Frame & Reference Podcast - 75: "The Expert at the Card Table; Looking For Erdnase" Director & DP

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

On this weeks episode Kenny talks with director Hans-Joachim Brucherseifer and cinematographer Marc Tressel-Schmitz about the documentary "The Expert at the Card Table; Looking For Erdnase." In this episode they chat about achieving a professional look on a low budget, the importance of production design and costuming, and how magic and film mirror each other. Enjoy the episode! To see the BTS featurette played at the start of the podcast, check out the video version of the podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boUW1aCMLgo  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. 

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today I'm talking with the Hjong's Yohe and Brochersipher and Mark Treschel Schmitz, the director in DP, respectively, of the expert at the card table looking for urnays, which is a documentary about the writing of the very important magic and card cheating book, the expert at the card table. As I've said, a handful of times on this podcast. I'm a lifelong magician, whether or not people believe it or expect it. And so I reached out to these guys, see if they wanted to talk to me about the documentary because it's actually very fascinating. For those of you who don't know, which is probably most of you, like I

said the expert at the card table is a really important book in card cheating and magic and it was written in the early 1900s by someone called s w urnays except that person doesn't exist there's no record of one ever existing so this documentary is you know trying to figure out who that was and also does a great job reenacting so to speak I don't want to give it away too much but there's a lot of scripted elements as well you know what what you would call But maybe these things didn't happen. Who knows? It's a mystery. So the guy's actually sent over a little making of featurette, a little eight-minute guy that I'll play right after I'm done talking. So if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see it. If you're just listening, you'll hear it. Obviously, that's how those mediums work. But if you are not interested, just skip eight minutes from when I stop. And that's about the end of it. But it's interesting. So I don't know why you'd want to skip it. Anyway, I am going to let you get to listening and watching. So without further ado, here's my conversation with the filmmakers behind the expert of the card table.

The movie tells the story of the person behind one of the most influential books in magic, particularly in cart magic. And it was written at the beginning of the 20th century, and we don't know by whom. The author is anonymous. He used a pseudonym, S.W. Ertnase. So the movie is diving into different theories of who this person might have been. I started doing magic when I was 15 years old. So in some way, the fact that I'm a man. member of the Magic Circle here in Germany is due to the book, The Expert at the Cart Table.

Of course, for my exam, I performed most of my tricks out of this book. And only later on I figured out that we don't know who the author was. And I decided to make a movie about the book I'm so grateful for. I was immediately hooked when he showed me that S.W. Erdnese turns to E.S. Andrews. That was a moment where I thought, oh my God, there's something. I talked to some people who did the research, to the most prominent, so to say. And to people having archives who could give me some articles. I wasn't able to find on the internet.

She gave so much to the story because she put conflict and drama to every person, to every piece of dialogue, basically. I chose this specific genre for the movie in order to combine the modern magic world with the historic background. And this is what the movie plays with. plays with throughout the film.

We decided to go for a more traditional filmic look. So no handheld camera, just static or slow-moving dolly shots, classical composition. And also we lit in a more traditional way with classic film ratios. Always sort of a discussion in the film industry. Can you make digital? look like film. I started to do my own research and sort of develop my own method. And in the end, I'm quite happy with the results we got. I think it works, it gives the

movie a quite distinctive look and separates those scenes. The character, Ednaise, is slightly odd. You know, and he's portrayed as being slightly almost otherworldly. It's kind of like, okay, you know, you can't really see what's going on, behind the eyes all was. What is his motivation? We were really lucky to have Florian Bayer to be our urnace in every scene because Florian is a magician himself. Florian and I knew each other from back in the magic circle and he was there for my exam and he was also part of the very first short film I ever I ever shot. I play four different characters or three different characters, depending on whether you assume that the actual urtanez is one of the other three or not.

So I don't even know whether I'm playing four or three characters. This was my biggest ambition, I would say, that when we show tricks on screen, there is no visual effects. So everything you see in the movie when it comes to slide-of-hand is done on set. So we had some extremely talented slide-of-hand artists who have specialized, especially in the Erdnese techniques. We also work with Moritz Müller, with Simeon Sidanov. And then Hanyu himself, the director, also did some of the slides. So all three of them used their hands to... pretend to be my hands and made me look good.

Of course the clothes were very different back in those years because the beauty standards and also the situation of the time was quite different, the fabric changed a lot, the shape changed a lot. Yeah, so it was some very interesting research and also work to recreate those historical costumes. We built the United States from 1902. We built all this as a set and as different sets all over Germany. So what I remember most about the set design was seeing it for the first time and when the building that it was shot in

was already quite old and sort of of the time is quite good. So I didn't think there was going to need to be an awful lot done to the did the rooms that we were filming in. And then when I walked in there and there was these amazing wood panels and it just like took it right back to the time. It was perfect. It looked really good. We had to change the German way of construction

from the room to the American-looking apartment that we see in the movie. At the time, you could enter the apartment and we had the newspaper office. And next room, we had the bakery. and then in another room we had the Milton Franklin Apartments. For me, the scene and the train was of the most challenge because we needed to have a moving train.

So it will be a train station somewhere and we have to make it move. We had our... Our lightning department was quite creative. They built something like a wagon out of wood where they put the spotlights on and then they could move it by the window of the actual train so they could make it look like the train is actually moving. So one of the weirdest and biggest problems I actually ever had on a film was

Han-Ju's entry to the USA. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to travel to the United States when we were shooting most of the interviews. Hans' visa was cancelled by the US government or so. We don't know why. We actually still don't know why. All of my colleagues were allowed to go, but I wasn't. And for all the interviews, Hans was there online via Skype or or Zoom and that's how we shot those scenes.

Work on this was the best work that I've ever done in my life. Was the most fun work that I've ever done in my life. In general, being on a film set I think is the most enjoyable professional environment that you can be in, unless that is that your director is an asshole. And luckily, Hanyo is the most wonderful person to work with. person to work with. It's quite challenging to shoot such a big project with a rather small budget and we wanted to get the highest quality we could get.

And I'm just very thankful to be able to be involved in such a project with so many people who were so involved and to sort of work the extra mile. The way I normally start the podcast is by asking everyone what got you guys involved in in filmmaking, not necessarily, or art in general, not necessarily how you got started in the industry, but, you know, what got you interested in being a creative individual, especially a magician. I've mentioned on this podcast before that I was a magician, but it never got to talk about it, which is half the reason why I invited you all here to talk about this film. But Hans, let's start with you then. How I got started with filmmaking.

I started trying different artistic things when I was in high school just as a way of expressing myself when I was dealing with, I don't know, emotional, difficult situations and stuff like this. And I tried a lot of different things from, music to to painting drawing and and all of that and I wasn't good in any of that like at all um so then I found magic not film I found magic first and I was about 14 or 15 years old and this was something because not a lot of people were doing it I was able to do well enough to maybe impress some people, but also for people to simply notice what I was doing. And yeah, so I got into magic

when I was 14, 15 years old. And a few years later, I also got into photography. And I loved retouching in Photoshop. And it was a little bit like magic to me. You could also make things levitate and you could also remove things and stuff like this. And while I was in school, I was also working in CGI a lot because I was doing a lot of animation and 3D animation

and then all of this sort of came together my love for photography that I built over the years that I had a background in VFX and CGI and this magic element which film always

had to me and then I decided that I wanted to study motion pictures and this is what I ended up doing yeah what about you Mark So I basically as a child I always liked to draw and paint and I remember the first time I went to the cinema as a little kid and I was

immediately fascinated and even when I was quite young I liked making offs and watch behind the scenes stuff and I got really fascinated when you see the movie and it looks like a movie I didn't know but it just looks like a movie I didn't know why and And then you see the making off camera shots, especially in the old days, some crappy video camera. And it looks so different. And then I just wanted to understand what's difference. How do you get from this to that? So it's a fascination for me as a teenager, basically.

