dirty edge or something or to you know this feels better than that. Why does that, why does that framing feel better than this one? Well, because that's what painting, you know, was, right? Until now, in whatever. So I think that's a, that's a really important, an important place to start. Well, and something that you, you kind of said there that has

been echoed on this podcast is the feeling of it. Something that, uh, because that, you know, this podcast is halfway supposed to be educational. And, uh, I think one of the things that, people can get caught up in is trying to learn especially now that information is so available people can get and i'm i say people like i'm including myself in this um you can get caught up in trying to be too prepared trying to be like to know that every situation you're going to be and you're going to have an answer for and so you'll look up what that correct answer is and a lot of times with film photography there is no objective correct answer like there is in engineering it's a feeling it's a feeling you just feel if it feels good you don't have to explain why it feels good that's why

the image exists when you're working and and it feels good and then you get another shot that feels good all of a sudden you have this like is energy because it's it's all that's you have these moments with everything just starts to click you know and then you start man that's that's awesome but I've watched films like, I was watching Agnes Varda, her film about the Black Panthers in 1960s. And there are times when things for me don't feel like, like, say, you're, you know, a sign. You want to get a sign, but the shape of the sign doesn't quite work with. And I always watch how other people, if I see someone do something, oh, wow, I'll just tuck that one away because that worked. okay maybe maybe a pan across a sign has a purpose maybe it's that's a instead of trying to do a

beautiful composition of a sign maybe you can do a thing you know something which to me feels very strange and uncomfortable but there's a reason to do it so I know I'm always watching what other people are I mean as we all do I mean that's how that's how we get better right it's it's funny how you mentioned the sign because I I'm uh suppose I I try to avoid compulsive filmmaking, but anytime I have to film a street sign, like a, like a, you know, whatever avenue, I always tend to find like a background element and do the hip dolly counter move every time for that for some reason. That's my go-to. It's like, you can say your watch to it. I need to stop doing that. No, I know. We will repeat ourselves. We repeat ourselves all the time

because it works and it feels good, you know. It feels good. I do want to tell you, though, I, it's a radical subject change. Okay, go for it. I do want to tell you that this, that wasteland series, I hope, I hope that people can watch it because it's, it's a, it's pretty, it's, I'm pretty proud of it, especially because I don't normally say this about my work, but because we filmed, we did everything, it was all shot on, on our Canon cameras with my easy rig. guy, another guy with me, Rich, who was a second, you're doing on the second camera for interviews and things and some of the B-roll. And you guys were on L-series class? On L-series lenses?

Yes, yes. Yeah, I've got a whole bunch. So my go-to is the 16 to 35. It's almost always, it's because for documentary work, it's the, especially with the full frame on the C-500, I like to be right there you know it was weird when the when the pandemic started i like to be really close to people yeah i thought i thought i'll never work again right it'll be so you know oh right how can you get anything that has any kind of feel when the person's like you know 10 feet away yeah so um yeah no all of it was on uh all on on on can and glass um and uh and this and rich uh had to

C-300 Mark-2 and so and I was able to work Mark-2 or mark

three the C-300 he has the mark the new one the late the late three

yeah and it worked great with you know with the as a camera that would cut in

with the with the 500 and so and he had a he went out with a shoulder rig at the beginning

and he saw how I was working with the easy rig rig and like went and got one And then we were, like, in sync. The guy, he's an awesome, awesome photographer.

So, but this, the series, the episode that we did in Mount Vernon, New York was, Mount Vernon is a little city north of the Bronx. And they have crumbling sewage infrastructure. It's a hundred years old. And the Department of Public Works, they have a team of people there. They spend all day long, every day, driving, mitigating emergencies, sewage backing up in the town and businesses. And that the city has been trying for years to get the state of New York to get funding to fix this because it's a, it's a disaster.

And so we did our episode of Wasteland on Mount Vernon and the mayor opened the city, the doors of the city to us and we were spent all, you know, our days with the Department of Public Works guys and Damani Bush, who's the commissioner of Department of Public. of Public Works, wherever they went, we just went with them and we told the story. And it's been on Paramount Plus for a few weeks, about end of February, I believe. And last Friday, Kathy Hochle, who's the governor of New York, held a press conference in Mount Vernon with the mayor and announced a $150 million grant. to the city to repair the infrastructure and cited the mayor cited the film wow told said wait if you haven't seen waste land please go watch it 30 minute documentary and we spoke with her afterward she had sent the film to the mayor's office and said you have to watch this film and the may and so

the governor's office and the governor watched it and they got the money and the mayor talks about the power of of this this of being able to show someone and so to make a film right now i'm talking to like all of us to make a film where you can draw a line to a positive change that's happened as a result of the work that you've done to tell an honest and true story to change people's lives it's just that's fantastic i mean i just couldn't believe it yeah it's really really gratifying you know it's Yeah, I can't imagine. Like, my buddy spent years making a documentary that I technically helped on, called In the Dark of the Valley, about a nuclear, apparently the worst nuclear disaster in the country happened here in Sini Valley in Los Angeles. That no one knows about.

