Frame & Reference Podcast - 76: “100 Foot Wave” DPs Mike Prickett & Josh Quick

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

On this weeks episode, Kenny talks with Michael Prickett and Josh Quick two of the cinematographers behind the Emmy Winning documentary “100 Foot Wave." They chat about the challenges of filming in the ocean, managing multiple camera operators and much more! 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.

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan. And today we're talking with Michael Prickett and Josh Quick, the Emmy winning, two of the Emmy winning gentlemen behind 100-foot wave. This one's a lot of fun because I don't often get. get to talk to action sports cinematographers and that was a relatively big part of my life for a couple of years, not necessarily cinematography in the action sports, but action sports in general. So, you know, it was really cool to talk about, obviously, you know, we got the gear talking. But, you know, the challenges in filming stuff out in the ocean, for instance, having tons

of different cameras shooting with a relatively small crew and sort of the freedom of those DPs each have those camera operators all have a really interesting talk and yeah so that's kind of all the primary you really need it's a fantastic documentary especially if you like nature or action sports or surfing specifically and yeah you know not a not a bad life to live in Hawaii and shoot what you love you know Michael was a big surf guy back in the day we get into that. Anyway, so that's your little intro. I'm going to let you get to it. Here's my conversation with Michael Prickett and Josh Quick. So the way that we generally get started is just kind of by asking what got you into cinematography. Were you young when it hit you, or did

you come into it later in life? I became a cinema. Well, actually, that's a good question. Really, Really, I started as a photographer. I was a still photographer taking pictures of tourists and WikiKee, getting on boats and doing all these weird stuff, like parasailing and jet skiing. And then from that, I kind of fell in love with photography. And I ended up injuring myself back then, and the doctor told me I should swim for my rehabilitation. So I ended up putting my still camera in a little water housing and started swimming and started getting out in the ocean. And then I realized that stills were cool, but video would be a little bit cooler. I started getting into, back then it was actually film.

And I got into shooting like 16 millimeter film and 8mm and the 16 millimeter film from the water. And that was kind of triggered my whole passion for shooting in the water and for film itself. And then I kind of fell in love with the distant aspects of film and what you could do with film. And then finally now we're here in this digital world. So I hardly shoot film anymore. Yeah. What was it about film that drew you to it? Because I know a lot of DPs start as photographers, they end up falling in love with like the dark room or whatever. But was it when you say film, do you mean the medium or just cinema in general, the moving picture? I guess just cinema. I did like the medium, though. I did have a dark room in my house. I would shoot, you know, do my still stuff with. But I, um, film was just interesting to me because you got to shoot. and I just like the look of it.

You know, I like the different stocks you could use. And I just like the look of it. I also like the back then. It was kind of nice. You send your film away and then wait to see how you got it back. There was a hair in the gate. And there was like an element of surprise. Even with stills back then, there was an element of surprise.

But nowadays, in digital world, you know, it's just right there. You know, you can just check immediately. So I don't know. But I just kind of fell in love with the low. can feel of film altogether. Yeah, I still shoot film stills. Luckily, I had a whole little Red Bull refrigerator full of film, which I'm sure they'd love to hear me say there isn't product in it.

But I got a whole bunch of film before everything got really expensive. But that feeling of like sending it off is still, I think, I think, I mean, we've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but shooting film, I think, builds a, discipline in people because you have to you know with digital it's so easy to just be like set up the shot i'll look at it and know what's wrong versus having to meter it and line everything up and know that it's right yeah yeah but it's still tons of fun yeah i do miss my light meter and stuff i i still have it in my cabinet and i sat back there i'm like oh you're gonna dust that thing off and play with it a little bit i'll tell you on uh i've noticed

especially, you know, working around people who've only been around. I learned on 16mm film when I went to film school, but people who've never seen film when you pull out the light meter and before the camera even gets turned on, you like light everything and you're like, all right, just go. People think it's back to the idea of like being a wizard, you know, or like you had to like put your eye behind the thing and go, no, trust me to look good. Like it's that again with the sometimes I use it as a trick. I know Josh, Josh is, I mean, he's a.