And then I got a little bit more into film making and doing my own little stuff, a lot of stuff with green screen, actually, and compositing. and then when I was in high school the DSLRs came out and you could film on them and so I got the cheapest one and shot some shorts with friends and I directed them myself but then I figured out I actually

I don't want to become a direct I want to become a cinematographer yeah because that's I feel like everyone that I know at least definitely started out thinking that film was a possibility because of those DVD special features. I mentioned it a million times on this podcast how like I still like bulk by like a few days

ago. I was just at the store and just bought a stat. It was like the sting actually the everything everywhere, Blu-ray, the 4K1, the apocalypse now like 4K 6-6 disc set and like a few other things. And the guy at the store was like, wow, movie night, huh? And I was like, oh, I just collect them. I just want the special features. I still love making off, and I try to get them.

It's difficult nowadays with streaming and stuff. I also like to listen to DVD audio commentary. I've mentioned so many times that I think, A, streamers should put, you know, how you can choose what language you watch stuff in. They should put the director commentary in that. Like, how big is a MP3 file? I think with House of Cards, the first episode, I think.

There's an audio commentary of Fincher, if I'm not mistaken. But it's the only time I ever got that on Netflix. So then they know it's possible. Maybe I'm confused. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember. I got to check that out. Because I've been saying, I've been screaming about that, and I've been screaming about how we need to,

I'm just screaming in general, how we need to make like a special features all the DPs agree that this is a good idea we need a special features streamer because I imagine those aren't expensive like the rights to those aren't expensive you know no studio is like give us

$40 billion for the featurette for the Phantom yeah true you know yeah but one thing that I've mentioned a lot We'll probably skip around a lot in this podcast because I'm slightly scattered around. But one thing that I've talked about a lot on this podcast is how film and, well, first of all, we should, for the people, normally I never ask this because it sounds like I haven't done my research. But this film is so niche that I think I will have to have you guys explain the film to the listeners.

So it's about a very, let's say, famous, I suppose, magician who wrote a book. Hans, can you kind of walk the audience through kind of what it is and what the documentary is about? Yeah. So the background story is that there is a book that's the so-called Bible of card magic for card magicians nowadays. And what it actually is, it's half an explanation how to cheat at carts, and half it's an explanation how to perform magic tricks for friends and family, sort of. And this has become the Bible of card magic because it was revolutionary at the time it was published, the way it was written, it was written very eloquently, and all the techniques summarized in this one. book, which is very technical. It was just an amazing summary of everything, all of the material that was out there at the time. And up until today, we don't know who wrote it. So this is

something that fascinated me from the beginning because usually it's the magicians that control the secrets. In this case, we have a secret that magicians can't control. So this is something I loved about this. And in this movie, we conduct interviews with some of the best magicians that are currently on this planet. And we try to solve this mystery, sort of. We want to find who that author was of this famous book called The Expert of the Cart Table. And the alias he used was S.W. Urtnace. Hence the title of the movie, The Expert of the Cart Table, Looking for Urtnace. yeah it's a it's a it's a beautiful combination of just straight up regular ass documentary

I shouldn't say regular like it's not you know but it's like a regular documentary on top of these really fantastically created um recreations of of possibilities i should say not to give like you know too much of the film away but um it it is halfway a narrative a traditional narrative film and it has the look of that and uh you know kind of jumping into the cinematography side first i kind of wanted to know like how i can't imagine the budget for this was too big but it looks you know just as uh high budget as any narrative film um you know the set pieces are great the uh design is great the lighting's fantastic i was wondering if you could walk me through like how um how you guys approached that any any any references maybe you had

Especially, you know, I recall, I watched it like three weeks ago, I guess. But I recall, like, the prison scene was particularly pretty. The apartment and, like, the little bakery all looked just perfect. Well, first of all, thank you. Yeah, thank you. And, yeah, we had a really tiny budget. I mean, I'm not sure how much I can go into detail, but I can say it's less, it was less than 200K. And it's for a documentary part and a sort of feature narrative part.

And we travel to the States and shot our interviews there and stuff. So we always had the budget sort of in mind and thought, how can we make the best out of it? How many days can we have? What equipment is the right choice? And how can we make this look like a movie within the limits we have? And, I mean, the project started 2017, and we shot the first scene, so with a proof of concept, in 2017, and it's actually a scene that's still in a movie. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah. So then we waited three, two years, two and a half years, and shot the rest of it. and so the first scene when the illustrator and Artnay's meet, they were shot three years before. Interesting.

And yeah. I remember that scene being slightly different and I was like, oh, interesting choice. That would make sense that it's just older. Yeah, yeah. We tried, we hope nobody would realize but of course,

so we sort of back then we sort of set the look kind of. I went some rules, how I wanted a movie to look. I watched a lot of movies together and talked about stuff. And basically, I'd say we went for a more traditional look. So we said no handheld, no gimbal. And also a more traditional way to light everything, not really not old school hard light for now but traditional for today so i mean i grew up with

movies in the 90s and 2000s so that's that's almost traditional today the way those were lit and sure also wanted to go for 16 millimeter film look we shot the first scene we also shot on 16 millimeter lenses that were specifically designed for this um And I think we were shooting on a red with an 8K sensor and then cropping. So we still would get a 4K image, but we would have like a 16 millimeter crop. Because yeah, the look of the film, I, you know, any camera nerd is always sitting there going like, I wonder what they shot on. But the Super 16 kind of look, I was like, is it, you know, I was thinking you guys shot it on like an older black magic.

because those older black magics look very filmy. It is what we ended up using for the other scenes. The red we only used for the first one, but I think Mark can tell you more about that. But basically back in 2017, when we decided we want to go with 16mm, we had another company. We worked together with they had a red helium, and we just used the 4K extraction,

so we were roughly 16 millimeter. and we got 60mm size high speed primes and basically shot close to wide open and they're quite soft and flare interestingly and it was basically at the time where everybody was going full frame and large format and we thought it would be fun to go small format instead and originally two years later

we still planned on using the same camera we were still in cooperation with the same company but I think two weeks before the first day of shooting they sort of dropped out and we couldn't get the camera and since it's a small budget film and my philosophy

with indie and low budget stuff is basically always get the cheapest camera you can get but it's still quite good and then all the money you have for equipment, use it for lighting and grip. So I actually decided to test my,

I had a pocket 4K myself. Oh, okay. A newer one. And it's micro 4.3. But if you use like 80% of the frame, it's roughly a 60 millimeter again. And this update to do this came out like two days before we wanted to start shooting.

That's the best time to start changing things around. Yeah, definitely. So we had a PL mount on the camera and used the size, 6mm high speeds. We used on the first shoot. And actually, they worked great together. I was, in hindsight, I was happy with the choice of the pocket. It was much easier to handle. We had quite the sound problems on the first time we shot.

the red and the black magic you put a small v mount on the camera and it runs half the day also we had some color matching problems with the red because when it heats up obviously the sensor reacts differently to light and the colors change and i remember that at some point we had to pause for 10 minutes just because of the sound it was making so it could cool down and then 10 minutes later we started shooting again and then in color direction Mark where it's like okay this looks like two different cameras this one is magenta and the other one is green so

yeah but I don't want to hate on red to make great cameras and they're great cameras but I've personally have hated almost every red I've ever used especially as an AC it's fucking miserable I just borrowed the parent company of the people who put this podcast out as film tools they're like a local

camera store uh camera equipment store and um they let me borrow their raptor for a week to for review um and a few things i love about that i think that's probably their best cameras so far i know a friend of mine who's been a red owner's whole life slightly disagrees but um they actually put a thermoelectric coupler on the sensor so now you don't that temperature shift doesn't affect the sensor anymore. They fixed it. They fucking fixed it. That's good.

