Frame & Reference Podcast - 7: "Rebel Hearts" Production Team

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Welcome to another episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast! This week Kenny talks with Director Pedro Kos, Producer Judy Korin, Animator Una Lorenzen and DP Emily Topper about the Sundance documentary "Rebel Hearts." The film spotlights a trailblazing group of nuns who bravely stood up to the patriarchy of the Catholic Church, fighting for equality, their livelihoods, and their own freedom against an all-powerful Cardinal who sought to keep them in their place. Enjoy the episode!  For more about the film, check out the below links: https://twitter.com/RebelHeartsFilm https://www.instagram.com/rebelheartsfilm/ https://www.facebook.com/RebelHeartsFilm/ https://www.rebelheartsfilm.com/ Liking the podcast? Leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app! 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.

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we've got an absolute treat for you. In this one, we are interviewing basically the entire filmmaking team of Rebel Hearts, which is a documentary about this group of nuns in Los Angeles back in the 60s, who were basically, as I described them, the most punk rock ladies in town. You know, they all had PhDs, they were all rallying against the system. You know, the church was trying to take them down, and they were saying no. I try to keep these intros very short, so I'm not going to get into too much detail about the film plot-wise.

all I can do is tell you to absolutely seek it out and watch it. If you go to rebel heartsfilm.com, you'll see festivals that they're going to be at. And then depending on when you listen to this, I'm sure it'll be available on streaming somewhere. Maybe even Blu-ray. I would love to buy the Blu-ray. It is a fantastic documentary, really joyful, even though the subject matter of being oppressed to a degree. It's kind of a bummer. But really, these nuns are awesome.

So, like I said, we've got a chunk of the team. We've got the director, Pedro Koss. We've got DP Emily Topper. We've got producer Judy Corrin and animator Una Lorenzen. And it's a really great discussion of, you know, half of a masterclass for documentary filmmaking. A lot of really great tidbits of knowledge that they all give. And so, yeah, really loved this conversation, and I hope you will enjoy it, too. So I'm going to shut up and then immediately start talking 10 seconds after this.

Please enjoy this interview with the team from Rebel Hearts. I was able to watch the film two nights ago, and me and my girlfriend absolutely loved it. You know, I loved the motion graphics, first of all, I'm a great job. job on all the animation and everything that's super cool but it's it's like for being a kind of a not a bummer subject but it's such a fun it made me feel good watching it you know i enjoyed it what um how did you guys get involved in in this whole story and uh you know what what attracted you to the to it um we can start with pedro yeah yeah i guess i'll start because i've been uh been on it a little longer but um not

the longest actually the project began actually over two decades ago with our amazing writer-producer Shawnee Isaac Smith who began documenting these extraordinary women back in the late 90s early 2000s and really just with really the goal to to make a film about it and at that time most of the most of these extraordinary women women were alive and well, and she was able to get these extraordinary first-hand accounts of their stories. Flash forward to a number of years later, I think it was 2014, that Shawnee connected with a dear friend of mine and collaborator and producer, Kira Carsonson, who saw a basically, a cut of basically an assembly of selects of these interviews of these and immediately a light bulb went on in her head and said there's something really special here this is an extraordinary hidden gem that hadn't really had been sort of forgotten in time and the stories of how of the awakening of this

order of nuns and sort of the brouhaha that it caused basically all around the world and kira knowing me and thought i would respond to this story and she was very right i fell in love with them and actually i think i actually challenge anyone to not fall in love with these women um once you get to know them and once you um and so i said about was really inspired by it and i remember at the that time, I was in the process of finishing a film called Bending the Ark, which I directed a few years ago, which Judy was, I was fortunate to be working with Judy, who was a producer on the film. And we were talking about, I came in and I started to talk about this order of extraordinary nuns, and then one of them was this icon of pop art, Corita Kent, and

Judy lit up Judy who has an incredible eye and also a background in design, motion graphics, animation, you know, well, I'll let her tell the story from her end. So, yeah, what did you think, Judy, when I said...

Yeah, I mean, when he said it's, you know, nuns with Corita, I knew Corita's art because I had studied graphic design. I'd been working as a creative director and graphic designer, title designer, for years. And so I knew Caritas worked very well, but didn't, had no idea of the backstory. So when I heard the backstory from Pedro is like,

you got to let me work on this. And about a year or so later, maybe two years later even in 2017, we, you know, we started collaborating, so I came on board as a producer on the project. And I had, I had produced a very low-budget indie scripted feature in 2011, 2012, with a dear friend of mine, Ron Judkins, who wrote and directed it and Jennifer Young, who produced it alongside me. And Ron had found Una through, I don't, I don't even know how some delicious, you know, kismet. And Una had done the animation on that film for us.

