Frame & Reference Podcast - 73: "Key and Peele" DP Charles Papert

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

On this weeks episode, Kenny talks with "Key and Peele" cinematographer Charles Papert. Other than his work on "Key and Peele", Charles shot "A Black Lady Sketch Show" and "Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television." He also worked on both "Office Space" and "American History X" which is super cool! 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 McMill, and today we're talking to Charles Pappare, the DP of Kean Peel. I actually first heard of Charles, you know, as a person, through the DVX user forums, of which I am a member, and so is he and he would post lighting breakdowns from Key & Peel. But I always was interested in talking to him because of that, but never reached out. And then he reached out to me. And, you know, he said he liked the podcast, that we might have an interesting, fun conversation. And we did.

So, yeah, nothing to sell here. This is just two DPs having a good time talking about the work, the life, and everything in between. So, yeah, I'll let you get. to it. Please enjoy my conversation with Charles O'Pere. Well, I personally find the transition from analog to digital, very interesting, and picking the brains of people who were working through that change. Because when I graduated college in 2012, and so by that time, you know, pretty much everyone had flipped over to the 5D at the indie level, you know, weren't using DVXs anymore. Obviously, the

red had just come out. So I shot 16 millimeter before I went to college, like at a film school, like a, you know, New York Film Academy. And I found that experience very edifying. And I definitely carried it into my digital worker, or that workflow, I suppose. But yeah, I do find that transition period very interesting. And I like talking about it. So like when people talk about, oh, yeah, I was in the darker all the time. I got to do that in college. Right. So maybe more fun because I had a little bit more wits about me than a 13-year-old. But still, yeah, you didn't get to, you didn't do it under the pressure of a professional environment or the deadlines. And, I mean, you know, not the college doesn't have its own pressure.

But when you're, when it's the tools of your trade and you're forced into using very, that's something we can definitely talk about because I started in a three quarter inch tape. Well, I started fucking around with VHS. But professionally, I was, you know, I had a. period of shooting, editing, producing local commercials on three quarter inch tape to tape. And boy, did I learn a lot from that. So we can definitely talk about that part of it. Yeah. And how that impacts now because it really does, it gives me a different mentality. Yeah, because you've had, we'll just roll into it. Because you had, or have had a pretty storied career. You know, you've, you've worked pretty much in all facets of filming. I don't even

want to say the industry because at this point it's it's many industries you know doing industrials and right television stuff are all closely related but you know it's like people hey can you shoot me a TikTok I'm like I don't know if I can well you do video it's different it really is transitions yeah I agree yeah I think there's there's you know 12 year olds doing things in that medium that I can't do I just a friend of my posts on Facebook recently about their length of time you know how the length of education they had learning avid and using avid professionally and they cannot figure out the TikTok editor yeah and like that says a lot because it's working in a different mentality than our brains i'm not good with a lot with any of those sort of newer simplified

video editors they don't work my brain the same way my brain does you know i just recently saw a i don't want to call it a study but it was an article um and it said that People who are about my age who grew up sort of during the peak of the early Internet when you still had to tinker and figure everything out to get through it are more technologically literate than Gen Z because Gen Z has been primarily brought up on iPhones and simplification and not tinkering. So Gen Z seems to be about as literate as the boomers according to this article. and X and millennials are more in that like we used to build our own stuff whether online or not you know the forum eras which we can talk about and so I think that's it I mean I saw recently a Reddit Thriver this guy was like yeah I saw on TikTok that I should be using I'm making this up but it was like something like Allegiant editor is that better than Premiere and we were like

what the hell is that because they don't you pop open premiere and it's confusing as shit if you don't have the industrial knowledge. Right, true. Yeah. Or the, and the time and energy to learn it. Because I think a lot of it, the learning curve is, if it can't be explained in a single YouTube video, I don't want it. Right.

You know, and all the legit software out there is so deep that, I mean, I've been using Photoshop hardcore for over 20 years. I probably only scratch about 10% of it at best. And if I look at a tutorial online, I'm like, apparently I don't know how to use this at all. I can get the, you know, you know. Have you been doing anything? This just happened to here recently where I was like, man, I just wish there was a tool

to do something. And I like, oh, I Googled it. And sure enough, there's like, in the last update, they're like, yeah, we just added this. Like recently, they added sky replacement in Photoshop. It has its own sky replacement. Okay. Yeah.

It's got its own, all the AI tools, AI upscale or all these things that like, content-aware scale? Yeah, yeah, my feeling about it is that Adobe realized they were getting their ass handed them technologically by $3 apps that you could buy that literally, because I have friends who will go on their phone and go, boom, boom, boom, make a funny little comp, and I'm like, you know, I can do that, but it's going to take me an hour. So it's like, so Adobe's like, yeah, I guess we're going to have to put that simplified AI stuff in their AI stuff instead of, in addition to all.

the old methods. And yeah, you're right. I didn't know there's a sky replacement tool. I have to go look at that. Sounds great. It's like literally in a drop-down anyway. But I wanted to talk about the tape era. Yeah. Were you doing like, you weren't doing like VHS to VHS. Were you digitizing at that point? Oh, God, no. That term didn't even exist. I mean, you know, I started playing around in the, whatever the math would be, I guess late seven. 70s when I was in grade school, tape to tape, for sure. Originally, half inch black and white reel to reel was the first system I used, which the methodology for making an edit on that was you'd line up the two decks

and you would take a, in my mind it was a grease pencil, but it could have been a felt tip, and you would mark X's on the back of the tape at certain points, and then you'd wind back, just wind back, put another X, wind it back some more, put another X, hit play on one, watch for the X's, and go three, two, one, and then click, and then you jam it into record. It was like a manual countdown.

I mean, what? But it got better, but there was always issues. I mean, VHS to VHS, you could make one generation down of dub and you'd lose a bunch of quality, and then you'd make a copy of that, and it was looking terrible.

So it was almost pointless. But professionally, I got a job working at a production company in my early 20s and it was three quarter inch again all tape to tape again pre pre digital era and um again marginally better but now I was working under deadline um this was a tiny company they would hand me a script I would go out and shoot it with one or two other people helping me direct it shoot it just I mean I came you know I'd read the script to go okay I'll figure out what to do with that come back and edit it and it would be on the air two days later

which was an incredible boot camp for me to learn how to, basically the advantages there was I learned very quickly how not to frustrate myself as an editor. So the shooter part of me was like, oh, I got it, especially shooting B-roll. I learned how you, the basic rule of V-roll, which is start on one thing, count to a certain number of seconds, make your move to the next thing,

and then count for a certain number of seconds, giving you three separate pieces, clips, right? two statics with a move in between them because everyone else just sort of moves around the camera and then you're sitting there like grabbing the very last frame you can. I mean, that kind of stuff still to this day is advice that I'll give operators if they're grabbing things. I'm like, no, you're not, you got to hold it either end of that move, you know. That's the amount of, because you're an online individual, we know this. Have you seen what is, I have a theory that this this huge push, current push,

push on, you know, YouTube and whatnot, or let's say a popular video, towards B-roll. Everything is, no, there's no more A-roll. B-roll is the new A-roll. Right. My theory is that because no one has a script, no one has a story to tell, they're like, well, I can make this pretty. And so they just make some pretty stuff, you know. And most of them are photographers, right? They get like a DSLR, they shoot photos, they figure that out, and then they're like, oh, this is a video mode. Right. Do you think that's had a, first of all, any other tips about shooting B-roll from seeing

those that you have? Or do you think those are cool and new? Are they kind of annoying? Well, I mean, look, everything cool and new is annoying. No. Fair? Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

It's not. But it's funny when you've been around for a few cycles and what's cool and new is something you did yourself 20 years ago. and you saw it go in and out of a trend and then it comes back around again. A lot of the popularity of vintage lenses now is a little bit of a head scratcher to me. There are lenses that I was like, thank God we have something better now that has replaced that. I'll never use that lens again, bye-bye. And I'm like, well, that's the cool thing now.

And it's worth four times as much as it was when no one wanted it 12 years ago. you know i i keep i keep a little mental list of things that haven't yet come back to go i should start reintroducing this to my work to see if i can kickstart that trend you know uh like dutching dutching was huge in the 90s it hasn't truly come back yet it's probably about to and the next person that does it it's all what i i would guess one reason format oh four man's watching Not by 16. Yeah, but, you know, sure. You could.

There's no reason you could. She's wide enough, I guess. Yeah, it's just more that early 90s MTV vibe where you could not, not just so much the videos, but the, you know, the interviews and the BTS and all that. It was a hilarious thing, as I did some stringing for VH1 and MTV back in those days, and you'd have the beta cam in your shoulder. You'd hit record. Someone would say action and you instantly just start throwing your body around up and down, pushing in and out. and, you know, everything rolling on the shoulder. Rapidia still do that.

Yeah, not to the, I mean, I have some old tapes and I laugh at them when I watch. I'm like, yeah, that's such the look of its time. So, yeah, there's been a couple of things that I've done over the recent years where we've wanted to do a little bit of a callback. And I've had to coach the operators into how, what, you know, what was the look from back then. And it's very against the grain for some of them to be able to, like a steady cam, operator when they're just rock and rolling. I'm like, yeah, have fun with, have fun with the third axis, you know, roll that shit. And it's, and you realize that there's nuances to it,

um, that it is not automatic, especially if you're unlearning in a way. Um, a version of that that I was never good at myself, um, was sort of a mockumentary, you know, a faux doc look a la the office. Um, it's an incredible skill to be able to shoot like you don't know what the next thing happening is. The easy version of that is when someone starts dialogue, don't hinge to them before they start waiting to hear them and then go find them. But the SnapZoom part to make it truly look organic and do a great job at it, you can't teach it.