instrumental, everything. He's pretty much like the DP of everything, too. And he really likes film, too. And I still have some of my film cameras. And he's like, we've got to shoot some of these things. So I know. Yeah. Do, uh, when you, so something, I don't, I, uh, I knew one guy, I used to work for Red Bull, uh, back in college. And, uh, so the action sports world, I was a photographer, but mostly doing events. So the action sports stuff has always been interesting me and I was just snowboarder my whole life, or am a snowboarder. Um, but, uh, the ocean photography, like, uh, ski photography, snowboard photography, all kind of makes sense. I get it. You know, there's some elements to deal with. But, uh, the ocean guys always

confuse the hell out of me, because that's so much, uh, you have to float, you know, the, the, the having everything in the rig, like having to pull focus that way. What are some of those, uh, early challenges that, that you kind of had to figure out when you were transferring from, you know, shooting photos to shooting motion in the ocean. Motion, that's good. Motion in the ocean. Well, I mean, honestly, like pulling focus is really hard. Like a lot of cameramen, even to this day, they make a water housing and they're like

a point and shoot the monitors in the back. So they're just basically pointing and shooting, you know. I do like to have a camera that I put on my shoulder and a water housing so I can rest and I can actually pull focus and you can do some pretty cool stuff. But I think making a water housing for a still camera was pretty simple back in the day. I mean, compared to nowadays, and it's much easier now because it's just you can do everything. In the still world, it seemed like, you know, you only had 36 shots and you had to make sure everything is perfect, so you didn't want to mess it up.

And then with video, not only messing up the shot, you know, you can worry about being out of focus and all these different stuff. So there was, I was making my own housings way back then, and then I got this guy Taro Pasquale to start making waterhouses for me. And that was a big jump for me, I guess, when I made a little metal box

that, you know, I couldn't really do nothing with, and then I had a professional make something that I could pull focus. And, I mean, it was really helpful. I think I got totally lost in the whole question there. That's fine. Like I said, very, very conversation. It doesn't matter. Because when I was doing a bit of internet research on you, I'd seen that apparently you have invented quite a few rigging solutions for water filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, Josh here. He's like

the master, the master of it all. And we devised a couple gimbals that we could do like long, steady shots from the water and have a camera in a really dangerous position in the water and a jet ski just for the driver and we could control it from two miles away instead of endangering a bunch of people. So we did that. We put a red camera. We had all different kind of cameras in there. I mean, we used a Z camera. Oh, interesting. You never see those out. Yeah, that was because it was such a small little head. We put in the bigger head. In the shutter F1, we put in the Canon 50 to 1,000 millimeter lenses, probably one of our favorite lenses because we have so much for the action and nature stuff, it's like the perfect lens.

And we put that in the big gimbal, we could do anything from there. But the smaller gimbal, we had to resort to a Z cam. Gotcha. How did that perform when cutting together with like a monster or whatever you're using? And obviously like a GoPro is going to look like a GoPro, but were those pretty easy match? What do you think, Quig?

We used so many different types of cameras on this shoot. So many different types of cameras, so many different lenses.

We had different cameras used for, uh, different reasons. Like we had a whole group of Verite guys that were all

using Canon cameras, all the long lens guys, we were mostly using red cameras. We had Phantom 4K flex cameras and we had a Z cam. So we had like, I mean,

it was a melting pot of, of pixels. So, uh, we tried to shoot raw. as often as we could and build luts that would sort of match

based on where cameras were located if they were going to be backlit most of the day or front lid or side lit. We would build these luts for all of our operators because we had so many cameras running at the same time, you know, Mike can't be at every single camera. And we can't even send him a feed from every single camera just

because of the location and the restrictions that we have there. So we kind of, you know, there was some biting of the bullet, right? So we did everything we could. in pre-production to try to match as best we could. Had really no issues. The ZCAM was probably the only strange camera,

the only thing that we didn't really expect to use. We were originally going to use in that system. The head we were using on the shot of her head that we got, it was essentially like a beta unit. It was a very early one. They weren't in the wild yet, so we were using it out at Nazare for this particular job. And we were going to use a commodo.