It was a film about a graphic novelist. So when Pedro said, you know, I want to do animation that's inspired by Corita, but not exactly Corita. And I said, you got to talk to Una. And then that relationship between director and animation director. blossomed. Yeah, it was a love at first sight when I saw Una's extraordinary work. And one of the things that we wanted, you know, I've been talking about how to, there's a lot of different disparate elements in this, in this film from the beautiful footage of filmmakers like

Bayless Glasscock and Tom Conrad and Haskell Wexler who filmed at the Immaculate Heart College in the 1960s, to Shawnee's interviews, to documents, photographs. I mean, you name it. I think we have it in the film. Letters. And one of the ways,

and I'm going to get back to Emily shortly, but one of the ways that we thought about, like, well, how to tell this story, how to tell this story visual in a way that feels very organic to it, right? And originally I was thinking,

well, maybe some type of 8mm type recreations would be interesting. But then, you know, we had a phrase in the edit room, which was, what would Corita do? That was sort of our motto. And, you know, so much of her Corita's artwork was dialoguing with the times. and we felt that it was only

there would the best more organic thing to the story would be to actually animate it really inspired by Corita's work and that's when Una came in and we you know we talked about the work

the artwork we you know and I want to hear from Una about that but and then the other the other element which is Emily which was Emily, we started filming in 2017, and the goal of the filming was really we, Emily and I had watched Bayless's footage and Tom Conrad's films and Haskell's films. And in a way, it was really important to ground the film in the present, you know, in the current day. Because this is not only a story that sets in the 50s, I think it's very important for us to feel how curt the story

is today to look at it with a current lens on events that even though happened 50 years ago are about who we are today as a society and the awakenings and the movements that we are having today so that visually that grounding that anchor in the present was very something was a lot about but now I'm going to shut up and I want to hear from una and Emily yeah so you know it was so I mean it was so easy it's such a perfect way for me to come into this through Corira's work you know like the the sequence that you proposed I mean it was just it felt really natural just to kind of I immediately you know the just you immediately you know the just you immediately you immediately get going, just looking at Corita's artwork. And I also studied graphic design, and I always love, you know, my style is kind of usually kind of flat, graphicy, and using mixed media.

And I kind of immediately wanted to just kind of do something, you know, she's doing these prints. And I just wanted it to feel like the prints were coming. coming alive. And that was actually also kind of something that Judy and Petro talked about to kind of, we went, at least we try it out, to go from her artwork to the animation, kind of like, but yeah. So it was, it was the initial concept was kind of just like this flat silk screen coming alive that's really inspired by Corira's, you know, there's like a color scheme going on. So I was inspired by that. And then, of course, you know, in the backgrounds of all the animations, all of the, like, looked like, you know, pages ripped from, I'm going to guess, the second Vatican.

Yes. So that is something that happened with this first sequence that I did for them, which was the Mary's Day sequence, about Corita's artwork and it was something that I just you know I was so inspired by her work and I wanted it you know obviously that sequence was about Corita and not all sequences are in the film but so what I did I just took her printed texts which I mean she works with text so much so I just really used that as a texture to just kind of and and that concept from there on it became a concept for all the animation sequences to kind of use text not only I mean for for me the initial thing was basically just using the texture of the text

you know it was like a handwritten text but then that evolved and it became actually about what the text is saying too well it already was in some of the sequences Corita sequences But yeah Yeah Cool And each Each animated sequence

Has a different Text in it I was gonna ask that So yeah We like one You know When they are Becoming nuns

The very first one Is the catechism of the vows The vows that they're taking Right You know like you take your vows of marriage But they took their vows of poverty, chastity And obedience And so we took that text, which is like a long book of the Catechism of the Viles, and we did that.

And then, you know, when they are beginning to change and like take out, take off the habit, it's the questionnaires that they had to fill out about why they were changing and all that. So there was, each sequence was a different. And then for one, the one that they passed their decrees, you know, they're like basically their new constitution. that, the text of that, those decrees are the texture that you're seeing. So each one is, uh, each sequence, uh, is incorporating the, the text and the, the paper texture of that, um, of those specific documents that relate to that sequence. Um, and one of the words that we had on making this film is, we wanted to make it tactile, you know, this was a time when, um, Creata's work is done in layers. It's all very analog.

It's all very paper. It's like I almost wanted to feel the texture of the paper in my hand. That was really, and the paint and the everything. You know, so the way we approach that both visually and also on the audio side was very much in trying to create a tactile experience for the viewers. Yeah, the sound design actually, I remember thinking, I have a note here that it was evocative. I kept thinking like evocative, evocative. Like everything was very, as you say, tactile is a great word for it. Emily, what was your, how did you approach this film? Because

there is a lot of animation in it and also archival footage. Were you trying to kind of find a way to bridge that gap? Or how did that work for you? So I knew at the very beginning that this was going to be a collage of sorts that I was going to be coming in and being one of the end of a very long line of contributors, many of whom were long gone, to make a film that they didn't even know they were going to be part of in 2021. And here I am coming along, kind of adding one more layer to it. And Pedro and I talked a lot about what the footage that he was having looked like and felt like. And a lot of times when we were on set, the subjects were sharing materials that they were giving Judy and Pedro and they were kind of taking in stuff and I would look at it