You just have to either. Some people are just really good at it. It did come up in a show. We did a momentary parody of the office. And it didn't feel right. I couldn't articulate what about it because I just didn't have that. within myself. If I picked up the camera, I couldn't do a better job. And when I saw it cut together, yeah, it didn't quite work. We didn't nail it. I interviewed the DP of Parks and Rec,

and he also shot some of the office. And if I recall correctly, I could be making this up. But if I recall correctly, we were kind of talking about how the camera person is not only also kind of an actor, but also kind of needs to have great comedic timing. Like that's where the zooms come is like, you know that beat has been hit and then you snap it as the punctuation, which turned into, if you watch going back to what these damn kids are doing, you know, TikTok, Instagram videos, whatever, they all, because they've been watching the office for a decade, right, those punch zooms, the little two finger punch zooms. I see it all the time. And I'm like, that is a visual language that strictly comes from the office or like

a mighty wind or whatever, you know, like all those early mockumentaries. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, it has become a huge part of vocabulary and 100% it is, it's, you have to understand the joke to know how to punctuate it. And where does the snap come in? Does it come during the joke, immediately after the joke? Do you give it a beat or a half beat for awkwardness and to let it sink in before you snap? What's the speed of the snap? Is it in two pieces? There's so many tiny facets to it and you can really make the joke land with that camera move and I actually probably more than any other type of operating that I can imagine that you know there's I do have a good sense of moving camera and how a like a dolly or a steady cam a smooth move that's kind of like a

slow drift how that can impact and help or hurt a joke right there is a thing about having a moving shot that comes to a dead stop. that's like a needle scratch moment to use another dated reference and if you keep moving through a joke you can actually hurt that punch you know so that's something that comes up much more often and the type of stuff that we shoot which I find really interesting I really love the idea of it the cinematography end of it being a compliment to comedy yeah I actually uh we'll get back into comedy, but I have a terrible memory and I'm also quite scatterbrained. So I did want to ask when you were saying that you were like stringing and whatnot earlier, what was kind of that industrial

cinematography like functionally? Like when you were going out with a couple people, like, how are you handling lighting? Were you just looking for like good positions or what? How did that kind of come about mechanically? Well, first of all, yeah, this again, this is a, this is going back a good way is that when I was working at that job, the cameras that were using, the video cameras were tube cameras, plumacons, satacond, the old tech before solid state chips. And they needed a lot more light. They were definitely not 800. They weren't even 500. They were generally more like 250, 320 ASA. So, of course, we had to, we had to light them a lot. If you think back to sort of the classic television studios years ago, they were pounding light in there because the tubes were

very hungry. So, yes, everything had to be lit. Everything was hot lights, of course. And I learned a lot about lighting in that era. In fact, a tremendous, again, those couple of years, even though much of what I was shooting got awful and now I watch it and I just laugh my ass off because they're local commercials in a small market. I mean, most of them were the guy who owned the company screaming at the camera, come on down

kind of thing, right? But every now and then, I would sneak in a good one. Usually, if they allowed me to write one, I would create some magnum opus. I'd take three times too long shooting it. My boss would yell at me and then put it on the company demo reel. And I look back at those and I go, yeah, that's, that is a kid really trying to punch above his class and be a filmmaker. Using very limited tools. I was all about how do I make three quarter inch video look filmic?

We had, I'm getting away from lighting for a sec, but we'll get back. into it we had a one box it was like a frame a frame grabber a frame store um which i discovered that if you push one button on it it would drop every other field of video so instead of a 60 i it became essentially 30 i which has the cadence much more of film than 60 i did right and i was like this is our magic bullet this is how we're going to create spots that look filming right and i was using promists and nets and you know i wasn't the only one doing the this, of course, but in a small market, we were starting to, you know, our boss was starting to sell this look to clients. He was like, we have this, this is what, we're the only ones in the era doing

this shit, you know, because no one was going to pay for film. I mean, we bought a filter. Yeah, exactly. But it's, you know, it's, it's that and camera moves and all the other thing, and long lens, of course, you know, shooting white open on the, on these broadcast lenses. I was just doing everything I could. And it was, it was, it's kind of fun to be, to have to work with such limited tools and torture them into doing something they were never meant to do. I agree. Video engineers probably tore their hair out when we turned this stuff in because that's what they love to do in those days was try to find anything wrong.

And I'm like, no, everything's right. It's the other way around, dude. Take a look at it. It looks great. Yeah, but on the scope, it says, I'm like, oh, damn it. Yeah. I remember the DVX era, the same thing happening where because you had that built-in lens, you had to the cinematography teachers are always like stand as far back as you can and zoom in and

we were like okay because that's how you got the shallow depth of field or you bought the crazy adapters you know the uh the uh the uh yeah the mini 35 micro yeah yeah i did a lot of stuff with the with the mini 35 that was that was a hot trend for a minute i had one of those um and at xl 1 i love that combo and then it i still have my xl 2 oh look at you right over there love it love it that camera. They should bring it back. Just put a better chip in it. You're right. They probably should. I mean, yeah, that body with a super 35 chip would be really fun to own, wouldn't it, in its own weird way. I mean, it was a terrible form factor. That was the beginning of the best I loved it. Did you? Yeah, I found it very, it had a top handle. It had an I piece. You know,

it was very ENG, but it felt right. I don't know. Maybe it's just because it was like the first professional camera I had, but... Well, yeah, I mean, I shouldn't say it was terrible. A lot of worse things happened after that. At least you could bump it up against your shoulder. Everything after that, like the DVX, you held in your hands in front of you, and I grew

up on shoulder-mounted cameras, so yeah, I had a very specific feeling about that. But, yeah, I mean, I shouldn't say terrible. It was a wonderful camera. And it actually, I will say that it was... They're not listening. It's fine. You can... Oh, yeah. No, but I...

I do take it back. It's one of my favorite cameras that I own because the emotional attachment I have to it was buying that camera in what the late 90s and then getting Final Cut Pro 1. I realized that I had the guts to be able to make films myself with some reasonable degree of accomplishment visually.

That it wasn't just sort of this half-assed there's nothing really filming about that. No, you actually could use frame mode. I could edit it at home. It had 24P the XL2. Oh, the XL2 at 24P, okay. That was a big selling point. So it improved on the frame mode from the XL1, did it? Yeah, because 28 days later shot on XL1S's and they had to convert. They got PAL versions because it had a higher resolution by whatever it was 20 lines. Yeah, yeah. And then had to

drop frames or something, you know, do a pull-down. God bless it. Yeah, I remember watching that movie and being fascinated with it, although there were shots that I was like, I can't actually figure out what's happening in this shot because there just isn't enough resolution. A little blown out. Yeah, by today's standards.

It's interesting looking back at, because I started in video and then when I moved out to L.A., everything was film. I went from, we were jumping a little bit, but my period after working that production company, the next 10 years, I worked in Boston, as a Steadicam operator and as a D.P. And my workload

was probably 60-70 percent beta-type shooting and the rest of it was film, either 16 or 35. But all Airy, for instance, because we were in a small market. And then I started getting work out of town as a Steadicam operator and it became

suddenly I'm working with Panavision cameras and things are very exciting. Move to L.A. And that's all it was. It was just like the high end gear and I thought, okay, that's it. Bye-bye to video. And then 12, 15 years later, it's creeping back in. And then it goes completely, you know, everything that I had learned was still applicable back in the day. And for people who were having a hard time because I'd only come up in film, I had a little bit of a nudge there because I wasn't scared at all. The F900 was a very comfortable camera for me to get into. That camera, we need to give George Lucas a little more credit for what he's done for the industry. Maybe he didn't make your favorite film. Right. Not just maybe, definitely.

But yes, he definitely, he was, yes, making that push to digital was definitely, he's a large part of that. And inspiring Panavision to go that direction and then ultimately come up with the Genesis, which, of course, was the first truly legit, I think, cinema camera, digital cinema camera. And a lot of stuff was shot on that Genesis, like a lot. Yeah, I got to work on one of the early films with it, maybe number five or something. And as an operator, and it was really fascinating. It was very, everything was wild and woolly. Each team was talking to the net.

You know, we'd call up the ACs from the previous movie, the guys from Apocalyptic. And so, what did you do with this? How'd you do that? It was pretty weird to go from a very legitimate, mature workflow with film to this haphazard ad hoc. Well, we need to put the recorder in a backpack. So we buy a camping backpack. Well, it's overheating.

We'll just leave it unzipped. And we're making, you know, a studio feature with this weird hodgepodge of equipment. There was something kind of exciting and fun about it. And again, I just, you know, Having had that background and video, it hurt a lot of people's heads. And I was kind of like enjoying pulling them from my youth, you know? But ultimately, it was really a pain in the ass. Certainly as an operator, you lost the eyepiece that was the best seat in the house with film

became the worst seat in the house for a number of years there. You know, the early cameras were black and white. You know, they were tiny little chips or tubes in there. and you just went well I can't see shit anymore so that kind of thing you know as a steady camera operator those early cameras we called that camera the camera the genocide because it was so heavy and it wasn't until the Alexa that things settled down

and got really good right and that's almost exactly the time when I moved up to D peeing and I didn't have to carry him around anymore oh that's nice actually that's that's a perfect segue to that question I asked a little bit ago I swear to God we won't jump around as much. But how did lighting for tube cameras and all that sort of translate over to lighting for something like the Genesis? Because film lighting, or all three, you know, just like if you could touch on that little triangle, because obviously where you put the lights doesn't really change, but what you're choosing and how you're lighting it does. Yeah. Well, so tube cameras,

again, they're very starred for light and also very limited dynamic range. So a lot of the time you were just trying to bring, you know, you'd have to expose for the highlights, absolutely, you know, exposed to the right with a tube camera because there was, the clipping was got awful. There was, it was as bad as you could possibly imagine because it would actually start to smear and highlight streaks and whatnot. So it was all about knocking down. Yeah.