And MSNBC bought it, put it on TV, and I was just going through Twitter to see if anyone watched it or anything like that, because we didn't know what was going to do. and just the number of people who like had no idea and then started finding the woman who's the subject of the film and like her activism fund and all this stuff to like help clean that up and help stop that kind of thing from happening in the future was amazing and like I think it kind of bold my friend over because for a while there he it seemed like he was numb to it's like I think when you have a visceral numb to it because it was just like intense like to have to make a film that literally like here's a problem and then the problem gets solved like oh it does matter you know yeah it's pretty cool it's pretty powerful you know a lot of responsibility um you know with with that with having having that you know power to do that um you know pretty crazy yeah um i've got to let you go because we're kind of a little bit over time but um i kind of end these podcasts with the same sort of questions. They get modified every week.

But the first one, I'll have modified. What is, normally I would say, if your film is in a double feature, what's the other movie? So we'll use Wasteland, but maybe movie or series that you think is tonally similar or maybe dissimilar, maybe a contrast would be interesting there. But if you were to program a double feature for Wasteland, what would be the other film? Um, you know, I liked, uh, and I can't remember. I saw it. It was, um, the one about, um, the, uh, what's the, the chemical that goes on, um, Gortex. And it was the film. It was done in, in, uh, the, the pollution. It was Ohio, going down the Ohio River. Was that Gortex or the nonstick pan stuff?

Yeah, but it's the same material. It's on Gortex. It's on nonstick pans. Oh, is it? You fluorocardons or whatever. Yeah. And yes. And there was a documentary that was made a couple of years ago.

I think I know what you're talking about. I don't remember the name either. That, um, that, um, that I saw at, uh, up at hot docks. Um, that would be a, a, a nice one to, uh, counter program because, you know, it shows our, our film talks a lot about it's all, it's sewage. It's, uh, blue, green algae blooms. Florida as a result of leaking septic systems. It's people in Alabama who have septic systems which have failed. But this is, that film is showing, okay, now what happens when industry has a leaking

septic system, right? And it's not human waste. It's chemical waste. Right. And I feel terrible. I can't remember the name of the film. You know, when I record the intro to this, I'll make sure to have it be a note. Yeah, yeah. Give everyone a preview of what comes at the end. That's a great answer, though, because, yeah, the, tangentially, it's like when BP or whoever says, like, oh, you know what we should do to fix the environment is you guys need to recycle. And you're like, BP, I think we can, I think maybe we need to look a little more inward

before we start telling me to throw away the Pringles can in the right thing. Yeah, right. But, yeah, second. Oh, go ahead. The devil we know. That's the name of the film. The devil we know. I love that.

Excellent film. Excellent film. Second question. This one only goes to documentarians. Do you have shoe recommendation? A shoe recommendation. Because documentarians are uniquely on their feet for 80 hours a day. They always have a shoe recommendation.

I know. Mine are usually uncomfortable. I just got a new pair, though, because of this trick we have coming up. I got these, these Arcteric sort of their hiking shoes, but they're low tops, and they're really comfortable, and they're not that expensive. And so I got them and I put them on and I'm sort of, you know, wandering around the neighborhood and trying them out, You know, and they're super comfortable. And I think I'll be able to go all day in those for sure. That's a, I'm 90% sure someone else recommend. I've noticed that there's like the recommendations tend to be Hoka.

There's like an Adidas, Las Portiva thing, and then the Arcturix. Oh, here. And, oh, there we go. Oh, look at that. We actually get the photo. Yeah. It's the, I don't know what the, which, what model it is, but it's really very, very comfortable and uh hashtag not sponsored she's got this beautiful uh vana white version of uh the

final question uh and i was i was going to actually ask this earlier but it got away from me um especially with your work with uh CNN and and all this like this amazing body of work you have uh i was going to ask about any mentors you had but was there any advice that you either read or received from anyone that you worked with or maybe didn't work with and was just around you, that stuck with you over the years that helped you become a better filmmaker? Yeah, you know, some of the advice that I got was more ethics-based. I mean, I did get some from when I was younger and I was working with more experienced shooters. I was, you know, I would learn from them.

And so, you know, from some, it was get closer, be closer, you know. And my father, as a photographer, I would always say, you know, you can, you know, be close to your subject matter. James Knottwey, he's a fantastic still photographer, and he's always very super close, you know, get close. I like that. But the ethics thing, you know, I keep going back to that. But I mean, I was so like when I was at CNN, I left CNN 20 years ago. So when I was there, the president of the network, Tom Johnson, who is a, as a journalistic mentor, he's just amazing guy. Tom, there were a lot of questions about what can you do in the field?