and see a little bit about. So I was understanding what I hadn't yet seen, but what really I was standing on top of. And I think what we did just instinctively was just have an incredibly simple approach. It wasn't really, from my perspective, it wasn't really driven by, okay, let's figure out exactly what we want this to look like because we know what the footage looks like. So now let's sort of retroactively design what every shot's going to be. It was more driven by what the relationship needs were during the filmmaking. Here we were coming into a community as new, you know, total newcomers. And even though I'm a lot, I live in Los Angeles and in fact live close to all

these people and these places it was like entering into a very foreign land and for me and wanting to be extremely sensitive to the group as you can see from watching the film these women do not suffer fools

aren't going to tolerate any sort of excessive unnecessary fluttering around them or they may tolerate it for a minute, but later we'll rescind some of the access that we would potentially get. So it was just this feeling of wanting to go in there in at least

obtrusive way as possible, and then knowing, kind of having the confidence from working with Pedro and many projects before that a simple approach was going to be okay, that we could, that we didn't need to overly polish anything or overthink anything, that we could show up in someone's apartment, use the natural light, embrace it for what it was, not get really, you know, not rearrange all the furniture, not get really obsessive about what something behind the person's head was going to look like, just like flow, go with it, just whatever it was, go with it. It's not to say that we didn't try to futs things, but we had to be very, very low-key and non

not crazy about it. You know, some documentary directors will really want to control everything and some films will allow that and then others,

other films won't allow it. And my experience of this film was that we needed to not try to control everything and to go with it. And just recognize that it was like a gift to even be there

and just shoot it as authentically and just try to witness it for what it was, not try to change it, not try to interfere, not try to add a layer of something that was cool. Just it was what it was. Yeah. So were you showing up with like any grip or lights at all or was it, do you, was it just in situ?

Let's figure this out. It was, we always had stuff with us, but we oftentimes didn't bring it in. We would go inside, take a look, see if we could get away without bringing anything in. Invariably, we would bring in, you know, something to hold, you know, we would have. have a few things. I think we ended up doing interviews with one single light. We always use available light and use that light in addition to it. It was like a diva, a keynote, you know, 400, just something really simple. So, so yes, but it wasn't the kind of thing where we would load in. In fact, we wouldn't at all. It's like everything's in the car. We go in, keep it really small.

And if we really, really need that light, we go back and get it, you know, quietly without bringing it. But there's certainly no, like, not a lot of extra hands, no PAs, you know, not no one, no lighting person, just, just us. Sure. Yeah. Often it was just the three, two, either, you know, Pedro and Emily or me and Emily and, or the three of us and, you know, one of us doing sound, sometimes we had the benefit of a sound person when it was complicated, but often it was just really, really small footprint. And Emily and I would go in for a reconnaissance mission, you know, to scope out, see what wouldn't, and then really only bring the equipment that was necessary. And I have to, Emily has the most extraordinary gift to, for all great doc DPs, A is to list, you know, a great doc DP not only is looking through the viewfinder, but. is also listening to we would have discussions before if it was a veritas scene of like what

things really to look out for to and Emily is so in tune and so focused and and really so her antenna is extraordinary and also the at the same time to become invisible so Well, Emily is, it really becomes invisible. And the footage that she's filming is just so it sounds, how she says it sounds, you know, effortless. And she makes it look as fruitless, but the footage is gorgeous. I mean, the way, the framing and how and her choice of lenses and how to, it really capture with such a beautiful human. humanity. Even in the most sort of simple ways, Emily is able to find that extraordinary, beautiful

humanity in the simplest details. Totally. And it cuts together really well, too. Yes. That's always important. Even better. So what was the shooting package? You know, obviously, I can't imagine you were in there with, you know, you're saying you're trying

to keep it light. So I think you're shooting probably Canon. We were shooting on Canon C300 Mark 2, and we shot a combination of the L-Series zooms and primes. In general, for stuff like this, we would always try to be on a prime because a lot of times the environments are darker and you don't want to go in there and change it if you don't have to.

But we were, depending on the scene, we spent a whole lot of time on the 70 to 200 in some of the really big, when they're all together in these big meetings spaces. I don't think it made it into the film, but we shot at a really important funeral. And, you know, I was on the longest lens I had access to for that that I could handle by myself because I wanted to stay out of the way.

And there's so much of the photography of this was really shaped by what would work for the women. Not just women. What would work for this community? what could we do that would honor what they were doing and capture it honestly but that didn't take away from why they were really there which was to be together with each other and not to ever become like a distraction or try not to do i used to shoot um concerts a lot and uh the one thing i learned was you know i've always shot on an 18 to 35 historically um and so i'm usually in there And I found that I accidentally took musicians out of what they were doing on stage by being too close.

And that's like the worst feeling in the world because that's not what you're there for. You know, they're there for the audience. You're there. You know, the fly on the wall thing is huge. It's very important. Yeah. Yeah. And these women were a lot like musicians in a way.

I mean, I keep saying women. And there are many, lots of men, too. But there's, in a way, there's just something about what they were doing together that just was so profound to me. And this feeling of like, well, not wanting to do something that would take away from that. But, you know, and just be like a bother, you know. It's like being in a church, you know. You just don't want to be doing something that affects. somebody that would take them out of something that's important like that.