I mean, now looks cool. Back then, you know, you were struggling to hide all that stuff. So you would knock down the highlights as much as you can and then you'd have to like, pour in all this fill to bring up the other end. So you're basically squeezing everything into like five stops. And even then, it's a challenge to make it look good and artistic and make good choices. You know, under-exposing on those cameras didn't look groovy in any way, shape, or form. So you would, you'd everything be right at the edge.

Film, of course, certainly more forgiving in the highlights, not a ton more forgiving in the shadows, really, when it came down to it. so you were still working on it had a lot of dynamic range but it did crunch up in the shadows compared to what was to come after it in the early digital cameras still you know the clip was still a bit funky but you had suddenly all the shadow detail so you really didn't have to use as much fill with the with these you know what was discovery mid 2000s or late 2000s with those new cameras it wasn't that you didn't have to light and they also weren't as fast as they became either so you know you were comparable to film stocks maybe you know you know sort of a mid-level film stock for speed. Yeah, the F-900 was like 320, I think. 3-20, yeah, exactly. Which is funny to think now, you know, being at 320 base seems like, for an interior seems very slow, but at the time it was just average.

Right. So, yeah, finally when you got log, things started to, you know, it became a, you know, the highlight roll-off improved significantly, and you still had all that shadow detail to play with, that it started to get very comfortable and also kind of exciting that you could you could start to let things under expose you could let you know the dark sort of a face drop without it going a weird color and of course now we're just going to see more and more of that you know the the new Alexa adding a little bit more latitude in there is going to be really fun to play with I've noticed I've noticed that when people talk about wanting the film look you know in sort of the indie realm they often are talking about under exposed you know like that green shadow side and stuff like that like because like perfectly exposed film when scan just looks like digital you know like these days it does yeah yeah with the digital scans and the modern stocks I sadly I agree with you yeah I'm not quite sure what the point is anymore yeah I mean just well that that's yeah that's the thing like what do you what kind of film you're up again people are want the artifact of film. They want deep grain and goofy shadows and stuff like that.

I mean, that's why 16mm is becoming so popular because it's so clearly as film originated. Yeah. Versus a very clean 35 negative. Well, and going back to what you were saying about being in the dark room and like making, this was off recording, but going to the dark room and making smears by moving the paper under the projector and all that, It's like, do you think that shooting film has, do you think that sort of, I don't know what's going to happen is fun or as people like Roger Deacons would say make you not able to sleep for six months?

Or is that just a professional versus personal kind of thing? I guess it depends. It depends where you're at in your career. The experimentation process when you're younger is everything. Because you have everything to learn, you know, I'm a firm believer in learn the rules and then break them and see what happens and build your own set of rules. And having a toolbox that has everything from doing it by the book to going completely out of left field and then being able to pick and choose between them means that it's not like you're going from stodgy boring to complete anarchy. It's just that you have your own experience level all the way across the board. so you can find on the dial where any particular project falls between that.

And a lot of that has to do with what kind of project you're shooting. If you're making an art project with friends, you can do whatever you want. And you should do whatever you want, right? But if you're on someone else's dime, if you're on the clock, you need to make a choice that is going to be the right one. There isn't a lot of room of experimentation, at least in my career. There are some projects and there are some DPs out there who are given much more time. to try something and go, well, that doesn't work, rip that down, let's start again.

I don't get those jobs, and I certainly would, I don't even know if I'd like it at this point because I might be a little bit thrown. I would be distrustful and go, what do you mean I have another hour to light the set? I'm confused with this. I've got a story. I'm sure you do, and I'm looking forward to hearing it. But so it's, yeah, to me, it's making lightning fast decisions about where in the dial are we going to fall with this? And experimentation is great if you have a backup plan that you can fall to very quickly if it doesn't work. And very often it does work, you know, because at least for me, haven't been doing this as long as I have.

If I feel like, boy, that's risky, but yeah, I could see how that could work. Chances are, it probably will. There's only so many things you can do that are really that wild, I think. I say that and I'm probably 100% wrong. There's stuff that I haven't even thought of, you know. by long shot. Well, for your work on Key and Peel, did that involve? Because you guys were sort of, I don't want to say aping, but you were, you were, it sounds

rude to say copying, but you were doing a lot of different types of film emulating. You're doing a lot of different types of cinematography on that show. Was that all experimentation or was that very, we're going to watch this movie, fucking dial it and then make the thing. Because weirdly enough, that was. a comedy show that had, congrats, great cinematography. It was a more professional looking show than, say, this gets on like Chappelle's show or whatever. Right. Thank you. There was time difference as well. Yeah, there was. I mean, that was a decision from the very beginning. I walked

into the meeting with the director, Peter Attencio, who was quite young when we started the show. He was in his 20s. And I had the references that I had, I was like, he's not going to know these. And I was also concerned because at that time, everything that was being done in comedy, the particular Vogue was to shoot with crappy camcorders and make an unlit and very handheld loose, funny or die, early funnier die, basically. And I was fully convinced that this young director was going to want to go that route. And in my mind, what I thought would be the most fun and also what was going against the trend would be to do what it ultimately turned into, which was let's honor the look of the original material.

Let's make it so that if someone happens to be turning on this show randomly on a channel surfing, which if we could still use that term, not very relevant now, but it certainly was when we aired 10 years ago, that they might start at the beginning of the sketch and not realize it was a comedy. They might think it was the actual source material until, and like we were talking, about earlier with the office type moves to me it becomes a character in the comedy that the more you emulate the original thing the funnier it is when you know when the shit turns upside down right and thankfully peter was 100% on board he said that's exactly what i'm thinking of um the main reference that i threw out was the ben stiller show from fox in 93 are you any familiar with it

yeah yeah yeah yeah 92 i think um which was a one season and out 13 episodes sketch comedy show Brooke, who I'd worked with a couple of times, and I'd just, like, dropped to his, my knees was bowing to him. I'm like, oh, my God, that show. And he's sort of, like, the muse, like, you may get up. That was canceled after season. I'm like, yeah, but what you did, man, because that came out in my early 20s, and I loved that show.

So Peter was just like, yeah, no, no, that's, yeah, Ben Stiller show, 100%. And I'm like, dude, I'm just doing the math. You were, like, seven when that show came. Like, what? It wasn't on DVD. Is it even on DVD? Eventually, eventually it was. but he was just such a TV had every reference that I ever had

regardless of the almost 20 year difference between us he knew everything that I grew up with and it drove me nuts that he had such an encyclopedic knowledge of everything but the point being that we had we were able to throw references back and forth with each other sometimes just a matter of words and we knew exactly how we were going to shoot it other times we'd pull up YouTube clips and show them to each other

but the Keen Peel was a very very very low-budget show when it started, and it improved to a very low-budget show. So we took two varies out of it. The assumption was that we got a lot more money towards the end because we've really figured out how to do it cleverly. Everyone on, and that has to come all the way from the very beginning. The writers would be, you know, taking a tour of the Universal Backlot and shown locations

they could use, like the plane crash from War of the Worlds and write a sketch around it. And suddenly we have this. massive playground visually, but if someone is not familiar with that, if they haven't taken the tram tour, they're like, oh my God, the budget on this show. No, it didn't cost us, you know, a small location fee. The back to the future set. Yeah, yeah. I never shot at the courthouse for Key and Peel. Yeah, very close to it, but not quite on it. But so, yeah, every department was really figuring out how to do it on the cheap, but ultimately came down to this unified vision of, We all loved the idea of emulating these things that we, you know, we adored.

I mean, and it was very emotional for me a couple of times when we, we got to cop from material, source material. It was very close to my heart, especially things that got me into the industry. Like, we did the end of the shining that was the push into the photos on the wall, you know, the one that's Jack Nicholson, the July 4th, you know, the period picture. we did a version of that. Okay, that's not a big deal. But the idea that I was connecting to The Shining, which is one of the most influential films on me as a teenager that ultimately turned me into a steady cam operator,

that was awesome, you know, or doing it. And doing it professionally, too. Not like that, you know. Yeah, yeah, right. Now you're part of the lineage. Yeah, exactly. And when people see it and they go, oh, I see what you're doing,

because I recognize it from the source material, that's the joke, right? I mean also we did a Scorsese Casino era base sketch where we emulated the combination Dolly and Zoom in that he did in Goodfellas quite a bit and around that time

and you know exploring it breaking it down and trying to figure out the timing on that what is it that makes that shot unique to him and how did they do it yeah it's it's as simple as the Dolly starts moving and then the Zoom takes over, but at what speed? And we were doing it a few times, and director and we're looking at the monitor, and we're like, not quite it, not quite it.

And the first time it happens, we both were like, there it is. And again, that feeling, you know, where you're like, there's something I know that's very much specific to me that I really love reverse engineering. Pulling something apart and being able to honor it and recreate it, I think is really, really fun.

That's just who I am. I think, again, it's much pleasure from that is doing something that no one's ever done before, if that, there you go. There's me. So it's important to shoot Key and Peele, honestly. Yeah. Were you able to get new packages for like each skit or show or however you were kind of combining those? Or did you guys have like one set of lights, a couple of cameras and that's what you used for each skit? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. First, I should, I should correct you. The correct term is sketch. My bad. Sketch. You're right. It's totally fine. Jordan and Keegan had a little, they would bring that up sometimes because people would say, oh, I love that skit and they'd have to sort of grit their teeth and go, thank you.