It's good to know. Yeah, the fans not loud. Yeah, they took care all that. You don't have to blackshade for a half hour. That's another really great thing. I did this once. I did this once basically 10 minutes before we wanted to shoot. Let's do a black shading.

Yeah, you only do that once. I shot something on the, I shot something on the Commodo a couple of weeks ago. really enjoyed the camera so yeah the the commoto i've is a great care i wasn't as as thrilled with it you know because it's it's there's so many things about it that are stripped away to make it yeah what it is but i think the raptor which on oops uh the raptor's only slightly bigger and uh has like all the ports you need and all the features you'd like and then the xl obviously has built in indies which i i don't know i don't know how red and black magic for that matter matter, have decided NDs are going to be the last thing they think about.

I don't get it. Every other camera manufacturer was like, yeah, people use them. You know, talking about your lighting package, was there a sort of, there's a remarkably consistent look, except for the one, before we get into the lighting package, is there any reason why there's only one time period that's in black and white and then the rest of them are in color. Yes, yes. Because all these reenactment scenes or all those period pieces take place around 1900, right? And they all show a different candidate, different person that Ertnace might have been. And then we have this one black and white scene that's sort of intercut

with also another period piece. And this is sort of in between the different time levels we have, because we have today with the modern-day B-roll and the interviews, and then we have those period pieces. And in between, there was this journalist in the 1950s who first came up with a question, who is Ertnest and seriously investigated it. So I wanted to make clear that this is not a flashback of who Erdnais might have been, but it is another level of the research. So we wanted to go for this film noir kind of look,

because it also fit a little bit time-wise. So we wanted to have this film noir kind of look for this one scene that was neither here nor there. Got it. Yeah, because I had a whole lick of notes here. Before I knew I was going to interview you guys, I wrote down all these notes hoping I would be able to interview you. So, yeah, at the top, it's like black and white.

And then it's like, why color? Why is this in color? Wait, it's 50 years before that. Why is that in color? Yeah, 18, 99. seven is in color. What happened? Actually, actually one more thing about that to be completely honest with you. I mean, when you shoot a movie on such a budget, basically after our main shooting block, we had almost no money left, and we hadn't shot those scenes. And we know

we needed, the film was in edit already, and we really realized, okay, we really need those scenes to connect everything. We had only very little budget left. and black and white makes things easier. It makes things look nice too. Especially for production design. So we shot the scene at the basement of our production company and we decided, okay, we need to do certain things to make it still look interesting with the limited budget,

so we decided let's go with black and white. white, but anamorphic. Yeah. And I haven't, I have an old anamorphic projector lens. That's kind of clunky and difficult to use. And now it's a, it's a Sankor. Zankor, I don't know how to pronounce it. Interesting.

Yeah. And it's very interesting, but it's also difficult to handle and makes crazy flares and it's tough to focus. But we know it's basically just short reverse shot of two people, talking on a phone, so maybe we can make it work. And it helps sort of to not, I mean, it makes it's another layer and look so we don't actually realize that we are in the basement of our production company. And we couldn't also afford the 60 millimeter lenses. So we thought, okay, let's go with a completely different way because we wouldn't have

been able to get the same look than we got on the other. yeah it definitely doesn't look uh and i mean obviously looks different because it's like a different setup and everything but it doesn't look like you ran out of money if it still looks that one still looks good that's very good honestly like guys the i don't want to uh blow too much smoke at you but like it all of the um all of the i mean all the whole film but especially all the narrative stuff or the the recreations all look just fantastic like anyone can uh I think any student or anyone who's been working in film forever, both can learn some really nice little.

Again, that prison scene is like a classic, as you were saying, like kind of fundamental filmmaking and is just very elegantly designed lighting-wise. It just looks fantastic. And especially on a pocket fork, you know, so many people talk about black magics. You know, on one hand, you've got fanatic black magic fans on the other hand. you're like, oh, they're cheap or whatever. But you can get really amazing results with them.

Yeah, absolutely great. First of all, thank you. Thank you again. And I'm always, it's always interesting how long cinematographers can talk about what camera I prefer. And me too, by the way. I can't talk hours just about the camera. But in the end, it's probably, if you do it right, if you're exposed right, it's only the last two, three percent.

most people won't notice. But if you've got a, especially on a low budget, if you've got a light more, if you've got a Dolly, that makes a huge difference, I think. So that's why my philosophy always was, I take the camera I can basically afford. And I'm not using the pockets so much anymore. But it's a great camera for basically a thousand bucks. That's, yeah. Yeah. And you get timecode, which is nice if you do a real movie shoot with sound. Basically get all the professional features. It's great. Yeah.

I jump back to my question from like an hour ago. What kind of lighting package were you traveling? Was it the same for every scene? Like, were you just kind of repurposing the same lights? Or were you more tailoring them to each scene? We basically had the same package for all the scenes except the train. The train was a different beast. Yeah, because that's a relatively large set, isn't it?

Like lengthwise? Yeah, we had every, how do you say it, car, right? The individual compartment's not confusing at all, but okay. every car of the train was a different department so in the back we had the actors and costume design and all of that then there was a little bit production design then there was production and catering next to one another surprise and then there was the actual set

so every time an actor was getting ready they basically had to walk for five minutes in this one direction until they ended up on set and it was so cold it was freezing I think it was November and of course you can't heat up the entire train and then shoot and get good audio

so we would have the heating on and then when we were rolling we would turn it off and it was so small because we didn't build it as a set we actually went into a real train from that time period and tried to shoot there

and so it was it was, I wouldn't say it was a nightmare. I was definitely on worst shoots. Actually, it was a lot of fun, but it was complicated. This is what I'm going to say. But I enjoyed those scenes very much. It was great, I think. They're very, I mean, I've

said this a million times on this podcast, too, and I've been able to, lucky enough to interview some really amazing production designers, but DPs get a lot of credit for what production designers actually did. Absolutely. And that train is that train is definitely beautiful.

because the train's beautiful, you know? Absolutely. So maybe that's a good time to mention Anna Luisa Fierke, who was our production designer and who's been with us and involved in the project from the beginning, working for free for like two years, helping me to get the proof of concept scene and to get the project started.

So if you're ever listening, Anna, thank you very much for helping me realize this film. Yeah, that's great sharing. Yeah, she's not. I totally agree. Oftentimes, actually, when people say, oh, that's great cinematography, sometimes they really mean it's great production design, because what's in front of the camera matter so much.

It was really nice to shoot in all those really nice locations from that time period, and most of them were actually built by Anna. Really? Or modified so far that they work for us. But the apartment in San Francisco and the bakery was all built by her. If you're interested, I'm going to send you some behind-the-scenes photos and stuff like this. Oh, yes. Then you can actually see how we set everything up.

For example, the San Francisco apartment, bakery, and the newspaper office. It's actually one apartment. And you were able to work from one room. room to the other and you would be in a different setting entirely. This was pretty cool. And we basically had this old apartment building, this old flat and Anna built everything from scratch. And one of the more trickier parts was to make a German apartment look like America,

especially in around 1900. And what Anna was complaining about all the time with the windows, she was like, no we can't shoot here because the windows are so different no window in america looks like this and she ended up building something in front of every window and then putting a different window i wasn't seeing the difference really to be honest and there was a different window in front of the actual window and then it was okay then it was fine so yeah it's you know that's that's that's why you uh keep those people uh close to you because yeah that the little the little lie for detail that some of us would never pay attention to is often very important.