But the commoto, we were having issues Mike didn't like the frame rates that we weren't really capable of the frame rates that he wanted. So we had been talking to Shotover and they had been working with ZCAM and they had, we had a beta Z cam, which I think was a full

frame 6K Z cam. I'm guessing they went to market ultimately. I think that's called the F8 or something. Something like, well, I know they have an 8 I think they have an 8K and a 6k full frame. Maybe it's a F6. Something like that. Yeah, it was a

It wasn't something, it was, it was hard to get a hold of it. We had to talk to some pretty high up people at ZCAM to get this. They weren't quite ready to send it out to market at the time. I've never even seen one in person. I've seen every, I've held every camera under the sun except those ones. It's small. So it's like, it's sort of like, it looks like a GoPro on steroids. You know, like it's like a big GoPro.

It basically looks like a sensor block. Have you ever seen like the Sony cameras from the Venice? You split it out. The Rialto, yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like that. It's just a sensor block with a mount on it. The mount's, you know, a PL mount's bigger than the camera in some cases.

And then we had to mock up a control solution for it. But matching-wise, it wasn't really a problem, you know. That camera was sort of a glorified action camera that was really, really close to the waves. It didn't really have the dynamic range, I think, that we would have wanted. Luckily for us, it's, you know, Nazare is not quite like Hawaii, where you have this big, bright beautiful sky with white clouds floating around and then you've got this shadow of a wave that's going right across the guy you're trying to shoot or the girl you're trying to shoot so it's not like this insanely contrasty situation there so as long as they stay out of the whitewash everything pretty

much held and we were able to to time it up nicely in post so I think it all it all matched but it was a lot of cameras to mix sure who was the colorist on the project oh man what's his name I didn't I didn't speak with him too much. It was, I was mostly working with the, we're working with the editorial staff. Sam. Sam?

Sam was an editorial, but he wasn't new to the color anymore. Yeah, yeah, no, I was mostly just talking to, yeah, so those guys, yeah, Chris, the director was really,

I think he was, he was mostly super involved with that aspect. Got it. And then all of our Veritas stuff was with the C-500s, which is just a really, is that what you're using right now?

That's this web cam, yeah, web cam. That's your webcam? Yeah, yeah. When I started this podcast, I had just, I got serial number eight. This is, so, like, I was like the first one in the country to get one. And I was like, man, this is going to be great, you know, production. I get to charge way more now.

There you go. And then pandemic hit. And then I started a podcast. So I love these cameras, though. They're fantastic. I've always liked Canon cameras. Ever since the, you know, I basically went from C-300 and then didn't use another Canon camera until the C-500

Mark 2. Actually, we play with an original C-500 a little bit because it had the quad. It had like the quad out. So it was good for helicopter work because we could have three, four fiber lines going in and we could record inside the helicopter. So that was kind of cool. That was a cool thing that we could do with the C-500

although we didn't really do it that much, but it was a, you know, it was an option that we sort of had in the kit. But I've always loved the look of cannons. Yeah. I like the C-300. Yeah, I find them uh i was talking to um someone else who shot i think it was gale tattersall but they had used it on uh grace and frankie if that was the interview i'm thinking of and i think what i was like why doesn't

anyone use canon for film and they were like well it's mostly just because like for tv it's everywhere but for like movies it's not because it's just so easy to use and i think it it's mostly just the um the bodies like the outputs you know there's not enough like outputs and because they're plenty sturdy. Oh, yeah. No, they're great. And the great thing about the C-500

and what we were doing is they're like, they're very well sealed. The 500 much. Like very well said. We had a couple of C-500's legit take waves. You know what I mean?

Like not in a housing. Splash up. You know, a guy running in the, a Verite guy running in the waves coming up to his knees, splash up across the camera. The camera's still working great to this day.