Well, they're improv comedians and they want the correct nomenclature. I get it. Skit is what you do in high school or something, you know, in front of the class. I produce a stand-up comedy show. I should know better. Yeah, yeah, no. It got to the point where, you know, it became like that thing where you'd feel everyone would sort of go, yeah, I know we've got to tell people there's sketch it.

But, um. That's a very good question. And I will say that we looked into it a number of times. Peter really wanted to shoot anamorphic. At the time, that would mean changing out the camera body because there were Alexa classics later in the show to get a 4x3 sensor. So it would have been in Alexa Studio. And then the lenses.

And anamorphic had already started on its swing upwards and popularity at that point that it still enjoys today. So cost-wise, we could never do it. I would start putting it towards the line producer. And then she'd go, nope, find another way. So we would crop, crop 239, shallow focus with primes. We would carry a few primes on the show. And then blue streak filters is how we did anamorphic.

The funny thing was at the same time we were shooting that show, they were shooting the Nick Kroll show comedy series as well. And that was, oh, damn it. I'm trying to think he's a buddy of mine I could see but I can't think what the DP was

we compared notes a couple of times and he was just like yeah I've got I got cameras coming and going lenses coming and going all the time I'm like

how are you pulling that off on that budget that's so wild and also it was a combination of that and also just mentally it's a lot

of extra work for the camera assistance you know it's a very different thing than pulling the same body out of a coffin every day

on the set and we we shot two plus sketches a day all on location So a certain point, it's going to start chewing into the mental energy of getting the show done. So I also thought it was an interesting experiment to see how much could be done, you know, partially in camera, but a lot in post. And we were able to emulate, what I learned from that was that the Alexa and modern digital cameras, you can emulate the look of virtually anything that was shot on film as far back as you can imagine. And if you have really good color, you know, colorists and, you know, sometimes it leans a little bit deeper into, you know, after effects type work.

But if you have the right vision and visual references, you can really do a lot. And we, you know, we did everything from like 1930s, 1940s, black and white, 50s, technicolor, 60s newsreel, et cetera, et cetera. And all with the same camera and lenses. Right. The one paradigm where I did bring in different cameras, and this is leaning back once again. See, it seems like we're rambling, but yet we've got a common theme. My video background, I brought tube cameras in on a number of occasions. So I had these three tube industrial cameras from the early 80s that I picked up on eBay,

and we use those for a number of sketches that were supposed to be like early 80s into maybe about 90. infomercial live television etc etc you know very four by three crappy looking streaking on the highlights kind of stuff and uh it's some of my most fun stuff that we that we ever did was with those cameras one time actually with a what's hilarious is our viewer can't see him but uh no they're back they're back behind me um you can edit this out this is more for you Oh, nice. Yeah.

And also, a little home video cameras. Nice. Is that a V-mount? A V-mount? Oh, I thought you had jerry-rigged V-mount to the top of that thing. That's the viewfinder. V-finder, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's a battery. Yeah, no, it's a little weird view. Look at the little tiny, high people. I know. Again, you'll have to take this all out. But, so those are the actual cameras I used on Key and Peel. And when you see that image up on the monitor for the first time, I remember the EP is all just going nuts

because they're like, it's like we have a time machine between us and the actors. And you cannot recreate that digitally. I've talked to a number of post people about that and why you can't recreate the look of classic tube cameras digitally. You can try, and I've seen attempts, but it doesn't do that. Yeah. you know that because what you're saying specifically

you can recreate film looks that you can't recreate like tape and tube looks well maybe tape but tape yeah but you can sample tape or you can just run it through tape a couple of generations especially VHS because the fact is professional tape formats didn't have a look to them that was the whole point of it VHS artifacts has a very specific look but yes streaking on highlights and smearing and all that would be very intricate to create in post

and take a lot, it'd almost be like a rhodoscoped effect. Right. So, and I haven't seen anyone bother to do it because they're like just got an old tube camera. Winning time on HBO was a recent show that did that. They had an Ikegami. And mine,

I'm always curious because of my own experience and so the cameras that I own and I now rent out for those who weren't around of that era would be astonished to learn how much, how persnickety of those cameras or how much attention they required. Certainly every time you moved them and took them out of the case, you had to do a registration process with a little tweaker tool at the minimum amount. If they were exposed

to too much temperature change, even loud sounds like at concerts, the tubes would go out of whack enough and all the pots inside. Everything was on a pot. There were no menus that engineers would have to spend up to an hour tweaking them back to spec. Pot being a dial. Yes, a little like a mixing board. Correct, yeah, a tiny little one, a screwdriver, micro screwdriver, you know, through the screwdriver site. So when you take off the side of a camera of that vintage, it's like 40 pots all lined up with no legends on them.

Their legend would be somewhere else. And the engineer looking at a scope and tweaking these things. And I've had my cameras, I have a guy that comes over and works on my cameras from that era. and he comes over and tweaks these things. And I've tried to learn it myself, and I'm like, good God. It's so much more complicated than I could even imagine. Where even this guy would know, he'd be like, huh, that should have done that, but it's not. Oh, wait, this control shouldn't.

Yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, things got a lot easier eventually when Solid State came in. But that's all part of that look. It's, I am curious, though, on winning time to find out if they had an engineer traveling with them because the cameras are very fragile. They have to, right? I think they would have to. especially the ones they used on that show.

The Ikagami's were the best picture of the day, but they're the most fragile now. That was the particular tubes. Oh my God. Think which camera it was? No, the show that they shot. For anyone trying to figure out what these Ikagami's were, it was Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers shot on him. Well, almost every high-end TV show, if it, you know, outside of studio, was using those cameras. HL.L. 79 was everything for, from throughout the 80s until solid state came in. Big gray and black stuckers that just that was that when I came into the business, you know, in the mid 80s and started working, it was like, oh, yeah, we got an HL 79. Yeah, that's that I never, you know, they didn't get them from my little jobs. They were too expensive. They were too good. Right. But that was the cool camera.

And it was a beautiful image. And even to this day, it's still there's something about it. In the same way that in the audio world, the old analog tools are revered, much more obscure and much less so there is something about that Ikegami. The problem is the low resolution, unfortunately. If they had done an HD version of that tube camera, that would be a really cool thing for someone to build today. It would be a 4K tube camera.

That would be really neat. Wow. The, you know what I did. Now I have three things stacked up. But first being my XL2, I got a, I guess it's RCA to HDMI adapter. Because I couldn't use the BNC because it's not, I would need a DAC and I don't have one. Okay. Or A to ADSD.

And along digital, whatever. It's not an SDI. Yeah. And so I was able to get 1080 footage to my, Odyssey 7 Q plus out of the XL2 and I thought that was very neat because it's the taped decks broken yes of course yeah I know with all my cameras again I shouldn't it with everything on it oh wow and I'm sorry that the camera wants to not focus on that but that's a SDI converter on the back Adamus on top for recording yeah this is now

completely self-contained but able to able to function in today's production world. That's very... It's fun that we can do that now. That idea would be ridiculous even 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, and it was.

And 10 years ago was when we were using those and we had to have outboard key pro rack mount recorders. Yeah, the version of what I did with those cameras, this has been a recent project, getting it all into the back to make it easy. But it was a much bigger deal back then.

And to the point of why we didn't do that regularly on Key and Peel, it was a lot of effort and stress for me to do that and make sure that it worked and hope that we got through the day without the thing exploding. And, you know, so I, my experiment for Key and Peel mentally was to see how much can we do with one set of tools. And, you know, countering today's mentality in terms of lenses, I shot with very neutral lenses on that show. had the lures, the various allura zoom, the lightweight and, yeah, Arioluras, yep. We had a set of master primes, not a set of master primes. We had like four master primes, I think. We started with super speeds. Yeah. Three's a set. It was a set. It was enough to get gone. Usually the wider side so that we could shallow out, you know, once you get long enough lens, I think it becomes less noticeable. But yeah, you know, like 135 mil prime to me is a little bit

of a head scratcher because it's so shallow to begin with. I'm not sure, you know, the optical difference. For the north by northwest look. Yeah. As long as nobody's actually moving in the frame, you're good. But, yeah, we started with super speeds. It's actually we had those series one speeds with the triangular bouquet in there. And there's one sketch early on first season where we had a lot of back.

light flares and huge triangular flares in it. And I was just like, I don't know what I'm looking at. I couldn't remember the difference between the different, the speeds at that point. And those are the cheapest ones we could get because, again, we were, you know, we wanted to color and literally windowed triangle windows to try and knock down the amount of those flares because it was so distracting. Again, something that may be revered now, but I don't know if anyone's really embracing those flares at the time. just felt like it was in the way yeah everyone either wants super buttery no edge boca or really swirly helios crazy boca yeah or like those lomo uh lomo makes some like crazy brass lenses that are interesting um i did want to ask what kind of if shooting two sketches a day how are you how are you able to work quickly. Like what, in regards to lighting, like, did you have kind of a basic setup? You're like,

all right, everyone plopped down the grips and gaffers know what to do. Here we go. Or was every sketch like a new plot that you guys had to draw up and that kind of thing? It was the latter, but there was no drawing it, literally. There was so, the prep was so accelerated. It was so ad hoc. I will tell you that, for instance, we would shoot generally in two week blocks on K&P.O. two weeks on and then a week of prep, which was a lot of scouting and the usual, blah, blah, blah. But our location scouts would be one day where we would look at like 25 locations because of how many sketches there were that we were going to shoot. And in a given day, each location would have at least two places within a push move that we would shoot different sketches, sometimes three. so we would have we'd get off the van director we go okay this is this sketch we're looking

this direction this is fourth wall give a couple of notes and then we would have our little time and I would say it for the first time I wasn't out on the creative scouts so I'd be looking at with fresh eyes going okay all right I've got to come up with a scheme cook up something as fast as I could with the gaffer and then we had maybe I feel like it was about 10 minutes at each location to be able to do what we need, everyone giving their notes. So I'd be coming up with my lighting scheme, giving him the rough notes, then the location person is saying, everyone back on the van, here we go, got to go, get to keep our schedule. And I'd be, you know, literally giving notes as I was backing out the door and then going, all right, we'll figure out the rest of it on the day.