Yeah. I will say I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area and she nailed it. That's like, that's what I remember. Obviously, I didn't live in the 19, the early 1900s, but technically I was born in the late 1900s. But, but yeah, that's like what. They, that's what, that's what they told us it looked like. Like, you can go to like various ghost towns up there and like they have obviously like recreations of stuff and that's all very, uh, what I remember it being. It honestly, uh, another compliment to you guys. The only thing that reminded me y'all were German was just people's like accents, people like doing American accents because I've worked with a lot of Germans before, uh, on various like commercials and stuff. And, uh, sometimes to make fun of me, they'll do an American accent. And I'm like, and I can just hear. Like, at random syllables, I'm like, oh, that got you, motherfucker, you're, like. Okay, apart from the main...

Apart from the main actor, do you remember where you heard it? It is the main actor, and no, I don't remember. It's just, I'm telling you, it's like random syllables. You'll just hear slightly off if you've listened to Germans enough. Like, it's just... It's not, obviously, it's not obvious. I don't know if anyone would pick. up on it. It's like a weird little memory I have from my friends over at Hollow Ride, if they

ever listen to this. They're all German. Now, I was I was casting Florian because he's also a magician and he's a professional actor and we knew each other from ages ago because he was joining the Magic Circle here in Germany when I was joining and he was actually a part of my very, very first short film I ever shot. and I'm never going to show anyone. So he was part of this. And then he was also part of this, my first feature now, which I think is also very, very nice of him to go through all of these very steps with me.

And he obviously is not a native. So I was like, okay, maybe that's still possible because I want to work with him. I like his acting. And we knew each other from forever. ago. But then I would definitely need to cast everyone else to be a native, if possible. So it's not an English movie and everybody speaks English with a German accent. This would be horrible. So I try to do this as good as possible, as well as possible. Yeah. I think good's the right on there. I don't know if it matters.

And I think we got a lot of natives, not 100%, but a lot of people who spoke very good English. And also, Florian, we organized a dialect coach he could work with. And I always had this argument, well, we don't know who Erdney's was. So maybe he was a German immigrant. You don't know that. So 100%. Yeah. The Bay Area is a story of immigrants. Like that's what made the entire. There's this great documentary I've mentioned a bunch of times on this podcast

called Fog City Mavericks and it's about all the filmmakers who went to the Bay Area left Los Angeles, went to the Bay Area to make film. And you were talking like George Lucas, Coppola, Clint Eastwood, all these people. And

it's the story of that area every single time. It's where people go to get away from maybe not anymore. it's the tech sector of the world, but historically, it's where everyone went to go be different and try something new. And I truly do want to make, I just wrote down an idea the other night. There are so many amazing musicians that came out of the Bay Area that I, that I want to make a Fog City Mavericks for musicians. You know, you got Sheila E. Prince's drummer, you know, Deftones, Tupac. You know, it's.

So many different, anyway, that's, I'm going to need your help making that documentary. Thank you for agreeing to pay for it. But I did want to go back and touch on the lighting package. What was that package? Because you did such a good job of, if it was the same, like you're saying, it was the same package the whole time. You did such a good job of making every scene fully fleshed out. There wasn't, there wasn't like, oh, if only we had, it didn't seem like there was like, oh, if only we had another fixture or something. Can you walk me through what that package was and generally how you were the idea behind lighting each setup?

Sure. So I really like LED lights and use them a lot. I started during film school to build my own LED lights. I built a four-by-four frame basically full of LEDs or flexible fabric. Now they're more common back then when I did nobody here. Germany at least use them. And I love that light. It's great. But I thought it would be interesting for the period setting to also go with a more traditional lighting package and actually avoid using LEDs. So I ended up using them in a couple of moments because I own some and they're

available. But basically we had about six lights. We have one 4K HMI, R.E. Sun, so you can change to the 2.5K bulb. And luckily in Europe, you can plug a 2.5K in every household socket. You can't do that in the US. LED has changed filmmaking for American students, trust me. And then I have a little day door 400 watt HMI with a projector lens. I love the projector lenses. Nowadays you have them on the aperture lights, for example.

And also a source for tungsten. And especially when you can't really light so much from outside because the rigging would be too, or you're up in the third floor or something, then you can just maybe rigged a white card over the window and then you bounce the projector light in there, so I like to do that. I love mirrors. We had a one by one meter, so roughly three by three feet mirror. And especially simulating sunlight, I think it always helps you. if you get the highest tripod you can get, put the mirror on top, get it as high as possible, put the light on the ground, the strongest you can get, into the mirror, back through the window.

You've got a nice, really sunlight looking light without using condo lifts and cherry pickers and stuff because we had none of those. And then I had a couple of tanks and soft boxes, refa lights. And basically, that's my lighting package, except for the train. For the train, we needed 3, 4K HMIs because I wanted to have... And you build a wagon where you could put the lights on and drive by the windows. Oh, wow. Yeah, we were shooting on real train tracks.

So there was a train track to the left of the train, to the right of the train. so we had a little wagon on the train tracks and we put one light in there you don't really see it so much in the movie just when they're playing cards and you look really closely the lights moving but for the big scene and we couldn't move

all the three lights at the same time but yeah we had 3 4K HMIs and a lot of butterflies and stuff I also believe that you can do so much with just flags and floppies and especially just using black to just negative fill, can work wonders.

Yeah, especially these days with digital sensors being so sensitive. So many DPs have talked about how it's more about taking away light than it is adding, whereas back in the days of shooting film, you had to punch things with light. Sure. Yeah. So for example, the scene in the prison, we basically had one 4K coming through the little window, bouncing off the floor. And then, of course, we, for the closer shots, we added some lights to wet, I think, muslin laying on the floor and sort of wrapped around the soft bounce from the floor a little bit. but that's it yeah that I think I've mentioned it a little earlier but that is that's my favorite setup

the train and that and that present scene are like my two favorite setups by far I thought the train was green screen and I don't mean that as a negative I mean it was it looked so controlled that I thought that was on a stage yeah we had a lot of discussions about the train because it was the most complicated

scene we had to shoot and to fit it in our budget it was the most complicated too. And we obviously knew we couldn't get the crew to, I don't know, the south of Spain or something that would remotely look like the desert. And shoot in an actual moving train, we could never afford that. So we were shooting the documentary parts in August, and we would shoot the narrative parts in, I think, November. So when we were in the States, we were in Los Angeles and had to go to Las Vegas.

So we took a car and drove to the Death Valley. It's a long drive. And filmed our plates there. Oh, perfect. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great because, first of all, we could control exposure and time of day and stuff. And also, I knew beforehand when shooting the scene what will actually be projected in the windows because oftentimes you shoot something in front of green screen or whatever and if you don't actually know what's going to be in there it'll always be tough to match

yeah and then we we had different ideas how to shoot it and I really pushed for using white instead of instead of green because I knew basically I did it once for a short film Roger Deacons actually does it a lot and Fincher does it a lot too. And helps so much because you don't have any spill. And actually the white fabric outside helps you light the scene. And you get similar looking light they would actually get from sky or just bright outside. If we had green screen all around, I would have needed a much, much bigger lining package to get some white light, basically, in the...