What can't you do in the field? And so he came up as a journalist. He said, okay, here are, these are the rules of play. this is what you can do and this is what you can't do because i saw these these rules violated and i mean i've got stories i could tell you you know about all sorts of things which is terrible um so i took that his little car his cheat sheet and i printed it laminated it stuck it in the side of my camera and i'm sure that people thought i was a complete jerk nice but if anything would like crossed the line, I would say, it wasn't me talking. I would say, look, here, and I would take

the card out. We can't do that. Right. And so the takeaway was like, was, you know, have a set of core principles, you know, because that's the most, that's the most important thing. And to, you know, when you're, when you're working, have, don't feel as if we should never, we can always do better. We can always, you know, tell a better story. We can always get. a better shot we can always but you can never regain your respect for yourself by breaking rules or you know because it doesn't it's i mean this is documentary work so you know to be fair i went to arizona state i've said that a billion times on this podcast uh and uh the film school at the time was brand new and so it wasn't really it hasn't really apparently it's dope now but at the time

It was kind of rough around the edges. But the guy who F. Miguel Valenti was his name, really rad guy, ran the program. And he, it was all, they said, and I agree, it was ethics-based film education. Like that was like the first few classes we took. And this is for a narrative film. They were like, we're going to talk about the ethics of making films. Not only what you're saying, because that matters. You know, if the film kids was cited once, we had to watch that.

And he's like, how did this break some of the rules? You're like, do we have to write a paper? Because we can. But also how, going into the kids, think, like, how you work with others, how you film it, how you do it, not just the message. So I think that is a universal truth. Yeah. Yeah. It's super important, you know.

Do you still have that, that laminate? Do you remember what the rules were? I probably do have it somewhere because I was really kind of, you know, I really, it was really important to me because working with reporters, you know, I mean, we just, on Wasteland, we worked with Adam Yamaguchi, who's just awesome. He's just a super, super guy to work with. And, you know, he was, he drove the story forward, and then we, and we had the ultimate freedom to, you know, go on these tangents of more observational, you know, but we had a reporter on it. But, um, but, um, uh, One of the reasons I left news was because I didn't like working with reporters because I always felt like the reporter, and I still feel this way in many, especially in many instances, that the reporter is a barrier, just becomes a barrier, you know, to the, to the viewer.

And so I started, I did a lot of these Nat sound pieces, we call them at CNN, you know, when I'd go off and I'd take the camera and I would go film things and put together stories without. a reporter, little mini documentaries, and, you know, CNN would put them on. And I, I always felt like that sort of scripted voice of God approach. And documentaries have really evolved, because they, 20 years ago, documentaries were all voiceover, you know, this happened and then this happened. Attenborough style, you know, which is great for nature. But for nature, sure, right. But now documentaries are, you know, largely interview instead of, you know, interview driven, interview, you know, without a voiceover, but actually there is a voiceover. It's the interview. So, yeah, I think, you know, trying to breaking down these barriers between, you know, the ability of the viewer to access what they're seeing and create their own, you know, what if you don't like the voice of the person who's telling you the story? it's a great story you know i mean that happens what if you don't like the sing-songy delivery of the live at five reporter who's telling you an awesome story but you know you can sing along with the

cadence of the delivery right so everyone has a reporter voice yeah exactly even reporters who do this is a completely off topic question but do you know who invented that like who who who's the first person to decide that that's what news had it had to sound like. I don't know. Maybe Edward R. Murrow. Maybe it goes back to this sort of, you know, kind of the very serious, you know, the dawn of television news guy who was doing that, you know.

And then you had a lot of older, older reporters who, like, CNN had anchors or back in the, you know, 80s and 90s who were from that era who did that a lot. And now you hear it all the time. I mean, you know. But then you have. have new you have new iterations of that so you have like um you'll have kind of you'll have the younger more slack version of that where it's much more conversational you know where or two people doing tag team on us on a paragraph for some of you hear this on on like on npr they do that a lot

yeah one person delivers the first half of the paragraph and the other one picks up like they're they're playing off each other i mean these are all it's entertainment i mean it's all entertainment right that's what we're creating um but yeah so the the reporter voice is really is really something it's still out there though that that oh yeah probably forever that's just what the language the literally the language of news is maybe it'll change maybe there'll be a dogman 95 for news i guess that was vice for a while wasn't it yeah we're gonna we're gonna push this through in s log not even color it like yeah I love you see that all the time

you know you see stuff online it's like wait a minute why does it look so brown they're like it looks I remember when camera I got to let you go but I just do remember when cameras first got log and people like clients were requesting to leave it and log because they thought it looked more professional because the camera they spent

tens of thousands of dollars on shot like that so they were just like that So they were just like, yeah, that looks cool, man. And you're like, no, it looks like crap. And then you throw the transformer on. They're like, no, that looks like digital now. You're like, what? Or someone is using, is using their, you know, their Canon camera and they're,

they're putting the Lut on it so they can, which is super helpful. Or people film with the Lut, but just for the viewfinder. And then they'll, someone said, well, wait, it looked awesome when I was out there. I thought it looked great. Why does it look bad now? Yeah. You know, it's a, it's an assist, it's a tool to help you. Yeah. So.

Well, awesome, man. Thanks for spending the extra time with me. That flew by, speaking of time, flying by. That was really fun. Yeah, next time you have a project coming out. Please come back and we can chat about that. Yeah, I'll be in touch. Thanks. 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-Armattbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.