Okay, bye. So really what ultimately key and peel was, was an exercise in first instinct, going with it, bare bone notes, and then doing what we could on the day. unless it was something that required a lot of intricacy that we would put a little bit extra time into it but most of the time it was winging it there was sort of an improvisatory quality to how we would

attack certain things so yes it was not a rinse and repeat each sketch had its own approach and again part of my challenge was to see how to do that with most of the same set of tools and also to keep it fresh so it was not the kind of show that you would throw up

the big you know the 12 by book like with no fill and just kind of, you know, blah, blah, blah. It was not that type of show generally, unless it was emulating that kind of show in which case, yes, we would do that. Can you, if you just could pick any sketch off the top of your head, could you walk me through kind of the, because that someone could, you know, look up in reference,

walk me through kind of how you approach the lighting when you got there, you know, like, were you always, or I shouldn't even say always, but was it kind of like, all right, sun's there, just going to diffuse it and then throw a light here but that was always moving or was it truly like all a cart every single time was there basically what i'm asking is was there any sort of um basic not formula but uh mental tools that people could use from your experience there not not necessarily shortcuts or cheats but uh something akin to that i suppose Yeah, I mean, the, look, there were, the sketches the easiest to shoot were the, as we call them, the two-handers, you know, Jordan and Keegan, just the two of them bantering, which those would come up every now and then, and those, we knew that we would do a master, coverage, coverage, maybe two sizes of coverage on either side.

And the nice thing about that when it would be shot listing is, you know, the director and I would be like, cool, we don't have to spend any time talking about that. To the point where we said we actually just need a catchphrase to describe master coverage coverage. It was something to do with a loincloth. I literally can't remember what it was now,

but it was like the original loincloth or something would just go, and this sketch, loincloth, okay, next. And, you know, so lighting with that, especially if I was cross-shooting, it tended to be within a, okay, the point of this is to shoot it quick and simply and give us more time to, it would be paired with a much more elaborate sketch. That's how we'd buy our time back. Early on in that first season, particularly, we came up a couple of times against production looking at page count and going, okay, well, this is this number of pages and this sketch is this number of pages. So we're going to split the day according to the page count. Now, if we were that second season, scene with the large page count happened to be a loincloth type scene or the Obama runner that we did that was Obama speaking to the camera, which had a very specific, very simplified,

you know, both lighting and camera. In fact, that was the only set that we returned to that was built. It was a one and a half wall flat set of flats that would be erected in all these different places that would be shooting the main sketch. And like you'd walk into a an anti-chamber, be like, yep, and there's our little Obama set, but that may have a high page count. And they would make us, you know, split the day based around them, and direct time, be like, no, no, no, the other thing we're doing is so much more complicated. We can bang through the Obama thing. And it wasn't until we did that a few times that they actually trusted us to do two thirds of the day on the much bigger sketch and one third on the higher

page count, Obama sketch. But getting back to the lighting aspect, it's a hard to, it's a hard, It's hard to do a global takeaway because everything was different. I mean, one thing that comes to mind that's worth looking at, unfortunately, the most popular sketches, the substitute teacher, for instance, that everyone loves that sketch, A-A-R-Rond. The gifts you see, yeah. Yeah, hugely, hugely popular.

Photographically, I have hardly any notes on that. I mean, I don't, I think the first one, we might have had a condor pushing light through the window, blah, blah, blah, is this a classroom? the ones that were much more interesting visual challenges for me or ones that are more proud of are not necessarily the most popular ones but for instance lay mis we did a parody of lay miss on one of the backlot sets at universal and of course our art department who were unbelievably brilliant and resourceful on a larger scale set there was only so much they could do

one of the things that was very tough for me was the cobbles that movie we were basically parading the look of the movie, Le Miz, which... You were on the quote-unquote Mexico set? It wasn't... I worked on the universal backlots, so now I'm short-handed it. Yeah, if you were to look it up, you'd be able to tell me what that one was called. We use it for a Shakespearean era sketch also. It's kind of like old European street-ish, I think.

Yeah, I truly think they call that Mexico for some reason. It doesn't, okay. It doesn't look like Mexico. The Mexican one I think of the flash flood. You know, the flash flood street. That's supposed to be Mexico. So maybe it's near there. Is it adjacent to New York?

Yeah. It's like you walk off New York, go up like a staircase and then that's that thing. It's up the hill. Yeah. I think it was European street, but any of it. Good sidebar. So.

For the five people who know what we're talking. So, you know, a big thing for, for a cinematographer, as you get used to working in larger crews, is being able to, you know, work with your other department heads so they can, you can help them, they can help you. Knowing when with wardrobe, you're in a situation where you're going to be working with a lot of contrast and requesting, you know, most costume designers are not going to arbitrarily just put a lot of white clothing on people, especially, you know, depending on skin tone, they would hopefully ask you first, but sometimes, you know, you do have to make special

requests on certain things and the same thing with our department um in this instance um the set looked great but the cobblestones were immaculate and the whole look of lay miss is this absolutely tech down filthy you know environment and the cobblestones as i my lighting scheme with a big you know soft source above i like they're going to be glowing from you know for the big soft box is there any way you guys can knock him down and and they looked into it but the cost of dirting them up and then cleaning it afterwards time was and so forth. It just wasn't

there. So they couldn't help me. And we ended up having to do a lot of windows and post to try to take down these glowing, clean looking cobblestones. But my that was one where I went into a little bit of a, not an experiment so much, but I took a risk.

Because the amount of work we had to do, it was a night shoot, but we didn't, we never shot all night. We never shot past like 2.30 a.m. on Key and Peel. It's just didn't happen. So we had something like six hours to shoot this rather large-scale sketch. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to have to, I can't be too precious with lighting each setup. So the grips built a truss or speed rail rig.

I don't think it was even truss. Basically a fly swatter with diffusion. And that was one of the few. I didn't often get a condor on that show it got shut down as much as I got approved but that was one where I was like it's a speed thing we got to have it and this is pre-sky panels

you know LEDs were not powerful instruments at that point again because this is or ugly yeah or ugly yeah in this instance I actually wanted to go a tiny bit green for the look of the movie so it could have worked but having to figure out what instruments to put up there that wouldn't break the bank and I ended up speccing

five 2K blondes, blonde open face lights, cheap, inexpensive instruments in a pattern like you'd see on a dice, you know, the five, so the four with the one in the middle. And we, you know, I picked out a gel. Again, this feels so quaint in this era of being able to stand on the ground and do it on an app.

Oh, the app is so good. Yeah, yeah. In comparison, I mean, because you can sit there and go, I don't like that. that a little bit more blue. So in this, you know, yeah, looked at a few different gels, picked one out, had to like balance the color with the transmission. You know, you'd have to look at that math and try to, but to try and calculate what these instruments through that gel pushed through a specific diffusion at that specific height, you don't have the tools to be able to get an actual

number until you actually build it. And, you know, these being Alexis, there's only so much you can push the camera. So I was like, okay, hopefully. Hopefully all that will add up to enough base exposure by the time we get it up in the air. And that was one of the risks I took was, let's see. You know, you never really want to be on the edge. You always want to have 50% more than you're going to need and dim it down. But in this instance, I was like, I don't think there's going to be any dimming. I think we're going to be full up and hopefully it's enough.

They built the thing, you know, while the sun's still up. It went up in the air slowly. You know, we're losing, you know, it's a dusk. it's going up. I can see light coming out of it. I'm like, you know, holding my fingers and then it gets in place, meter it. It's right where I hoped it would be. Not a half a stop more, you know? And oh, thank God. Okay, that one paid off. I mean, it's all just gut instinct at that point based on having used instruments before through diffusion and kind of going, okay, on the ground, it would do this. Well, that's the same thing just because it's up in the air. It's just distance.

you know it's just math um so that was that was a gratifying one and if you see the sketch you kind of yeah and it's got this kind of you know grungy slightly greeny quality to it um and then we augmented with you know some chimeras and things on the ground but we got that sucker punched out in very short time and so i i felt good about that one um the only bummer for me was we couldn't quite emulate some of the looseness of that movie they apparently shot it very you know they record the audio and location and there's the steady cam work, there's a point where the steady cam gets bumped in that movie that always

was fascinating to me and they kept it in there. Well, yeah, they just I can't I don't know if that was ever flagged by anybody, but I sure, when I saw it in the movies, I was like, wow, and I actually told my operator, be like that, be loose, make

mistakes, be sloppy, and he just didn't have it in him. And I was very tempted to go up and bang his rig during the shot just to like put that in there. But I was like, you know what? It's too esoterror. reference. No one's going to get it, but it's just going to look like a mistake. Yeah. It's not, you know, what might be noticeable to steady cam operators or former ones in my case is,

it's, you know, we don't need that Easter egg. But we're actually, there's a little, speaking of a podcast, me and the production designer who joked for years about doing a podcast that's behind the scenes of Keen Peel that's all craft-based, talking about the making of from all the perspective, the department heads and doing a re-watch, you know. So you hear, you heard it here first. I don't think we'll ever get to it, but, you know, it would have been a great quarantine project. I will say that would be incredibly, like, you know, because the start of this questioning,

line of questioning really was because you guys did so many different styles that that would be a very educational. I've said for at least two years on the record on this podcast, but elsewhere as well, I want to design this. I don't know who to ask and I don't have the skill, but I have the drive and the and the determination to make a some kind of DVD special feature streamer. Like, I don't know how it would, I don't know if, because I can't imagine the rights for DVD extras cost very much, you know. So describe to me what you're, what the thought, what this is. So you've got, we got streamers for all the movies. But the one thing that got me and plenty of other filmmakers into filmmaking, but also educated about filmmaking, was DVD special features.