Get rid of the spill. Yeah, and get rid of the spill. So we shot not in the studio, but outside. And we angled the white butterflies, like in a 30-degree angle. So we would actually bounce some skylight in the white fabric and back into our train. And then we added the HMI as hard sunlight. And it worked great. And actually, I think I had a lot of discussions beforehand with the

post-production people because they like green screen because they know, okay. I know how to do it and it's going to be fine. But in the end, they were very happy with it because if the window will anyway be quite overexposed, if it should look realistic. So going from complete white to overexposed desert, it's not such a big difference. So you can get away even with hair and glasses and stuff in front. well and exactly what you're saying like if you look at my window that's real right that's not green that's what nate i think that was what they did on on mank it was just they were on a stage

and then uh the outside of of mank's like little apartment or whatever where he was all laid up with his foot up uh it's just a white it's just a white screen and they were like why did you do that and he's like who hell who cares what's outside no one's looking out this window going, oh, the dynamic range sucks. Like, it's just white. Exactly. Exactly. If you go too far with a green screen and you want to see everything outside,

you'll end up looking unrealistic. And it's fake. So, yeah, I'm very happy we did it with the widescreen instead of green screen. And we had two scenes, two lighting setups, one later during a dusk. and then we basically just bounced our HMIs into our white butterflies and played a little bit with different colors

so we get a sort of transition from very cold blue skylight to warmer sunset and yeah I think the darker scene also worked well with the white screen set up Absolutely. Were there any sort of film references that you guys took from that that informed this film? Or were you just kind of going from your own imagination? Visually or from a structural point of you, visually, yeah. Or structure, I mean, both if you've got both. Well, in terms of structure, searching for Sugarman, wasn't?

inspiration and definitely. And there is a film called The Imposter, which also has this very unique approach of combining documentary and narrative filmmaking. So this is from a structural point of view. And I think what I, I think I want to go for Robert Richardson kind of look, but not too artificial, so not a completely wide rim light and stuff like

this. Right. Or the giant light that hits the table in all of his movies. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is sort of what I wanted, but more subtle. I remember sitting in the cinema for hateful aid, and they cut to a white shot

of these hut and so on. And I could just see that behind the hut and behind And every, I don't know, hill of snow, there would just be a huge light illuminating everything. And I laughed and it looked amazing. It was a very, very beautiful frame. But I laughed because this is not what moonlight looks like.

And the entire cinema was silent because it was just not a funny scene. So, yeah. Yeah, I would say his lighting is a lot more impressionistic. Yeah. You know, it's funny, you know, that actually does bring up a good point. Like, you can get away with a lot in film. You can do things. Like, I think, I think as filmmakers, we can kind of get caught up and like, oh, it doesn't

look perfect. And it's like, you can get away with quite a bit. The audience will forgive a moon that comes from the floor and lights trees. You know what I mean? Like at night, you see that a lot. In Thelma and Louise, you can also see it when they, in the end of the moon, when they drive through the valley in the desert. And you can also see that the moon is actually down there in the valley,

trying to light the valley itself. Yeah. What were the sort of... So it was mostly... So it was less so like films that you were referencing visually and more just kind of styles. Yeah, I think Mark also a huge role model for use Deacons, as far as I know, so maybe you can comment on that.

can comment on that? Yeah, I mean, obviously there are quite a lot of cinematographers who had a great influence on me, but we didn't reference Deacons, I would say, in any specific way in this movie. I think, I mean, we talked about Leon the Professional as something that influences you a lot, and I think it influenced a lot of the shots, actually, also. Yeah, mainly the apartment in San Francisco. I wanted the apartment in San Francisco to be lit very similar. too, like the opening massacre sort of in beyond.

And we talked a lot about different westerns. So that's also something influenced. I wouldn't say there as a specific movie that sort of we looked at and thought, oh, we basically want our movie to look like this. It's a combination of a lot of things. And here we wanted to go a little bit more, let's say impressionist, impressionistic. without being too obvious, but I wouldn't say we try to be naturalistic. Sure.

Yeah, it's like you said earlier, it's a very classic style that is immediately obvious that it's cinematic. I think the main difference also visually for me was to distinguish the documentary parts. from the reenactment scene. So you can really see a difference there. This is why we also switch aspect ratios. And this is also why we went for a more digital look for the, for the interview. So it looks more modern. We also use different lenses to get a crisper look for the interviews.

And then we had this softer and less natural, more impressionistic style for the reenactment scenes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the, what was I going to say about the interviews? The interviews are great. Oh, it was, you know, it was actually just a random thing. When you go and interview Richard Turner, for those people listening, Richard Turner is one of the best card mechanics of all time.

That quick shot of his closet, I really appreciated. Yeah. It's got, what, 500 decks of cards just stacked in there? More, it's a couple of thousands. and he's like the official tester for B cards. So he does sort of like quality control. I think for USPCC in general, he tests a lot of the decks from them.

Interesting. I do want to get into cards because you guys made your own cards and I bought a brick, but they're stuck in New York. I'm so sorry about that. That's not your fault. That's clearly our fault. But they made it from Germany.

now they're just stuck in the wrong coast. But I did quickly want to touch on the color grade for all of the reenactments. Do you guys, were you very, obviously you're probably very involved in that. But, oh, wait, Mark, you did it, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I was about to say, were you talking to your colorist? You're the colorist. That's perfect.

So can you walk me through kind of your system there for color grading and kind of how you approach that? Yeah, sure. so we always knew we wanted to go for a more traditional film film look including some sort of film emulation for the for the narrative parts and I've been testing for I'm always fascinated by by analog film stalks and as I said I'm growing up in the 90s and to a thousand sort of this aspect era of film, film looks, so basically Vision 2, Vision 3 and sort of classic print film look that's, and lit in a sort of traditional film way with your typical lighting ratios and stuff. That's sort of my reference point. Because if you say film look, it can mean a thousand different ways, especially depending when you grow, when you have grown up and photography is very different than motion and the way you scan it or project it there's not

one film look so that's basically my reference point and Steve Yadlin of course sort of changed a lot for me I've named dropped him a million times on this podcast yeah I mean he's he's amazing and I so appreciate what what he does and basically open my eyes that it was possible to match digital and film to a point where almost nobody, I say, would see the difference. Or care. You know, you get close enough and the audience goes, yeah, that's film. Right.

So I spend a lot of time reading everything I could about this, shooting films, different film stocks, scanning them, looking at them, and sort of develop my own process. inspired by Stephen Yatlin. And essentially, my current form of this is I shoot color charts with a couple of thousand patches, actually, the enclosure, so the lighting is always the same, and you have to make sure you do a different profile for daylight tungsten. Basically, the moment you change a little bit in the lighting, it won't match perfectly, but it gets you close enough.

And I figured out my first test were just with a regular color checker and looked horrible, not even close. Yeah. Then I got the bigger color checker with 200, I know, 88 patches, still way off. I wasn't happy at all, so I tried many, many things and sort of used the parts of the pandemic.

pandemic to work on that and fine-tune it and try different algorithms and the matching later in post and the right soft right software is still something I'm working on but in the end basically I yeah the color checkers you you basically prepared yourself to to do your color science project how many patches are on there now do you do you know I think there are I think a couple of hundreds and I do different exposures also. So I end up with roughly 2.5K patches. And I'm happy with that. Yeah. I'm so glad to hear you say that because I did that over the pandemic too. Oh, great. And I'm just glad to hear there's someone else who's insane enough to just sit there in

resolve and just be micro-adjusting versus curves. Who am I talking to? What is happening? It's strange when you realize it's, I don't know, you are at home on the weekend and it's, I don't know, 1 a.m. And you're still matching color stuff. Well, yeah. Well, the thing that sucked for me was I only have the original color. I just did this with the Raptor.

I made a lot for this C-500 that matches the Raptor about 90%. But because I don't have a ton of color chips, what I would do is I'd match the color chart, like, Exactly. And then I would just go around filming random stuff and then we'd just have to eyeball it. And I've been doing that for a while. And it's, you know, close enough for government work, but it's not, it's not like perfect. And that annoys me. I think you're quite limited in resolve to do these basically three-dimensional changes because you got you versus saturation or luminance versus saturation. so basically two-dimensional things you can change. But if you want to say, okay, only very saturated orange-reds that are dark,

I only want to affect that, that you sort of get to the limits of resolve and need different things. Yeah, 100%. It's a journey for me. But I think it's fun and I'm happy with the results and I'm getting better and better. and I had a very, very early version of all that before we shot and made a lot and put it in the camera. I think that's quite important that you have a lot that at least gives you a saturation and contrast roughly to what you're shooting because the regular reg 7-09 luts are so low contrast

in comparison to, yeah, agreed. They're all terrible. I don't like them too. But if you just light and exposed based on that, you will never use enough fill light and don't go to sort of class. I think part of the film look is also the way, or maybe a huge part of the film look, if you want to call it, is actually the way you have to be prepared if you shoot on actual film

and you don't have a monitor and see it. So I'm still, I still like to use my light meter and I like to think, test a couple of things and get some specific lighting ratios key to fill in my head and try to not look at the camera until I think it's right and then just, I mean, it's not, I'm happy that I can look at the camera and check. I don't use it to expose, but basically to get the lighting I wanted, I want the fill level I want. and get consistency there, I think it's actually a very big part of the look. And if you just use your regular REC709 LUT and shoot and it looks okay, if you go to the film emulation, afterwards it might look horrible. Yeah. You know, it's funny.