Yeah, it's funny to say that now that we're talking about musicians, because I did write down, like, these are punk rock nuns, like 100%. That's the, they're the definition of punk, you know, like that you keep with, that was the other thing, too, it didn't really occur to me until I was, you know, we were farther along in the documentary, but I was like, they're not, someone brings up the question like, oh, so you've left the church in an interview, I believe. And she's like, no, we're still essentially nuns. We're just not attached to that system that we don't agree with, you know.

Exactly. And I thought that was really cool, you know, because I'm not particularly religious, but that was a, made me feel closer to them in a way. Yeah, they saw beyond the institution, but, you know, their faith and what moves them, you know, that's the beauty of it. It's not confined to an institution. They're very much about very social justice driven, very open and progressive and inclusive, and that's what they felt called to do.

And, you know, if the institution, at the end of the day, I think they grew beyond the institution. As the institution was, you know, beginning to change and then had like, oh, well, actually, no, that's too much. but they, you know, they kept with it and they're still, you know, they're still trailblazing. But yeah, it is that sort of punk rock spirit of, of, um, re-questioning, you know, that they were, Rosa, one of the, who was now Roman Catholic woman priest and was educated by them. They said they were always teaching critical thinking to question, question authority.

And that's so punk rock. I mean, like question, you know, like this, this critical thinking and questions. questioning authority and questioning the world around you and being part of the world, I think, is, yeah, as you said, totally punk rock. Yeah, and the other thing that was sort of, this might be highlighting my ignorance, but that, like, is it kind of wild that they were just, they all had PhDs, like just the smartest women in Los Angeles, like all in one spot? It's, in the 1960s, this was very rare. This is not They had more degrees amongst them than all the priests in Los Angeles And they

That's one of the things that again Going back to the punk rockness of them They were very determined to educate their sister That every sister was trained to be the best teacher professor Possible And that if that meant getting a PhD from Stanford or Columbia or wherever that's what they would do. They would send the sisters out to other institutions to get these advanced degrees to

tertiary, secondary and tertiary degrees, and so they could come back to Immaculate Heart College and teach there. That was really, I mean, there were other orders of sisters, I think, around the country that were doing that, but they were one of the most well-educated group. of sisters in the United States at that time. It was something really special and rare. And they did it to fulfill their own potential, but also for the potential of their students.

They really felt that part of their social justice work was a major component was education. That was the roots of their order when it was founded in the 1800s in Spain. It was all about education. So they really, you know, it's in their DNA and they just took it. it to the next level.

Yeah. So going back to the look of the film, I noticed at one point during one of the more modern interviews, I assume, that there was like a fake film mat that kept it 4-3. How much of that, Una, if that was you, sick, but how much of that was done in the edit? I didn't, you know, I was really just enjoying the film and then trying to take notes.

Like, I should ask about that. But yeah, how much of that was. going on like the not sitting with the format you know it's very creative instead of just filming a frame you know um i never thought i would spend so much time thinking judy and i i never thought we would spend so much time thinking about aspect ratio which is uh which definitely took a lot of discussions and band you know bandwidth as we were making the film and one of the things it was a way to unify and to

signal to the, maybe unconsciously signal to the audience of who how to group things and how to unify certain elements. So basically if you're going back and watch the film,

all the original Immaculate Heart sisters all their interviews are four by three um everyone else is 60 full frame 169 and in a way it was um a tip of the hat to unify with the original interviews that shawnee did um over 20 years ago um which were done with you know the cutting edge technology at the time which was dv and which we we captured i still have my DV deck in that closet back there, which we've used.

And we up-resed it using a new software that recently came out. But not only that, we wanted to unify everything. So we're making, that was a very conscious decision to make the four by three for all of the sisters, even the ones that we interviewed later, the ones that, the interviews that I did. Um, and also for the, uh, a lot of the archival, the films and the archival of from the time was also four by three. Um, and so it was a way to unify visually. The aspect ratio was a way to unify visually. And we had a clean. Oh, sorry, Una, go ahead. No, just I wanted to add that the first sequence I did. Um, I was also actually in the beginning, I was going to do all the anime. It's funny that you talk about it. Um, do all the. Um, do all the. Um, do all the. animation as because a lot of Corita's prints are more, you know, it's more squares. And I was kind of, that was my first idea, actually, to do, have all the animation happen as it was on a printed, on a big paper, a square on a paper. But we ended up not doing it, but

interesting in the context. And just to add to the four by three mat discussion, because there was a lot of back and forth. Originally, we had this very clean 4-3 mat that our finishing house provided to us. And as we got into it, and to go back to that idea of everything being very tactile, I mean, when we got the film scans of some of the archival footage back, we scanned it 4K and 2K, so you could see the edges of the film. And it was just so great, you know, looked. so yummy. So we just, we said like, let's make a grungy 4-3 mat that has that feeling. So that's how that came about. And we're glad you noticed it. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, what's funny is I'm seeing it a lot more. Just right now, there must be an app out there because everyone's doing