And especially the earlier ones where they were really, you know, they weren't PR pieces. Commentaries too. Yeah. But I think they should put commentary. See, that's an easier one. I think they should put commentaries just in the language track. Yeah, I agree. I don't know why they haven't.

It's crazy. Yeah. How big is a fucking audio file for an hour and a half? 200 megabytes? Like, yeah, nothing. They could upload that. But I want a special feature streamer. So you can go learn about how all your favorite movies were made.

And in my head, it's like, well, I can't imagine the rights to that, those properties are very expensive because they're not the real movie. And I assume that the studios are going to go, well, no one wants that here, have it for pennies on the dollar. But I don't know. I don't know anything. That's just my idea. I agree with you. I totally agree with you on all that. I think it would be amazing.

And I think that it is a big loss for us because it was very educational for me as well. Getting a DVD and watching all of that and listening to the commentaries and learning, engrossing yourself in the movie. The only version I have of that left now, every time I watch a movie, I go on IMDB and read the trivia. And get a couple of nuggets about how it was made. Even if I didn't like the movie, it's interesting to read that. That's all that we kind of got left now from the previous experience where Or do you just sit there and go, no, that was cool.

Now I'm going to learn about it. So, yeah, I missed all that. I just finished Jedi Fallen Order, the video game. And when I beat it, a bunch of BTS docks opened up. And I watched one last night before I had to go to bed. And it's like two hours long. It's like an hour and a half long behind the scenes dock on how the game was made. And I was like, see, that's in a game.

Like, what can they should, yeah. I mean, I still buy Blu-ray's like crazy. Like one of my pandemic projects was just buying every crazy. I could get my hands on. That wasn't full price. Oh, look at you. And just a lot of educational material there. One question I did quickly want to ask is I've seen a lot of internet stuff talking. You know, you see all these trends.

I'm on, I keep going like these fucking kids, but I'm one of those fucking kids. I'm on YouTube all the time. But I've seen a lot of people saying like, ooh, I just bought an Alexa Classic for five grand. Now I'm a professional. And while we can argue about whether or not that part's true. Would you these days recommend shooting on an Alexa Classic with other options available? Specifically

an Alexa Classic, yes. I would because as we all know, that sensor is still active in almost every camera they make today except the most recent one. So there's a lot of, it's still a very good looking camera. It's lower

resolution than what most people are acquiring at, but there's a lot of stuff still being just posted at 1080. So yes, you lose the flexibility of being able to do punch-ins and reframes and maybe future-proofings that you have a 4K master, et cetera, et cetera. But

it's still a very good looking camera and not a tough workflow because it's pro-res. I think when you start going back too far, I know that there, for instance, there's some avid hobbyists who are into the F-35. Sony F-30. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And there's

some arguments that there were certain things that were done with that camera that they veered away from in future releases so that there's there may be some intangible something there mojo wise that that isn't there in other cameras but the fact is it's sort of bulky and power hungry and weird and you can't get parts for it and obviously it needs outboard recording and you know i'm interested in reading on message boards that what these people are doing to keep those funky weird cameras that were only via you know only a thing for a couple of years killed by the Alexa. That one seems a little bit of a head scratcher

to me and then you go even further back like someone was just asking about the viper. And should I, you know, you know, and I was like, that was a nightmare the entire time it existed and it doesn't, it didn't anything two third inch, you're not, no. There's nothing cool. They shot Zodiac on it.

Yeah. And he hated it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I thought collateral was shot on the viper apparently a lot of it was F-900 because it was so much easier to deal with. And there was just, you know, there was a certain amount of viper, but overall it was just such a pain. So I think, again, leaning back to where I came from, I think that when you're looking at video, vintage digital cameras or vintage video, if we use the whole to, to describe any camera that's current back to anything that wasn't film. tube cameras are a real pain in the ass but they're really unique looking

once it became digital with sensors late 80s there's a certain look to that like old beta cams that arguably is worth exploring as it gets later and later that digi beta and then like f900 and all that yeah if you want to do something that looks period late 90s into the 2000s you could use those but it might start to get a tiny bit subtle against what it takes to get there. I did a thing for HBO last year

where it was supposed to have been originated in early 90s, I think. It was TV footage. And I was pushing for the tube cameras. They wouldn't go for it. And we ended up with HDX-900s, which was like a 12 to 14-year-old camera. Is the Panasonic?

Yeah. Yeah, the Panasonic 3 H-Tex and 100s. Yes, three chips, right? Yep. Broadcast cameras, not, yeah. Not the HVX or the HDX

was the pro shoulder-mount camera. And I dumbed them down to SD, or at least I tried to. I can't remember if I convinced them to let us shoot SD. I did a lot of tests back and forth. But I was like, you really want the look of SD in that HD master

for it to look like that camera because there's a certain point, it just gets too subtle. So I think it's cool to play around with this stuff, but it doesn't really start to look that different until you go back to, you know, the 90s cameras, like your XL. Well, and to your point, this is actually something I was going to touch on earlier, two examples of that sort of emulation idea of, like, you know, which camera for which look or whatever.

I have the Twilight Zone. the original Twilight Zone, not Jordans, on Blu-ray. And they re-scanned all the original negatives and everything. And this is a show where the first episode came out before we went to the moon. And it looks like it was shot yesterday after it was re-scanned. Film is an incredible medium. And people have this, like, oh, the film look, blah, blah, blah. It's the scanning.

Once you can scan a good negative, it looks modern as anything. Yeah. And it's really, really trippy. Things that I grew up on TV show, like Star Trek, the original Star Trek. Yes. Grew up on that, had a really good sense in my mind of what that looks like. And then when they did the HD remasters, let's forget about the CGI stuff for a second. The color and clarity, I was like, well, wait a second.

Because I'd only seen kind of like funky telosinies of it my whole life that just didn't capture the range of the film. So it really was bonkers to learn what was buried in that negative and what could be extracted from it. And I think it's very interesting to see how shows kept originating in film even when there were video alternatives because certain showrunners and producers, you know, were like, but this is forever, you know. Right.

TNG got the same treatment and it looks incredible. Yeah. So, yeah, there is something about that sort of reinvention of the past, but I'm all for restorations, you know, like I like finding old photos and cleaning them up because, yeah, scratches and dust increases and all that are part of how we perceive the history, but it's really fascinating to think what it was like when that thing was brand new in someone's hand. It rolled off a printing press or out of a dark room for the first time. You know, that's how it was created. It wasn't created funky. There's a great YouTube channel called Baumgartner Restoration. And this guy is a painting restorationist restore.

And yeah, it's fascinating to see because we think of old paintings as being kind of grungy. Or not grungy, but there's like a color. There's a patina. And then when he cleans it up, it's like, oh, white is white. It's not this weird brown green. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And I think there's a place. both. I mean, if you're looking to emulate something that people can connect to as being period, lean into that, lean into the aged look of it. But at the same time, something that is truly old, bringing it back to how it was originally ingested, taken in by people. I think that that's really valid. I mean, which is kind of an odds, but what, you know, there's a something along that, that line that I find hilarious is, if we're on location and there's a blown out window, we will do what we can to try and knock that window down so you can see what's outside, right? Or super hot screaming sun coming through. We'll try to control it to a certain

extent. Most of the time, there's certain instances where, yeah, you let it burn. But most of the time, we'll try to control it. Then when we go on stage, we blow it out to make it look more realistic. We'll always let that fake sun play hotter, the window play hotter. And I laugh at that because I'm just like, it doesn't really make sense except that it does. Because the real thing is always going to look real no matter what you do you can knock it down but if you start knocking down artificial stuff it just doesn't look real anymore it's like this mental gymnastics of trying to sell an idea you know oh we we don't want to sell this location as just being a location we want it to look intentional and then you get on a stage and you're like we want it to look like it's spontaneous

yeah yeah it's it's crazy i mean stuff like this by the way is why i adore this industry um because it's all it's all play and we're just from to figure out which flavor of play is the most interesting to present to the viewer, but we get to have a lot of fun, you know, along the way with these little, they're almost in jokes for ourselves. Right. Something else that came to mind that's a camera movement type thing, Larry McConkey, who's one of the top Steadicam operators, if not the top Stadicam operator of all time as far as I'm concerned. I got to teach alongside with him in the 90s when I was working as a steady-game operator.

And he was telling stories, showing his classic shots, you know, the Goodfellas co-co shot and many others with Brian De Palma. And describing his process going through how he designed these shots and all the intricate elements that he placed in there. And at one point, he, there's a, the characters go into an elevator. They talk. The elevator doors, you know, come out. And he said, well, the elevator ride was actually much shorter than the dialogue.