So it's, yeah. Were there any? We have the sealed buttons. So. Yeah. Was there anything you learned about using those cameras that you could pass on to other users, i.e. me? Like, I always ask people like how they expose it, because I've been exposing everything real middle now, whereas the older, like, the C-300 used to have to kind of get a lot of light in there. I would say Mike can touch on this. But on our, for this job, all of our Veritas cameras, so our crazy human beings literally running around all day with cameras on their shoulders, those were. all C-500, right?

So we didn't have to put them in terribly dangerous situations, but they were mostly shooting people. And I feel like what we were getting, the best output we were getting was just maybe like two-thirds over on skin tones. It's almost like how you go about shooting, like if you were using like 500 tungsten or something. It's like very similar to the way that you try to get that. Because we're always going for skin tone.

All the Verite guys are just shooting human beings. They're shooting faces and people running out of the water. things. So, but exposure-wise, I think two-thirds over on your key looks really nice and it's easy to play with too. But I guess it depends on what you're shooting also, like if you're choosing to shoot raw or not. In this case, yeah, we, yeah, went raw with everything on this one. But, yeah, and I mean, it's a great Veritas camera. It's got everything you need for a one-man sort of band situation. It's got all, you know, it's got the grip on the side, which is fantastic. is the sensor is beautiful.

That grip has saved my life. Yeah. Well, it just slips out on this one, but you've got the straps. You've got the strap, yeah. You've got the hand straps to hold it on there. But no, it's a really great camera. We like the sensor on it, you know? The sensor looks good.

It's kind of the term that we more off, you know, you always hear buttery, right? Buttery is sort of like the word that you hear, oh, I love these Lika lenses. They're so buttery, you know, like you hear all these things. And for the canon, we always feel like it's not buttery. kind of creamy. It's like you've got to churn it. You know, it's like not quite completely churned yet. And then you've got this nice, creamy look to it where it doesn't look like insanely

vintage or something. It's still very sharp, but you have this sort of creamy palette, sort of like your box on the zoom screen here, you know? Yeah. I've noticed with these, I've stopped using diffusion because the image feels already too, not too, but like smooth enough, you know, it doesn't mean. Speaking of cameras, I actually wanted to know, because obviously, when GoPro's first came out, everyone was super stoked on them and didn't really know how to

you. I did my Red Bull employee training in Las Vegas when the first GoPro came out and I was showing employees like, hey, look at this thing. And they didn't even know what it was. And I'm on the Vegas like gambling with the camera. Just look at this. And no one knew. No one. Everyone was like, that's interesting. No one dive tackled me. How did they how did those little cameras kind of change water action sports because I imagine that's like what they were built for seeing as the guy who made it was a surfer yeah yeah he did he was a surfer actually you know it's funny um I was back in the day I was using this photosonics 100 foot load film um really small little camera we could do 100 foot loads with those 3.5 millimeter lens we were using a chopo

and we were getting these like in the in the tube shots um on film um and they were just like like a GoPro shot. When the GoPro came out, I'm like, oh, shit, man. This is like, it kind of like fit that mold perfectly. And then, except for it wasn't quite as good as the quality. But it's gone up and up and up and up. And it's amazing. The stabilization and everything. We use that on Chacey Mavericks as well. We had those all over. They said, I can't remember what they were like the second GoPro. So I had a whole box. I still have some remnants of leftovers of those sitting around but yeah they've they've changed a lot and they're amazing cameras and they're great to just throw everywhere in the surf world though they're so wide they do make the wave

look flat like you made a 100 foot wave and it looks like it's like three feet sometimes you know interesting so the only time it looks good is if you're actually in the barrel and completely in the barrel and then it's big but if not it makes a really big wave look small um but it's awesome though they're they're awesome and plus you can get some some decent audio sometimes you get little blurbs of stuff that you know it's yeah I think I think GoPro is awesome

yeah they're almost more valuable for audio yeah interesting but we treat them like expendables you know they're like in the budget with tape so it's like so we're not terrified of them like the other cameras we you know we spend all this money and all this time and trying to

create develop technology to protect everything and the GoPro's is kind of like oh we'll just tape it on over here and suction cup it over here and if we get if we get 60% of them back then it's a win to win for the guys on the beach that pick them up the next day when they wash up to shore