this 8mm overlay. But the thing that bothers the hell out of me is the picture goes into the sprocket hole. Like, what do you think that hole's there for? Like, it's just a burn or something? That's an aside. Every time I see it on, like, Instagram, I'm like, what are you doing? Were there any influences for this film, like, references that you guys were kind of pulling from, or was this all, aside, obviously, from Coretta's art, but, yeah, anything

like that that you were kind of like, you know what, I liked this from X documentary or X film? Um, I have to say one of the films and one of the things that I think triggered and inspired the animation was, um, Yellow Submarine, you know, the Beatles, uh, film. Did you share that with me in the beginning? Maybe we, maybe we briefly talked about it. It wasn't a big topic of discussion, but it was, that's a film that mixes animation and live action. And also, I was going to do a completely different thing then. I don't think they brought it up, actually, the Yellow Submarine. But there was another film, The Wall. The Wall, the Wall, Pink Floyd's the Wall, yeah.

One of the things that Pedro and the edit team did in prepping for not only the motion, the animation, but also the motion graphics, we had kind of two teams. Una had the animation team, which we, all the character animation sequences, and she had two people working with her, really talented people, animators. And then we had a motion graphics team, which was six people in the end in the last minute,

and they put together all those other textual or audio visualization. The typography stuff and all that? All the typography. And for that, aside from Corita, a lot of the influence came from this thing that Immaculate Heart College Art Department published called the Irregular Bulletin, which was this amazing typographic magazine photographic experiment that has a lot of the same spirit of a lot of the Carrita work. So we were definitely playing with some of those references and just being really inspired by the material itself, by all the documents. and all the photographs and the film. And I just wanted to add that, like, work, you know, starting to work with you guys.

I knew you, Judy, but I didn't know Pedro. I mean, it was such a pleasure because the way they approached me is basically, you know, yeah, they gave me some references and there's a, you know, this is kind of like the story we want to say. And then they really, they were so, you know, trust, they trusted me. And just, you know, go, you know, use your own creative, you know, go crazy, have fun. And I really got freedom to, you know, explore, well, explore a little bit, but just kind of come with my things. And they, you know, they were so open.

And, yeah, just the mindset of how they were working was really enjoyable. Yeah, that's how I felt too, onset. Yeah, I was going to, as this is technically a cinematography podcast, I'm going to address Emily here for a minute, going outside of this film, what, where do you, you know, like, where do you come from creatively? Like, what are your sort of influences if you could have lit something? Like, if you were to, are you into dramas? Like, where is your head as a cinematographer generally? So I really am, at this point, these days anyways, really a documentary person and doing a lot of Verete's stuff. So where I come at stuff is usually, like Pedro and I, we worked together for a long time and worked on other projects together. And I kind of feel like in a way we've kind of grown up together too. like I think there's a I like documentary stuff that is really relationship um how to put this um privileging the relationships of the filmmakers to the subjects and serving what that is

whatever that is because I think the best stories come out of deeper connections and so when I approach my work it's really relationship focused it's me to the subject not a direct relationship to the subject, but it's sort of me to the ideas coming up in the film and then me to the director and the producer directly. So I don't know if I'm answering your question because I think I'm just thinking, I'm thinking about it more in terms of how I approach documentary.

But in the big picture, I am really a doc nerd at this point, very happily. It's an exhausting profession, so I don't know how long it'll last, but I like it for the moment. and I tend to approach the projects I like the best are the ones where

they're not super the gear of course is always present and you have to be incredibly good at handling all that but that's not what I'm interested in thinking about ever like I'm interested in listening to these the people that I'm filming and trying to find the right metaphors that are around them naturally to try to

bring their story out visually so sure were there any uh documentaries that stood out to you when you were um getting started that really like inspired you or or uh made you think that that was going to be the career path that you wanted to go down yeah yeah oh my gosh so many i mean like for example one of my this just goes to show you because there's no cinematographer on this film one of my favorite films of all time is tarnation there's no cinematographer on that film it's very relationship, um, centered. And it is a story that very much comes out of, uh, deep, a deep psychological. It's, it's one of those films where the person in the film made the film, you know, and it's all this archival. It's similar, in some ways similar to this one. It says

a hundred percent archival. Um, but, um, yeah, so I, I tend to like really weird stuff. And it's not, I mean, I think I got inspired to get involved in documentaries because I really love documentaries, not because I fell in love with documentary cinematography, although it's hard to separate those two things. But a lot of times, I'll see films all the time that I think look fantastic. They're not necessarily my favorite films. My favorite films are the ones that, you know, sort of not necessarily, I'm not necessarily just thinking about cinematography. I'm thinking about the people. Sure. I mean, that's, you know, there is two kinds of cinematographers. There's ones that make super pretty pictures and ones that

serve the story. Yeah, and I'm definitely, or at least I'm trying to be the second. I like the pretty pictures. I mean, no cinematographer doesn't, but that's not how you get a great film in my, at least the kinds of films that I really respond to. Sure, and I assume too, you know, especially