So the thing, the elevator arrived, you know, 20 seconds into the shot, but we had to go for 40 seconds. So when you are standing in an elevator with a steady cam on and it comes, the elevator comes to a stop, the steady cam will rise up or lower depending which direction you're going because of inertia, it wants to keep going. So the operator has to kind of control that inertial feeling. It's a, if you've never seen it, it would be a little hard to describe it. It's weird. It just sort of looks like the thing is just, you know, rising up by itself because the, you know, it wants to keep going the speed that it was going. Okay. Physics works.

Yeah. It just looks weird the first time. So the operator is trying to control that. And because it's a very, it's not a linear curve, it's very hard to keep there from being a little vertical bubble in the frame. So every set of game operator who's ever done an elevator shot knows this. Larry, because he was faking the ending of the Steadicam shot, he'd already gone through that, but now he was trying to make it look like, okay, while the doors were about to open, he actually inserted a replication of that move into the shot. And he goes, yeah, that was me. And my head exploded at that point, being a young Setticam operator, that anyone was thinking that deeply about it.

and that really had such a great impact on me all these stories that he told me and recently there's a Scrubs podcast that Zach Braffin and Donald do and there was a steady cam shot the first two seasons of that as the camera operator and there's a steady cam shot in an elevator

that they were describing and listening to it Zach is saying you know there was times when we faked it where the elevator didn't move and other times that it did because we shot in a practical location Scrubs was at an actual key commission hospital and he goes

well you know you can tell that this one was real because there's this little camera bubble when the elevator comes to a stop and sometimes we tried to fake it but it didn't really look that good so this one you can tell is real and I went and watched and went yeah that was a fit that we faked it elevator didn't move that was me

doing my bit and I actually took that clip married that podcast audio to it send it to Zach and I was like Runga gotcha because I thought that was really fun that I fooled him on that one yeah you know that that does make me think especially with Jordan now going off and making incredible films and

Zach is also an accomplished filmmaker and actor and stuff are there anything that that people like that have taught you about filmmaking that you've that's kind of stuck with you in other words actors turn directors? Sure, but you know, the sort of people who have risen above their station, maybe. But yeah, you know, just there's certain creative minds out there who I think are, they got something else going, you know? Well, I mean, yeah, look, how can you not be inspired by that? And I think that we've touched on a little bit of my background that I came up shooting,

editing, directing, doing all of the creative jobs. Your IMDB is long. It's long, and it's got a few categories. You know, when I moved out to L.A. as a multi-hyphenate, I learned very quickly at that time 25 years ago that I had to pick a lane. The industry was not particularly friendly to the idea of someone that was a bunch of different things. It was like, well, we don't know how to hire you. I feel like that has changed a lot because of technology.

A lot of new people coming into this industry have a facility. they have directed, they've shot, they've edited, they've done all the jobs because there isn't a barrier to entry anymore with all of those. So not to say I was a pioneer or anything, but it was just because I was

so engaged in all these different levels of production personally that I feel like that's reflected into who I am and I try to, and so I can bring that all to the table. So you know, as a director, not having been an actor, that part of it I work hard.

it, but I also did have many years as a camera operator where I was essentially technically directing actors, which is, as an operator, you go, you know, it would be great. If you could just banana out a little bit here. And if you can, if you can find a reason to turn at that moment, that helps me get this shot. And that's a lot of stuff. Actually, I learned directly from that time with Larry McConkey teaching was that you are allowed to and encouraged to, if you want to be really good at this, communicate with actors. But you have to learn how to approach it. especially with an actor. Some love that stuff. They eat it up. They enjoy it because it's business for them. They love that being able to integrate with the camera in a certain way. And others don't really want to hear about it, but you still have to try to figure out a way to,

I'm going to say, trick them into it. But I learned a lot about work with actors at that time. Yes, you would inspire them to help you with the frame. So that really was when I got interested again in directing, is working as a camera operator. And in fact, I'm actually directing a couple of shorts coming up to kind of get my head back into that game a bit more. I joined the DJ last year.

Oh, wow. And so, yeah, so your question is from actors becoming directors, it's always interesting watching that process. They certainly know how to, you know, or should know how to communicate with other actors. What's interesting, though, is to see how they embrace working with all the crafts, the technical side of it. And I have a lot of friends who I've given advice to who are getting into directing, who get very insecure about how much they should know about cinematography.

And I've actually taught a couple of little classes casually for groups of people that's called cinematography for directors. Because I'll hear the same thing over and over again, which is, I just don't know that much about lenses. And I go, well, you don't have to know much about lenses. If you can learn about them, if you can be Steven Spielberg and say, give me an 18. mill here, great, but don't worry about it if you can't do that. You do have a D. You don't need the Sini lens manual. Yeah. You don't have to be a Stanley Kubrick who knows everything about the construction of every lens on his set. But it helps to understand what they do and why you might want a wide angle versus a telephoto at a given moment. But don't let everyone else sort of press you

into thinking you need to know everything about being a cinematographer as a director because it simply isn't true. You have bigger things to worry about. You know, you have other things to worry about. Let if you bring you in a cinematographer, let them do their job, you know? So, and I think that that's, you know, that's when you become a hyphenate, it's trying to figure out, you know, a little knowledge goes a long way. You don't want to be overthinking the other people working for you. For instance, on the short coming up, I brought in a DP. I keep trying to switch off my brain and go, don't think about how to light it. Let her do that. It's very hard not. too but

you know it's I have enough time before this project starts where it's very I just keep thinking about it you know but I think that's that's really what it comes down to so for actors they have to learn

that side of it and some you know Jordan very very intelligent guy it doesn't surprise me all that he has moved in the direction that he has you know he always loved the process we had long interesting talks on set about films and horror

films were included that we talked a length about shining so yeah yeah because at the at the time of this recording nope just came out for anyone listening so that's the other reason why it's on the top my mind uh I did want to ask because as I alluded to earlier I actually knew of you originally as as a as a name somewhere you know from the DVX forums because you had posted a bunch of stuff about key and peel that's still sticky there to this day because that was like what 2013 something like that yeah and uh i wanted to know what your sort of uh point of view is on internet culture specifically surrounding filmmaking cinematography that thing um as it was even just 10 years ago versus now do you think that because there can certainly be a lot of

poo pooing about oh they don't they have it too easy these days or whatever it is you know old man shouting at cloud joke that I was making earlier. But has it changed or is it different in any way? Or do you have you? I know Art Adams, a colleague of mine used to write for Pro Video Coalition Now Works at Ari. Amazing, amazing guy. He's kind of backed, I was talking to him about. He's like, I can't do Reddit anymore.

I can't do the forums anymore. It's just I always get shouted down. Like, who's shouting down Art Adams? Because they don't know. Yeah. I do find that a shame that there are certain. people who are really the way the internet works is

if you disappear for too long you're gone and they just you know yeah there are a few old timers know you are but the new ones aren't interested and I think there's that sense that things keep evolving so any piece of information that's more than five or ten years old is no longer relevant which is a little

bit sad the trend that I would say is the hardest one to swallow is instead of experimenting and learning and researching, there's a tendency to go in and say, tell me how to do this. There's a demand for information. And there's always someone that's going to respond.

The problem is there's going to be 15 people who responds with 10 different versions of the information. I don't really know what do you do at that point. You're crowdsourcing and you're ending up. You don't know who it is that's responding. You don't know if they're right or not. And how do you pick between all those different versions of it? But I've come to realize that that just doesn't really matter because you can either do

that or you can look at YouTube videos and who are those people putting up the YouTube videos? They are, do you look at the number of views and go, they're the bigger influencer? They must be correct. Well, that's not necessarily true either. So that part of it, I think, is a little bit discouraging that someone who's been in the craft and has a great wealth of experience might be less relevant to a newer person coming into the industry than someone who just has the most number of subscribers and has the

most popular channel. Now, it's not to say that the, I'm not trying to discredit those people. I've watched, there's some people who know a lot about what they're doing, but how do you separate them out, you know, being engaging and being savvy with your SEO is not the same thing as, as actual knowledge in the craft that you're talking about. they don't necessarily conflate but as far as message boards

I think that they yeah I get where art's coming from I'm still I'm still engaged because I like to help and educate and and it's kind of fun to toss some nuggets around and debate with people here and there

I won't get involved in it as soon as it gets hostile or weird I won't engage I won't start polling though well I've been doing this for this many years therefore blah blah blah because there's no point in that. That just makes me sound old.

You're not going to change anyone's mind. No, I'm not going to change anyone's mind by saying that. In fact, it's usually the opposite. So I try to keep it light. And that's why I sort of, I think my lack of interest in drama is probably what has, A, kept me around on those boards longer. And B, why people I think like to have me around on those boards is because I just, you know, I can actually try to, it's a good version of patience, you know, to be able to

exhibit. I think there is a value to that. Just in the way that teaching is not easy either. Being a teacher in a classroom, you have to put up with things and people that are difficult. So there's something to be learned from that, I think, as a human being. Yeah. Well, and to your point about, like, people have, you know, whoever has the most subscribers is correct, quote unquote, there aren't a lot of people with that sort of institutional knowledge, such as yourself, online doing the teaching. You know, if, you know, Jeff Croninwitz had a YouTube channel, I'm sure, if Roger Deacons had a YouTube channel, I'm sure it would hit, but, you know, they're busy

working. Yeah, and I mean, yeah, Roger's podcast was fantastic, you know, and inspired a lot of people. He's inspired this podcast. Yeah, awesome. Great. I mean, ultimately, you know, I'm at a stage of my life where I've got one. one foot very deeply into the sort of legacy and what's next and what do I do with with my experience what's the most useful thing and you know teaching there's teaching is complicated I don't necessarily want to at this point try to pursue teaching full time so I do

versions of it like I said which is maybe it's going on a podcast maybe it's going in a message board I'm mentoring some younger DPs now I'm finding I'm finding all that very enjoyable and And it's not because I'm some great wealth of knowledge, but I have a lot of different flavors of experience, and some of it's still relevant, you know. It's like raising kids, but they go home after. Yes, see, you're absolutely right. I don't have any kids. So it's some version of that also. But, you know, and the old, the horny old tales that we've engaged in some of this can make people's eyes glaze over sometimes, you know.