even if you go to the North Shore to Wahoo is like the you know during the surf contest the security guys that are there 24-7 they've got like a bag of go-pros by the end of the contest because they just wash up on the beach after the fact. Yeah so we sort of,

they're helpful for that but they're great for getting audio clips from people out there that don't really realize that they're being recorded you know so you get sort of more real true true audio in motion. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah, and we were using such a medium of cameras and, like, Josh is right, we use so many different cameras that, like, the GoPro kind of just we could throw in there. And then also we used, I've been shooting Garrett since he was a young kid. So we were using a lot of old footage and archival footage that was easy to match with all this mix of stuff anyway. So it kind of was a film that was made to have a mixed bag of footage. Yeah, that makes the series really. great you know when you have what were we just watching I can't remember in any case having great archival footage really does like make any documentary about an

individual or or an event really shine instead of just going straight through interviews you know yeah I've got a roll of film in my in my refrigerator I was supposed to do but and it it was never processed but it says Garrett on it so I've got a process edit and to see but it's it's probably 15 years I don't know what it's got missing in there, but I do got a process and just see what's on that role. That'd be great. Yeah, a little special feature on the day raise. How'd you end up meeting him? His brother Liam was a pipeline surfer, and so his brother Liam used to make a lot of surf videos way back in the day, God, like 30 years ago. And so I would just give him footage for his movies a long time ago. And then his brother kind of took care of all the Japanese servers from Japan. And I spoke a little Japanese, so I got to

meet him through that. And then I met Garrett from Liam. Interesting. You know, I have, my brain bounces around a lot, so you have to forgive me. But earlier you had mentioned, we're going straight back to gear. Earlier you had mentioned, like a two-mile radio control. And I was wondering how you guys were pulling that off, because obviously, line of sight's probably easier on when it's just ocean, but I can't imagine you're using a taradeck. No, no taradeck, but when a wave comes

in between anything you're using, it becomes a problem. But we use the EBITR. Josh can probably explain better. Yeah, the EBIT is definitely hard to do, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you think you'd have a lot of line of sight, but when the waves are so tall, you know, and your

camera... 100 foot, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, perhaps. When you're going in between the waves, you know, we tend to, there's a really good possible we're going to lose it, right? So we would use these microwave transmitters. They actually came from the

broadcast world. They're made by an Israeli company called A-B-on-Air. So if you ever go to an NFL game, you see tons of these things. And they're all like, you know, they mount onto a battery plate, you know, so they're all in the back of these guys run around with their broadcast cameras. So they had finally gotten to the point where they could transmit, you know,

distance with only a, I think it's a sub one frame delay. So the latency is like non-existent. So it's like seven milliseconds or something of delay. So our latency is less than a frame, imperceivable, right? You don't even notice it when you're operating. So we needed something that would let us, that we could operate by. We needed like zero latency. You need to be able to operate.

So we actually had two radio systems. We had like 900 meg, like low frequency transmitters for camera control. So Pan Tilt Zoom, that sort of thing. And that was its own standalone system. And then we had the A-B-on-Air systems that we would use to transmit audio and video. The grand plan was using those transmitters, they also have, because it's made for broadcast world, you know, they have that, they have a whole secondary transmission built in where, you know, someone could adjust your iris remotely from the truck or whatever.

Right. They have all these control packets that move back and forth. and our master plan was to ultimately tap into that to use that for pantilt zoom and then have everything in one system that fits in one little pelican case is easy to travel with we could zip around the world and do that but that's ultimately how we did and we've been working with those guys for a long time our early on test systems we're using that system as well so they make like a portable system which is quite nice and that works that works really well we had some you know antenna issues one day and we went out there one day and we went out there one day and we weren't that far away and we were sort of losing connection and stuff which I'm surprised none of that made it into the into the documentary because they're you know like the director sitting there filming me

as I'm like trying to figure out why nothing's working you know there's these math waves coming through and I'm thinking to myself like oh this is going to be a great show it's just going to be me overshund just me fucking everything up yeah it's just going to be a whole episode about just like us failing at the one thing we had to do you know but you know we ultimately got it all worked out it was great so that's some great footage and everything so it's a very cool system i would like chris smith had just finished doing the tiger