when you're talking about having to blend in with your subjects and stuff like that, the things that would make a pretty picture, tons of grip, lights, time, spending terms of of time is, rigging for the camera. Yeah, is anathema to what you're trying to do. Yeah, yeah, like one of those things that comes up all the time these days is everyone's always says, oh, are you going to use an easy rig? Which, of course, there's a part of me that's

like, God, I would love to use an easy rig. It makes things a lot easier. But I never do that because the kinds of films I'm on, having something that makes me look that different from everybody else in the room would be completely disruptive. And for lots of films, it's not the case, and certainly for commercials and all that stuff, it totally works. But for true Veritas films, like, you just can't walk in there looking like Darth Vader or looking like something else. You just, you just can't. Even if you're in a room full of Darth Vader's, maybe, maybe if you're making a film about camera operators, you could probably do it. But otherwise, I try to just keep it simple.

Is there, um, go ahead, Pedro. I was just going to, in that vein, I actually was going to ask Judy to repeat her professors. Actually, it was a big time cinematographer. Actually, in their, you know, fiction cinematographer, but gave the best advice in a way that we also tried to live by a lot. Yeah, it was the other watchword in the making of this. I studied in film school with the cinematographer Woody Oman's

who shot Coming to America and just a lovely human being. And this, we apply to everything, largely the motion graphics and to a certain degree the editing, but this is a cinematography story. And what do you would say, when you feel like you've got the scene perfectly lit, you've spent, you know, as much time as the producer would allow you to light the scene, stand back and start turning off lights. And then you'll get to the perfectly lit scene that tells the story. And so it's all about simplifying kind of what you were talking about earlier, Emily, and getting out of the way of the story and letting the story tell itself in its most simple, elegant form. And we use that over and over again, especially in the motion graphics, just peeling back, literally turning off layers to be able to just get to the essential elements that you need to tell the story, nothing more, nothing less. so that's a story I live by he had one other story which we didn't use as much in this one but it also is great and I'll tell it really quickly which is just the one third one third one third rule

and that is that one third of your shots you pour everything into it's like these are your money shots you milk it for everything you can one third of the shots you spend as much time as you're allowed to and get it as good as you can. And one third of the shots are throwaways. And that's when you know, like, you just have to get it and move on. And I, you know, that's also like kind of a rule that you could apply to almost anything in life, I think. That there are things that you really invest in, and then there are other things that you can let go of in order to make the good stuff really, really shine. Yeah, the theme of, like I said, I've been ratcheting through interviews today. and uh tomorrow and the next day and um a theme that i'm noticing a lot is is cinematographers in

general are and i think it's probably has something to do with the new digital technology you know you don't need as much light you don't need we're all going back to like really simple let the location speak to what the lighting is going to look like maybe modify it a little bit or add or subtract even um but there's there's just a very uh not hands off approach but just a just a very light touch, it seems, going forward, which I'm actually for, because that also makes it easier for young filmmakers coming up to reach the quality, so to speak, that they're seeing in larger films, because, you know, it's not as produced and, you know, aggressively massaged.

There's one other way to applying Judy's thoughts and the same kind of concept of simplicity that I think people forget, especially up and coming, is not moving the camera to, much. That's a thing that I think you can, if you really slow down, and I think we did this in this film naturally because we're working, we were working with older people for the most part, not 100%, but just realizing that when you're filming something and you're feeling really captivated by what you're seeing, I think a lot of people's instinct is to change it. Like, I'm so captivated by this. Therefore, I must need to do more. But actually, you just just need to pull you need to stop and let yourself be captivated and and say with the moment and because if

you change something you won't have it on film because you're changing it there's a piece you're going to miss there no matter how quickly you can get over there you're going to miss something and then the other thing is you're going to trigger your subject to get out of it and so if it's good enough and what's happening is extraordinary you just totally freeze and just stick with it until it dies which sometimes isn't for a long time and you just sort of slow everything down a lot of times when I'm mentoring I notice people's footage just has like five shots

where if it were me you would all just have been one I wouldn't have moved at all because something really extraordinary was happening yeah I think it can be easy to get a little a little two in your head instead of kind of getting lost in the monitor you know like like when especially starting out I consciously had to make the habit of like

if I'm watching this and I'm interested, then it's probably interesting. I don't need to add to it. Yeah, and you don't need to insert yourself into it. In fact, just, yeah, totally. You can set up to second-guess thing, like, oh, I should get another piece of coverage because they're going to cut it. But it's like, no, you just have to be with it and trust that you'll have time. And, you know, you do have to move.