I'm still a meter person myself. Getting a color meter, too, was like saved my life, especially with the LEDs where you can just put in the X, Y coordinates. So just meter the sun, X, Y coordinate. Everything looks great. But it's the last, because now everyone has the monitor. So as a DEP, you're not like a wizard anymore. You don't like, no, trust me, it'll look great.

But if the camera's turned off and you start figuring out your ratios with the meter, and then they just turn it on and it looks great, you're the wizard again. Yeah, it's good. That's great. Yeah, I mean, I enjoy that. That I can just tell my assistant where to put, or my grip, where to put the camera and can start living and get everything ready and then check. I still think that's for me personally the better work.

It saves time, definitely. And battery. If you're shooting on batteries and you don't have to turn the camera on to like expose for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, you know. That's definitely a great thing. I wanted to talk about the magic stuff because I, or I shouldn't say all the magic stuff. stuff. But I've said a million times on this podcast how I think magic and music, but magic in cinema are kind of the same thing as art forms. And I was wondering if you guys have any thoughts on that. For me, it's, you have some great quotes in the film. You know,

there, was it Richard Link Letter? I know, it was Ethan Hawke was explaining to Stephen Colbert. he was like a good movie isn't doesn't happen in the theater it happens when you leave the theater and you've got a great quote in the film where the answer isn't as fun as the question that's what a mystery uh that's what mystery is really about yeah um and i and i think those things are so intrinsically linked and i was wondering if you guys had had any other thoughts about how magic and cinema are related not not only uh uh as a concept but in the film i believe you mentioned the guy who invented film was a magician. Well, I think that very different levels, how they are similar.

For example, the way how I want to backwards engineer how a magic trick is done. It's very similar to how I would think about, okay, how they light this scene or how did they stage this scene. And then I also have to go back in sort of similar thinking pattern. In order to analyze how did they shoot the scene, it's very similar compared to how is this trick done. So this is one level, I would say. And then there's also this storytelling level. The way, if you want to structure trick well, you can also, for example, have three phases,

just like you have maybe three different acts to a movie plot. So they are sort of similar as well. And regarding this, we also have a nice quote in the movie. I think it's Jason England who says to him, magic is sort of like, or the mystery is sort of like the ending of a movie or the ending of a book. Making the point that if you already know, if you know how a trick is done or if you know how a movie is going to end, then you're taking fun out of it. And this is also something that's similar, I think. And then, of course, you have the actual movie magic and all the tricks you can do. I'm not necessarily talking about VFX and CGI, but you can do so many practical film effects.

And this is basically exactly what magic is, especially stage magic. Stage magic is practical film effects. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was just, I was looking at a secret. The other one, the other quote I really loved was talking about the importance of secrets. What is it?

One of the reasons secrets are so important in magic is because the secret is what enables someone to... With this idea of impossibility into your brain for a moment. Yeah, and that's kind of what film is. You know, we were at the beginning talking so much about special features and being fascinated by knowing. how a film was made and it's funny how as magicians we would never have special features i mean you can buy a book or a magic DVD or whatever but it's funny how those two art forms are the way that you go about oh well i suppose there's plenty of filmmakers who don't want to share you know how they lit something or how something was made there's a lot more secrecy

especially if the technique is new then i think people are more secretive i mean if you want to reveal a classic magic trick how to i don't know do a classic shift nobody's gonna, I don't know, hate on you for sharing this, but if someone releases something more or less really revolutionary that changes sort of the way we handle coins or cards or whatever and this person's not going to want this effect or this technique being shared and obviously it's not quite as bad if secrets are exposed in film in terms of how they did that.

exposing secrets like which movie is coming out next or how it's going to end then people get angry as well so yeah I think the one thing that that I noticed about

or I just know about I am privileged enough to film a few magicians at the magic castle every so often oh wow that's so cool congratulations dude it's the best because I just get to go for free

get to eat for free drink for free and hang out with the best magicians in the world. But the camera is, the camera does not lie, right? The camera sees everything. The camera's the worst observer. The camera's burning your hands without blinking. And so I was wondering if, you know, there's a few instances in the, in the documentary

where, like I saw Babel, I saw Babel for a quarter second. And I see him do like, I like some card catch. It's like, what the fuck? How? Yeah. Perfection on that man. But did you have to talk to any of these magicians, like, were there like multiple takes or were they just like,

this is the one trick and I'm never doing this thing again? Okay, Mike, do you want to take this one? Yeah, I think that's a good question for me. So I'm not a magician and I basically didn't know much about magic at all before I started to work on this movie with Hangio together. And it was a learning course for me because Hanio gets very specific. how to film those car performances and which angle

works and which doesn't and of course it sort of sometimes it's counterintuitive to the way I would like to look at it visually or the way to light it. If it's more documentary maybe you see okay that's a great way the light looks

on the hands but no you can't it's forbidden you can't you can't look from this perspective I have to go I have to go a little bit higher or a little bit lower and left to the right. So basically, Hanio had to micromanage me and where to put the camera. And then it's quite strange when somebody performs something for you. And to my unknowing eye, it looks perfect.

But no, we have to do it again. And with it, I don't know, on some of those performances with it, like 40 takes or something. and I didn't see the difference. It's quite strange when you stand there and obviously there must be a difference because I trust Honey and I know he wouldn't just do it for fun but I didn't see it, but I get better, I have to say I understand much more about it, I know more about it

and I sort of understand a little bit more how most of the tricks work, not actually work but it's the principle a little bit behind many of them. And I know a little bit more how to shoot it now. I wouldn't be comfortable shooting a magic without somebody like Hanyu around. I have to still admit. It's very special.

It's very, yeah, you have to be really into it and know what you're doing. But you know that I'm a lot of repetitions. You know that I'm a perfectionist in many ways. A lot of times for the wrong reasons or in places where it's really not important. But I think when it comes to magic and this repetitive nature of practicing until it's really, the move is really invisible from most angles and knowing your angles. And this is something that really stuck with me and which really made magic so fun for me to practice because this is something where I could actually do this and it would make sense to be. to pay attention to details so much.

And I think this is also why when I worked the hand double for some of the slides, those I think were the worst days for Mark because I was like, not again, not again. I don't like how my hands look. No, I can see my pinky flesh and, yeah. Is there any kind of things

that you can directly say you've taken from magic into filmmaking, any, I guess I can't say techniques, but anything that you kind of see being the same, obviously perfectionism might be one of them, but kind of any similarities there? Something I would need to think about, honestly. The biggest thing is what I already mentioned. The way I would reconstruct a trick helped me so much when I look at a frame and I want to reconstruct how they lit or how they reenacted

this scene. This is the biggest thing for me that I took away from it. Totally. Yeah, and the other thing you mentioned about storytelling is like always being I love a film where the movies one step ahead of you and that's just such classic

magic, you know, telling, saying one thing and having done another. I think one more thing, but it's a tiny thing. In terms of short films, usually not all the time but I would argue that in a short film you don't have the time to actually build a three-act structure

obviously there are exceptions but in general a short film for me should more be constructed like a joke so you have a buildup and then in the end you have your the big moment the punch line

then maybe 10 more seconds and then the short is over and you have a lot of magic effects like this as well. And you can still build it up like, like you're walking up stairs. And then there's a next level of impossibility. And then you say, okay, but I can also do this blindfolded. And then you have the next level of impossibility.