king um just right before right before this show and and he miced those guys all up and then so they were mic and josh and i up um in the morning and then we'd be talking shit throughout the day and then and i would always forget mine was on josh was smart he goes oh i turned mine off i'm like oh i just muted all day the sound i didn't think that stuff bad was going to come out there So I was happy to see that. We didn't get, I'm throwing another bus too bad there. Yeah,

that's a whole other level of trust. I've had to, I've, even just doing like random acting for friends. You're like, I just, or obviously talking shit about maybe an AD who doesn't know what they're doing.

And they have their, they're like, wait a second. Never encountered that. So I don't know what that would be like. I'm only worked on perfect. Or you could just go in the bathroom. You know what I mean?

I don't know. Oh, the bathroom was great. Yeah. you always see the sound guy i've seen that he's just sitting there and you go just immediately yeah yeah um you know that reminds me mike you've uh worked on a handful of um feature film like narrative films uh and i was wondering if you could explain to people who have no handle on uh what action sports is like like how those two worlds kind of um

and how they differ. I mean, you know, some are set up, you know, and you can set up, you can set up a shot. You can block out a shot. You can figure out, you know, exactly how it's going to play out. And so it's very controlled. And I think that's probably the biggest difference. Like when you're, when you're dealing with Mother Nature, you can't block out a shot and everyone just kind of out there and you're dealing with the fog and the waves and the wind

and the spray. So I think that's probably the biggest difference between, you know, know the narrative and the nut narrative, you know, like probably mother nature, yeah, dealing with it. Are the, like, crew interactions pretty much the same? Is the, you know, set kind of life kind of the same? Or is in documentary, do you, or especially in action sports, do you find that it's a little looser? Yeah, it's way looser of shooting sports because, like, when you're out there, you're on a set, you know, doing a narrative, you're like, okay, roll cameras, everyone's like, speed, speed, and then in your action, then you go.

Basically, when you have 15 or 20 cameras shooting nature or waves out there, they're scattered all up and down the beach. You're basically not, each guy sees a different wave or something happening. So you can't tell each guy to roll camera, this. You have to have trust in your cameraman that they're getting what you want and then they're relaying to you or to Josh, like whatever questions may pop up. But you don't have the luxury of looking at all the cameras and rolling and doing all that.

I mean, in some cases, we get to look at some cameras, but we can never look at them all. I think that's probably the biggest thing to me is, like, it's just control. You don't have control because it just, you know, sometimes some guy there has a different view of Europe on the cliff, and then there could be a bird coming through the shot with a dolphin, and you want him to roll on that and then get the shot,

but you know, but you can't tell it also. I think the lack of control is what the hardest thing is about shooting sports. Sure. This is actually a side question that I just thought of. How important is pre-record for you guys? Well, it depends on the guy, I guess, really. Some of the guys really love the pre-record, and it's good, like, especially like for certain things. Like, if you, you know, like, I mean, we were using that a lot with the Phantom camera as well, right?

Well, it's like, you can only use it. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you can, you can, yeah, you can go the other route. You can hit and go. Like, you can sort of set where you want your, you know, where you want your meat and potatoes to exist. All of our phantom stuff, our trigger point is usually about a third of the way into the clip, if that makes sense. So it just sort of, I don't know if you've filmed with the Phantom at all, but it basically remembers the last third of the length, and then it records the next two-thirds of the length, basically, of however long. Because you can set it up to have every clip, whatever length you want, based on how many you can fit on the mag or in the RAM that the camera has.

It's really, I'll say most guys don't use pre-recorded. I would say most of our operators don't. We have one that... Rick does. Yeah, we have one guy who only uses pre-recorded. And a long pre-recorded that, like a significant pre-record. It's like maximum, whatever the maximum he can have is there. And I think that's because that particular guy, that's just, he's already a really good operator.