It's not like you can go home with just one angle, but just have to slow down. Yeah. speaking of gear and then we'll kind of go back to a more general question do you see yourself using like you said you shot on the c 300 i currently am shooting on the c 500 uh have you seen the c70 the little it's like the c300 mark three i have not um but i keep asked people other people have asked me but i haven't shot on that since since it came out yeah i mean neither of i but it's i'm i'm wondering if because that's the first camera that like it's in it i don't like the DSLR form factor, um, of any camera, but that is the closest I've seen to like a really

small, um, cinema quality camera because it's the C300 mark three sensor. Yeah. So I suspect that'll then become, well, I have to see what it looks like, but I have, I wouldn't be surprised at that then becomes the B camera or a lot of shoots. Well, because going back to your point about, um, getting out of the way of your subject, like that thing is this big, you know, so, uh, it's, Cool. And Pedro and I have worked on a project together. We met like maybe 13, 12 or 13 years ago on a project that was 100% DSLR tiny all over the world. And that was really eye-opening. The difference between shooting on, I mean, the C-300 is still quite small. So I don't want to put that in the big camera category. But that little 5D, I think it was that we were shooting on at that point, I mean, I really experienced how profoundly different it was for the subject. I mean, I get, I could see, like, I was in, I got things and I was in rooms.

I could never have gotten or been in rooms before. It was like so eye-opening to me, having, you know, for a long time been on larger cameras. And the other, the other thing I, I'm not for Veritaine. It depends. I mean, each project, you know, has its own unique challenges and needs, but I'm, um, When possible, I prefer for Verite scenes. I prefer one camera. I am not a fan of two camera, like, Verite shoots,

because everything just becomes too self-conscious. And, you know, the two camera people then are more worried about staying out of each other's shots and not the story, and the people in front of the camera are now that there's two it just pulls everything out of the story in a way and I'm like I'm a big fan of like

if the cinematographer is good and Emily is the best then you don't need two cameras to film Veritas seems that's a good note I totally agree with that I totally agree with that and I can't tell you how many times I've been in situations

where we really botched a scene because two cameras, the thing about two cameras people don't realize is the cinematographer has to be good. The B camera operator has to be amazing. Amazing. What that person has to keep in their head is twice as much as what the cinematographer, the A person does. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to shoot a scene with two cameras, the more experienced person should be B camera. The A camera also has to be amazing. great but the the person who can think about everything and just be nimble more nimble because

they're more experience and should be the beat camera the other thing i learned from emily is that when your dp asks you for a sound person listen to them because i think i think you said to me emily that if you want the best picture then get me a sound person um because yeah i mean you know we are not professional sound people and knowing when to get out of the way and how to how to manage and do the dance with the DP, especially in Veritas situations, is so important. So was this, that's a good question. Was this a lot of lov or were you boomed or even camera mounted? It was booming, but it was just not necessarily with professionals. I mean, we, we were just doing it. But it was, what did we also put lobs on people a little bit?

Yeah. But you guys always, I mean, the good thing is you didn't only put a lob on. You know, when you just have a lob on, then you really have one perspective. And you end up having to shoot in a very particular way to capture that. If you have a boom, then the world can get so much bigger. And, you know, you can not only see things from that person's perspective and understand what they're going through. But then they, you know, the opening scene of the film, wouldn't have been possible if it was just a love

because we needed to hear what the other family was saying. I literally have your fantastic intro, first note. That was me on sound. I just want to take credit for that. That's so important that it's not just that law, because I get asked a lot to just go out by myself with a lot, and it's fine, but it's much more limiting. Something surprising can't happen, you know.

You think it's a one-person scene, but it could turn into a three-person scene, and you won't be able to get it. Totally. Yeah, I think we almost always shot with a lov if we had a central subject. Like, in that opening scene, Lenore was loved. And Emily always had a shotgun on her camera, just, you know, just in case. Yeah, a good one. And then, yeah, like a Senheiser 416 or something like that.

So I got on this guy. And then the Senheiser 416 on the boom as well. Yeah. Cool. What camera are you on, Kevin? Kenny, sorry. C500 Mark 2. Oh, cool.

Yeah, it's just massive over. Oh, it's my favorite camera ever. I mean, I put it up against, I was doing some tests with the local runner house, Stray Angel, put it up against the mini LF, put it up against the FX9, the Venice. I love the Venice, but the C500, it's like so small. The raw light, 6K raw light's amazing. It's a great camera for Veritay shooting. anybody who's listening.

I've been trying, I've been recommending it for projects where relationship-based, you know, projects that are intimate. It's a great camera. Yeah. And then I did the extra leg work of I, because I had the footage,

I just made picture profiles for all of the Canon cameras. And where they matched an Alexa. So I just, you know, color chart vector scope went in the color matrix tools of all the cannons and matched them up so that people could use, any candidate at this point but as a B cam to the Alexa because I know that's a really popular

thing to do but yeah I'm using that now subtle plug for myself moving on you know we've only got you a few more minutes was there anything that and this goes for all of you anything that you learned

during the production of this film that made that you sort of like wish you knew at the beginning or that advice that you would give to someone in a similar position or someone just starting we'll start with pedro i mean i think what we've already discussed i think this is one of um with the main lessons it's uh let the story lead you know um less always be on the lookout what lights do you need to

turn off to see what the um just to really bring the story in focus um and um but i don't know if that's something i learned on this project um it's something that was enhanced i think on this project maybe una well actually uh for me one of the things i learned um is that the thing is usually when I worked on a lot of documentaries and up until now I was doing it myself pretty much

but this project was different first of all I was busy with something else and secondly it was a lot of animation and just the character story animations so we brought in