But you're building it up until the end and the finale. And this is very similar to how I would structure short film. Yeah. No, that's actually fantastic advice. you know it's I was just looking down the other quote I really loved was right at the end he's like

we're not protecting the secrets of magic from you we're protecting you from the secrets yeah and I think that's something that most audience members don't get you know Michael Amar obviously

Mark I don't know if you know Michael Amar but I was able to one thing that stuck with me I learned this from one of VHS tapes back in the day, which was whenever someone would be like, oh, how'd you do that? You go, can you keep a secret? And then yeah, and you go, so can I. And that was like the classic. That was the classic get fucked that you would tell every audience member.

But it does leave them with a little bit of a sense of specialness. I also hope that this movie, because it's, I mean, yes, it is obviously for a very niche market in the first place. but I specifically designed it so also layman would watch it and could enjoy watching it and learn about magic as an art form. And I hope that after watching the movie, those people who've watched it will better understand how to enjoy a magic show sort of. Because there are people that even get angry because they don't understand or they get sad because they think they're stupid or something like this,

you could argue that then maybe the magic wasn't performed correctly if this is how you leave the people, but this is not 100% of the truth. So I just hope that when people watch the movie, they can better understand what magic is about, how they can enjoy magic for themselves, and whether they want to be, how do I usually phrase it,

basically ask themselves the question, whether it's better to be uninformed and fascinated or to be aware and disenchanted. I love that you say that because that's something that I think a lot of people in modern times struggle with, right? You'll be watching something and you've got your cell phone there. And it's either you're distracted so you're not fully engaged, which is I think part of the, element of wonders. People don't want to be taken by surprise, so if something's getting a little too serious,

they'll just default to that, or they'll just start looking something up immediately. And I think there's incredible value in letting a play or a magician or a movie just take you on the ride and you commit. You know, theaters obviously do that by locking you in a room with a bunch of people who will beat you up if you pull your phone out.

But it's becoming harder and harder, especially with people watching my my girlfriend has a like many people we'll just pause a movie and be like we'll finish that tomorrow and I'm like what no oh my god no you don't do that we've we've been watching the goldfinch over three days and I'm just like I hate this I love you but I hate this yeah I feel you yeah you know that was now I'm jumping around too because I just noticed this note By the way, try doing this with a magic trick. You're doing the build-up, and then 50% through the magic trick. You say, okay, now remember this card.

You shuffled. We pick up there tomorrow. Yeah. There's actually in that, when we were talking, before we started recording, in and of itself, there's an element where an audience member is told, take this book, write something in it, and come back tomorrow, and they kick them out before the end of the show. And they have to come back the next day

to see the end and pass the book on to another person. Oh. And so that is, it's a very fascinating way. You guys got to watch it. It's a very good, for anyone listening or watching in and of itself is not quite a magic show. It is a magic show, but not really.

There's only like three tricks in it. But one of them is incredible. But yeah, there's this element where they kick them out and do have them come back. the next day, which is for that one person, probably gut-wrenching. But magic, obviously, is not an American trade, but there's so much about it that, like, you know, like cheating a casino, for instance, is a very American thing, you know, taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots or, or, it's very anti-authoritarian,

which I think is kind of ingrained in our culture. And it's, so that element of it, it kind of fascinates me that more people aren't into, or that you need more magicians who, you know, like Daniel Madison, whoever, who their character is a card sheet. For some reason, the lay people find that much more interesting than just a magician, you know. But to your point about... It's one of the characters that started me with magic. I even have a signed copy of a book of his in my shelf. You know, you'll be the only people who can appreciate this.

These two uncut card sheets are signed by Wayne Houchin and Brad Christensen. No way. Yeah, yeah. Wow, let's see. That one, the gaff deck is Wayne Houchin. Wow, that's so cool. I met them in two, what did it say? 2004, 2006.

Yeah, those things have traveled me through college, through high school, I tell you what, because I think you're going to appreciate this, and then we can switch back to film and then leave the magic. I have 20 uncut sheets of my very own deck of cards. If your break gets through customs, I send you one of those, and if you like, we can also sign it to Mark and I, if you want. I would love that more than anything, and I will frame it to match, and I will put it, I'm so the mirror.

I will put it there. and it'll go up next to my other because that's actually one of the side not film questions I wanted to ask you was what emotions do you go through being able to make your own deck of cards because that's certainly something I've wanted to do my whole life

well after making the decision to spend all your savings on a film you then have to make the decision okay now that maybe some money could come in, do you want to spend the first bits that come in to create your own deck of cards?

Right. And for some reason, the answer... Yeah, and for some reason the answer is, yes, I'm going to do that. So, what are the emotions? Did you go through and maintain, like, it needs to be this card stock, it needs to have, like, this feel? They need to be faroable, you know, that kind of thing. Yes, although Turner doesn't like me for it because they've harrowed the wrong way around for him, but not for me. And also not for a couple of people I know.

I wanted to work with Katamundi due to the stock they use. And I used to hate their stock like two or three years ago. I don't know exactly when they changed it, but now it's my favorite cutstock of all time. B-9. No, the thin, yeah, the B-9 and then the slim line finish or something they call it. Same stuff they use on like cohorts, I think. Yeah, exactly the one. Those are my favorite, yeah.

Thank God. Yeah, so you're in luck. This is the stock I used. And for me, it was, I wanted to build this, this Urtnace brand because Erdniz is something that stuck with me before I made this movie. And it's just like you mentioned, Daniel Madison's card sheet character is much more appealing for layman. And this is also what got me fascinated by magic, this sort of dangerous aspect. And then I loved this Erdne's mystery from the beginning. So I wanted to create, not necessarily a brand, but I wanted to create this little universe around Erdnace. And

part of this, the first step was the movie. And now with my... own deck of cards and card clips and closer pads and all of this. I think I'm on a good way in order to make this a thing or even more of a thing than it already was. Yeah, Mark has fallen asleep. So, but I'm yours. Yeah, but I have to say, like, to your point about things being accessible, I think the documentary is incredibly, like all that conversation we just had, very nerdy. No one knows what the fuck we're talking about. But the documentary is not that. The documentary, I think

some of the best documentaries tell you about something you had no idea. It's the same thing like Harry Potter. Well, that's a bad I mean, it's a corny example because it's magicians. But, you know, a movie, any movie that talks about like a secret underground

right near the surface, you know, even the Jack Ryan, you know, any spy movie. A prestige, but dang it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything where we talk about a secret society or a secret thing happening right underneath normal society. Before vendetta. Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great one, I think is fascinating. And so when you have a documentary like that, when you learn about, you know, the documentary of the pandemic, Tiger King. Like, who knew that there was these people who just had tigers and that shit's fascinating. But no one's a tiger person necessarily. you know. So I think this documentary does an amazing job of both being great for magicians to watch. Like I personally loved it. But I think you could show it to anyone and they would be similarly fascinated because the storytelling is so good. The reenactments are fantastic. And, you know, it's a mystery. Everyone loves a mystery.