But I also know that this business is cyclical so that some of the stuff that some of these old stories may become relevant again, you know. Well, and I actually just recently penned out because I sometimes will make YouTube videos for fun or it'll be normally what it'll be is it'll be a concept that I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And then I'll because I'm a writer, not a writer, but I write for a for pro video coalition's, you know, journalist. I don't know. So then I'll make a YouTube video. But one of them I kind of wanted to make was how to learn, specifically when it comes to cinematography. And part of that, for anyone listening, I can give the rundown is like, there's way more information that's accessible on YouTube or whatever. But like you were saying, those people with all the followers, maybe they're, you know, you're, what's his face?

Peter McKinnon is a photographer, right? Go to him for photography advice. Unfortunately, he's giving a lot of film advice. Not unfortunately. but so what I I recommend people do is like I have hundreds of American cinematographers you know the American cinematography manual go watch the old DVDs with the the um not captions the uh commentaries you know the making up read all the American cinematographers then you will have a base understand listen to my podcast then you'll have a base understanding and you can go on YouTube and

know who's full of shit and who's doing well right you know what I mean right and then you'll be able to filter yourself and then you can learn. Because I'm also now trying to not instinctively go to new stuff, you know. Yeah. It's a challenge. Look, I mean, when we're younger, we're sponges. We love everything new and exciting and flashy and trendy and it's all great. And then it's a natural transition as one becomes more experienced and one becomes older and transitions and different flavors of life to kind of not be that person anymore. You don't feel, you're not in the zeitgeist automatically. So it is easier, especially, you know, in this industry

to become that kind of like grumpy old guy that we use the thumb or noses at. And it's weird to have that happen, but it is a natural progression. It's if you, if you, you don't want to be, you know, you don't want to Peter Pan yourself in this business. I think, right. I think there are some people who will dye their hair

and, uh, drive a fancy car and just try to play the game too long. Um, and to me, I, I'm kind of, kind of like, yeah, you might get better work than me, but I, you know, you are that person or you aren't that person. And I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm not going to be a superstar, A-lister, upcoming, you know, hot DP. Well, I didn't go to AFI for one. So, unfortunately, that's not in my favor.

We've had a lot of AFI graduates on this podcast. And I'm always like, oh, really, another one. Yeah, exactly. So, but, you know, I am what I am. And that's really what this is all about. And I've been, I'm very appreciative given the opportunity at a microphone to speak, to blab for a couple of hours. Yeah. Well, and to be fair, like you, people can, I've said poo-poo too many times, but people can maybe thumb their nose at like, oh, you know, if I'm not an A-list DP, then I've failed.

But like, you're working a lot. You've met a lot of really cool people. You've, you know, at a certain point, like, I keep doing industrials still. And I guess they're not called industrial corporate work. And I still find it fun. Like I got a huge snack bag the other day. I did a video for a distributor for a food distributor and they gave me a bunch of food. I work with death and co.

The like number one cocktail group in the world. Maybe not number one, but they're way up there. You know, I get hooked up sometimes. So there's, you know, advantage. Dude, I'll take that account. I love cocktails. Oh, I'll take you to death and co like whenever you want. It's, it is amazing.

Amazing. It's over in a arts district. Before I let you go, because I know we've been chatting for a while, I did want to touch on. You had mentioned that you're working on it. Is it called the Zigi? Yeah. Talk to me about that.

It looks kind of cool. It's for Steadicam. Well, essentially, yes. The, my last few years of operating when it was the cameras we talked about earlier, the genesis, the genocide and the D20 and all those cumbersome things. I started thinking about handheld a lot. And because that era was still very much, and I was working on comedy a fair amount, the handheld look was very popular.

But I thought it was really silly that we were standing around with cameras on our shoulder at shooting coverage for these now very long takes, which are still popular. Most comedy directors will keep the camera rolling and throw in alts and all that. And you've got operators standing still

with a, you know, with 40 pounds of camera on their shoulder just to give that little bit of axial shake. So at the time I came up with, I schemed up a couple of different rigs. the last of which I dubbed the ZG for zero gravity built a couple of prototypes thought it was pretty cool

and then at the same exact moment decided to move up to D-Ping and didn't have a need for it anymore and to cut to the chase a few years ago I realized I should have done something with it then but it's not too late went to cinema devices

who also make the ergo rig and the anti-gravity device for Gimble so they have experience with similar types of devices devices and we decided to start working together and bring this thing to market and it's a passive three-axis cradle that the camera sits in so you balance it somewhat similarly to a gimbal but there's no motors on it it terminates in a five-eighths baby pin receiver so that it can in the most sort of typical use of it it will mount on a steady-cam arm the operator can walk around with it and the advantage there is what most people want when they want the handheld look is the, again, the axial movement, pan tilt rolls, the little errors in those axes. They generally don't want footsteps. So the steady cam arm takes out those footsteps. The other advantage of the operator is you've now got your two and a half

to three foot of boom range with the arms. You're no longer stuck operating either cradled in the hands or on your shoulder. You can now transition almost between the two within a shot. Or if you're shorter operator shooting a taller actor or vice versa, you can boom the, you know, the lens side to what you need. The other advantages are that it doesn't have to necessarily be body mounted. You can hard mount the steady cam arm to a dolly, as we would sometimes do with steady cam. And now you've got that, all that boom range still. So you can act like a operator standing and being able to adjust a few feet in either direction or go down in their knees and up and down a little bit, but you have no weight on you at all. So you can shoot for hours like

that. And that's a great advantage, not only for operators and their stamina, but ultimately for directors and producers, because you don't have this time limit of how long you can work a camera operator handheld before, either they get tired and have to take a break, or more typically, they get, the handheld gets more erratic. Right. So the beginning of the take doesn't look like the end of the take. And as a DP, I've seen that plenty of times, and I've had to reach I'm going to go, we should, we should cut. And I'm like, why? And I go, because A camera doesn't match B camera anymore.

B camera is a earthquake. Yeah. You're focusing on performance. I'm trying to keep this shit consistent for you, you know? So, and even outside of the arm, you can drop it on a baby pin anywhere. You can put it on a tall stand. You can put it down on the ground. You get a consistent handheld look very quickly with any kind of, any number of different vantage points and rigs,

which there are a number of different objects out there. that we'll recreate the look of handheld with deflated volleyballs and this isn't that. I saw that on a pilot. I was literally about to say that. I saw that on a pilot years ago and I was like, that's weird. And I asked him, I was a PA. And I was like, why do you have a deflated volleyball? He goes, mimic handheld. And I was like, it's on a trial. Okay, cool. Yeah. Or it was on a pedestal, I guess. Yeah. But, you know, and it does seem strange because a lot of people, especially in the indie side, will go, well, just handhold it. And I go, right, yes. You can always do that. And there's a place for that. Take. Right. But, yeah.

How long, you know, if you haven't been that scenario with a heavy rig and have to shoot for 15 minutes straight, it doesn't make as much sense until you've done that. If you're doing a dock and you're running around, handheld is still the right way to do it. But this is really more of a narrative tool. And you don't have to be a state of game operator to be able to use it, even with the vest and arm on your body, we're strapped it into plenty of people who were barely even camera operators and they're just as comfortable with it, which is really cool. So that steady-can learning curve doesn't exist. And it has this great flexibility, as I said, that you can use it in any number of different rigs and you get the uniform look throughout the scene,

which is usually desirable. So that is the Z-G. And you go to the Z-G-com, Z-E-E-G-E-E-G-E, to check that out. I'll have to, we'll have to figure out, should do an article on that. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's getting out there, it's starting to, it's starting to get in some, some people's hands who were doing really cool things with it and some big directors have had a chance to use it and it I'm hoping that it just catches on one because it's my baby but two what I feel really good about is that it's not only an interesting problem solver it ultimately hopefully can help some operators with their longevity as operators and their health and keep their body parts intact and that's something that even even though it's not that relevant to me anymore because I rarely operate, period, let alone, you know, steady cam.

I don't do any more at all. But I'm very well aware of how many people get injured on a regular basis by camera operating. Really, the big change was from film to digital because we went from four-minute loads to 40. Right. Approximately. And that allowed the camera just to keep rolling. that you didn't have that automatic reload time, those built-in breaks. So I think that's made a huge difference, unfortunately, and we're only starting to see the results of it now,

where people have had 10 to 15 years of doing this. And I'm hearing about younger people having more back injuries, knee, shoulder than they used to because of this. So I will really feel good about this down the road if this becomes more standardized, and it helps people. Cool. Yeah, well, we'll definitely figure out a way to, like, do a little kind of demo for that. Great. Because I'm the production guy at PVC, so that's my job. Awesome. Well, man, thanks for giving me all that time. Yeah. Super, super fun. We'll have to have you back when you get those shorts kind of shot and figured out.

Or I guess you can just come back and shoot the shit again if you get bored. But yeah, you know, because we didn't mean talk about cinematography all that much, which is what I love. Frame and Reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMill. and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the Ethad Art Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truex branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to

Pro Video Coalition.com or YouTube.com slash Owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.