Brandon Blomart and Darren Passenp Pasemko, to really help bring this to life. So, I mean, I guess it's not necessarily an advice to other people, but basically just I had to learn to direct my vision as an animation director while also listening to Pedro with him being the director. And, you know, it can be. challenging at times and it's you know as things get busy and intense you know you try to kind of

hold on to what you had in the beginning but you also have to be very open and you also have to when you work with people I think the first thing you need to know is just to um get to know their character you know and I feel like that's a lot to do with how how you work with people like oh that this is how they are and this is how it works best to so I'm actually now I'm actually talking about relationships with people that you work on that's huge that's huge yeah so that i feel like i learned a lot about that and um yeah and just kind of trying to stick with what you had but also knowing that you know things will evolve especially you have to let go sometimes and you have to be open for things the animation you know it started out um very flat kind of graphicy

from Correa, but it did evolve a lot and that partly because we were trying to really tell stories and we, there was more depth that kind of came we ended up having a little bit more depth in some of the animations and kind of cinema, yeah, more cinematic scenes versus

graphic scenes. I'm more graphic personally. So it was an interesting learning curve. I learned a lot. It was amazing. And you were doing that all in After Effects? All in After Effects. The first sequence and the initial idea was to animate masks only.

So basically, so all the movement of the characters would be very flat and kind of like these shapes, basically. But, you know, we ended up, of course, there's so much there were so much work to be done. And there were so many characters, actually. It's very character-based. So

in the end, it became a bit of puppet and you will see that you know it the animation definitely evolved and but overall we were managing to unify it and the color schemes but yeah so initially

it was masks mask animation for some reason I never would have thought to do that I don't use a lot of after effects but I would have been the idiot who put in a puppet and then was like and then the arm goes like this well you're not an idiot and usually

people is this i i think you know they're talking about tactile and that's probably the reason judy contacted me you know i'm i'm from like a hand-drawn stop um two-dimensional stop motion where you know this that's what drives me and actually graphic design too that's where i come from so and but i you know i work a lot in after effects but i always like you know i i i don't like to use a lot of effects, you know, and I just, I wanted, it comes from the heart and from the mood and the feeling, you know. And so, you know, animating masks with a heavy character animation, 10 minutes of character animation, it's kind of crazy, you know, and yes, maybe if you have a lot of time, you could do that. But inevitably, it's going to evolve and change.

Sure. Judy, any lessons from you? I think just with every project I work, on, you know, every project is hard. Every project has challenges. But finding the team of people that you love to work with whose work and integrity you value above all and working with them over and over again and establishing these long-term relationships where you develop a sort of rhythm with each other. And then bringing, you know, and also bringing new people into the fold and nurturing them, we brought several, like, younger people up in this, in this film. And, and that is really important, too. So, and they'll never get out of our clutches again, either, you know? So, I mean, like, you know, I'm, I, I, every time I reach out to Emily to say,

are you available? She's always busy, but I'm always going to keep texting her first. Because, you know, like, you just want to work with great people. I've already talked. talk to Una about another project that she might be too busy for, but you always just want to, you know, work with people who share your values, both on a creative level and just on a human level. Yeah, totally. And that's it. Okay, but, um, Emily. Oh, um, uh, I, this project wasn't, I guess it wasn't like a learning on this project, but really reinforce, this project really reinforced it. And it's kind of a wrapped up with advice for a person starting out as a cinematographer is I would put a lot of energy into getting,

it sounds so obvious, but really getting to know your director. I think this film was a really fun experience for me because Pedro and I know each other well. We've worked on other projects together. We spent time just trying to figure each other out and, you know, what do you care about? Like, what, you know, what is that thing? You think that's tacky or you think that's beautiful? Just that kind of stuff. And, like, I think there's so much, to me, that's sort of the case to the kingdom is trying, you know, as a cinematographer, I see my job is trying to bring, trying to be like a proxy for a director. Like, if they had the skill to shoot this scene, what would they do? And I try to figure that out and try to get to know that person so that I can, you know, kind of do what is in their head that I can't see and try to get it.

out of them. And I just think that takes time and it takes relationship building. And it's like such an important part of the creative process. Well, our time is up, unfortunately. I could talk to you guys for much longer, I feel. But thank you all so much for spending this past hour with me. Like I said, I really loved the film. I've been telling a handful of my documentarian friends to go see it. And although I'm lucky, I got the screener. They got to figure out another way. and yeah hopefully you know our cross will pass again in the future yeah yeah likewise thank you so much nice to meet you thank you and if we could just plug you know follow us uh rebel hearts film yes is our handle on social media and it's also our website so there will be other festival

screenings coming up and other announcements about how people can see it so hope people seek us out awesome well thanks again and yeah have a great rest of your day frame and reference is an albot production it's produced and edited by me canny mcmillan distributed by pro video coalition our theme song is written and performed by mark pelly and the f and r matbox logo was designed by nate truex of truex branding company you can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to provideocoolition.com or youtube.com slash alabot respectively and as always thanks for listening You know,