Yeah. Like it's, yeah, I can't, I can't get enough. That's why I emailed you guys immediately after. I was like, I want to talk to you guys. this is great great yeah when honeyo came to I have a production company with a couple of colleagues I know from from film school

and when honeyo came to us with his pitch we all we don't know anything about magic but we like the mystery everybody likes a mystery that's what we thought and that's what fascinated us

and I think actually from getting a little bit more into magic I think a sort of learned shooting the movie how to appreciate magic. And I look at it differently. I think what you described, Hanyo, what happens to, hopefully to people who watch the movie, definitely happen to me. Oh, that's nice to hear. Never heard that from you. That's cool. Yeah, that is. It's, uh, yeah, that is very nice. Um, I'm, I'm going to have to let you guys

go, because I don't want to keep you here all day. Although I'm sure we can continue to to, you know, have you back if you'd like. But the way that I like to end them all, end all the podcast, is asking the same two questions, which I think next season I'm going to change up, but right now they are. If either of you, or both of you, were to be programming a double feature, you know,

like at a theater, what would be the, with your film, what would be the other film? So it has to fit So it has to fit our film? Not necessarily. You're the one programming the double feature. So it could be direct contrast. It could be analogous.

It could be different. Another question. Will I be watching the triple feature or do I program it for other people to watch it? I mean, you'd be watching it, but you're programming it for other people. Okay, okay. It's quite difficult for me

because I think this movie is quite different from anything I'm saying it doesn't it doesn't have to be yeah sure it can just be something you know like some of the double features I love seeing it like Quentin Tarantino will do them a lot at his theater down the street and there it's like it's like an appetizer it's so actually one of my favorite was my friend made a movie called Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 and it's an absurd film

there's not a one or a two you know it's it's a horror film but it's a comedy it's like a horror comedy I highly recommend finding it it's hilarious actually I'll send you a Blu-ray you send me the card sheet I'll send you the Blu-ray but the opening

when we first premiered it the opening was a have you ever heard of the chain sizzler like it's it's a very it's a shitty steakhouse here in America. It's like a, and they've got like a salad bar.

Like you get, it's terrible. It's not like McDonald's bad, but like, uh, it's just not, it's not good. And there is a, there's a character in the film called Sizzler, but there's a, uh, like eight minute commercial that Sizzler made. And it's absurd. I will, I will email you guys this commercial just so you know what I'm talking about. But it's a, it's an absurd commercial from like the late 80s, early 90s. And so they just played this.

eight minute commercial at the beginning and then played the movie just to get you in the in the mood to watch something ridiculous you know so that's a very long way of explaining what how you can program your special your double feature that's the most i've ever explained this question i want mark to answer first so i have a little bit more time to think i was going to say the same thing you're the director your answer um it's it's quite tough because I have the answer, I think, because it would also be one of my favorite movies of all time. Now I have to choose between... There are two movies that I like both, and they're basically telling the same story,

and it's Black Swan and Whiplash. Interesting. And they're telling the same story of an artist that wants... to aim for perfection and breaks themselves. So this is something that fascinates me in general. This is why I like those movies. I like the aspect of perfectionism. And this is also why my movie ends with a very similar shot

with this open stage, which both movies Blacksworn and Whiplash do too. So I would definitely choose one of them And just because I get a tiny bit better and it's been my favorite movie for such a long time, I would go with Black Swan, I would think. That's a fantastic answer. Mark is going to say Men in Black. I think that's a great answer. I don't want to ruin it by saying something else.

And Hanyos, the director. So I go with that too. All right, all right. the second question maybe easier maybe harder is have well this is for both of you obviously individually is there a piece of advice that you've received or maybe something you read in a book

or whatever that made you a better filmmaker that's kind of stuck with you over the years yes I have the best I have the best and the worst piece of advice I could share with you. Lovely. I love that. I'm going to start asking that from now on.

What's the worst piece of advice you got? The worst piece of advice I received was write what you know. Because what ended up happening in film school after they told us this in the first semester, the first term or something like this, everybody was making movies about a lonely student sitting at home. The girlfriend just broke up with him or something like that. like this and all the movies were telling the same story because they told us to write what we know and by the way it's the wrong quote it's supposed to say write what you know is true which is something completely different and it brings it to another meta level and write what you know is true

you could write about true love and what it means to you and you could make a movie about this that takes place on Mars, it doesn't mean what people think it means. So this is the worst piece of advice I've received. That's fantastic because that's, I feel like I was just having that conversation yesterday with someone about the right what you know thing and how it ends up. I used to teach at a film school and over on the universal backlot. And we had a list of rules that the kids were not allowed to do. So it was like single red rose, brick of cocaine, kicking a hobo, briefcase of a little mysteries.

Like there's just this big old. And it's because they all, that's all they know. They've only seen four things. They're 13 years old. It's funny that I say this, being a magician, making a movie about magic, because this is sort of what I know. But there were a lot of things in there that I didn't know. I didn't know about Western. And I don't know how someone feels who wants to commit suicide, which is a part of.

the movie. So if I followed this advice, I couldn't have made this movie, even though it seems to follow this advice at first. But yeah. Well, and I think too, learning things that you don't know helps build empathy. You know, if you don't know someone who's deep in depression, you don't know what that's like to learn about that person. It keeps you open-minded. And this is when you get to do your research. And before I was doing this film, I was researching with my screenwriter for two years. So I didn't know what I was writing about. I had to work for it and find out what it means. So coming to the best piece of advice is you have to start and then it's very difficult to stop. And this is something that I learned on this project big time because it started out

as only this one proof of concept scene and it wasn't even a proof of concept scene. It was just my bachelor thesis basically just my bachelor thesis and I knew that this is topic I want to make a film about I didn't really know how to do it and then I shot the scene and then I wrote this concept and I was like I put so much

effort into it and I've been working on this for a year I can't stop now so even if then there are some setbacks you will push and keep going because you already put in so much effort and then after two and a half years, even if something goes horribly wrong, you spend two and a half

years on the project, what are you going to do? Are you just going to walk away from this? No. So this is the best piece of advice, I would say. Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, 100%. Mark? Yeah, mine is not so special again, but I think the best advice, probably career advice. I mean, I'm at the beginning of my career, so let's see how it goes. Hey, me too, man. But is to use the opportunities that you get, and don't be, especially in the beginning, don't be so picky and think, oh, I'm too good for this. I'm not doing this.

But, and do, oh, I'm too lazy. I want to have a weekend. Just even though it's sometimes hard and frustrating, especially in the beginning, you learn from experience and you learn also from shitty movies. a lot so just uh and if you find people that you work well together be loyal and stick with them i think that's oh yeah that's the good one yeah the yeah and also to your point about taking every opportunity you get like you know obviously if they're not going to pay you a cent and it sounds like a lot of work maybe you don't have to take that one but in general i 100% agree always take every job

Because you never know when someone who's like either super connected or has a crazy career behind, you know, that they're taking with them is also just happening to take this job as like a favor to a friend. You meet them. That's how you truly network. Not going to these weird luncheons that people, you know, put together on Facebook where they're like, let's get all the filmmakers together and have a beer. It's like you're going to meet. Maybe you'll meet someone there. But that's not generally where you're going to get work. Yeah.

yeah um well uh thank you so much guys for for doing the podcast and i and you've you've fundamentally changed it forever going forward i am going to ask what's the worst piece of advice because that why did i never think to ask that that's such a good because there's another podcast that felt like a film or arts podcast where they kind of had the same advice question and i was like oh shit i got to change mine but i didn't know what to change it to and that's perfect um but yeah like i said guys the documentary's fantastic um what's the the website where people can rent it. It's www.

www.urtnay's dashmovie.com. Right. Easy to remember. And then, yeah, let me know when I can get it on Blu-ray because I will absolutely purchase that.

Yeah, we're working on it. Perfect. You know what? If there's a reprint, we can put this interview in the special features. Oh, yeah. Why not?

Let's just give it to. You can have it. Yeah, thanks again. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for having us, definitely. Pleasure to talk to you. Frame and reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition.

Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the Etherart Mapbox logo, was designed by Nate Churrax of Truax branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Providiocoollition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.