He shoots lots of surf all the time. And that's sort of his method. And we don't want to throw a wrench into his existing method. as long as he's getting what we're asking for, you know, what we're setting up, then it's good. It's fine. It doesn't, we don't really particularly care how he hits record. Right, right, right. And I think it's a tendency in the beginning to have to record and then get it, you know, there's like a, you lose a little bit of that stability right at the beginning of the shot. And I think he's trying to avoid that. Sure. Yeah, because the, the reason I ask is

I just got to test out the Raptor for a week. And, um, in eight, K, the pre-recorded is three seconds. And my friend James Buckman is a skateboard cinematographer. And he was, and he just bought one. And he, and he's furious because he needs like, you know, 20 seconds or whatever. Like a full trick. Yeah. And he's like, what am I supposed to do with three seconds?

I was like, really high resolution slow mo. I don't know. That camera is pretty amazing, though. That V Raptor is pretty cool. It's very nice. Gimble now. We went from that, we went from that Z. to a V-Raptor in a little bit bigger gimbal,

but now we can do, you know, much higher frame rates than 8K and, yeah, it's pretty amazing. The menu system on that's a lot nicer, the size of it's great. Yeah, you can, we're setting it up. We originally had that camera set up to be controlled entirely from an iPad, which is... That thing's nice. It's nice. Well, when you throw in a helicopter or in a head, all of a sudden, it's a little less nice.

because you're basically going, you know, you're going from USBC to Ethernet and then Ethernet through the head and then to like into your iPad or whatever it is you're using or router, however you want to do it. And I think that little handshake, that talking handshake between the camera and the iPad, it gets a little glitched up. So it's like, you're in the helicopter, there's crazy stuff happening. And then Mike's over there like having to reconnect, reconnect, just keep hitting it until it sort of connects to it.

But they've upgraded now. So I like how you can control it with the small HD. monitors a different interface so we don't have that loss anymore um so that's going to be pretty beneficial but yeah now the v raptor's great there's one issue i and then maybe they fix this but you can't shoot five and a half k on a vraptor 5.5 no it just goes eight seven and then six yeah and then they then they list six k it's six k s 35 right when you go to it it says yeah which it is not s 35 it's a little bigger isn't it bigger yeah it's bigger which is which is for us if if we're shooting our own project, that's fine, we don't really care, we got a little vignette,

we don't understand we have the resolution. We know we got it there. But we have clients and stuff, they're like, what's all this shit? Right. That's not, you know, image around the outside. So I wish we could shoot, you know, like the monster, like these other cameras, you can shoot 5.5K, you can set in your own resolution. But for some reason, the V-Raptor, they haven't done that.

It's just a little... I mean, I do know having talked to the red guys, and I don't, I'm not a red owner. I've generally bemoaned those cameras, but the Iraq that would like. But having talked to those guys, they are apparently very active listeners when it comes to people's complaints about it. So I would just email them and tell them like, we need this. And they'll, all right, if we can cut it in. There's a, I think there's a team of us telling them, so. Oh, perfect.

Yeah. There's a team of us telling them. That's probably on their radar then. Yeah. I'm sure it is. Mike, I wanted to ask, especially growing up in like an action sports environment, I was wondering if you could speak. to the mentality of these athletes and maybe how or if that's kind of rubbed off on you at all because I know I have a friend who was a professional motocross rider for Red Bull and his

the way he he quit that and became a painter and now he's his paintings go for tens of thousands of dollars and he's painting all the time and like he just took the track mentality and applied it to art and I always try to apply that myself and I was wondering if that has kind of rubbed off on either of you. I mean, for me, I mean, I was a surfer originally, and I just always, you know, wish I would get, like, get a good picture of yourself or your friends because you'd be paddling on, you watch your friends in the tube, you'd like, oh, that's so sick, and you'd talk about it to each other, but back then there was not much, you know, stuff, and then when I started

taking pictures, I kind of liked it, but I'd still, like, always go surfing, and then at that very end I'd go out and shoot a little bit and then after I knew I wasn't going to be a you know a big winter um surfer but I I enjoyed shooting pictures I kind of started shooting more and more and then I got to the point that I ended up not even bringing a surfboard and just brought camera equipment and I'd just borrow like Kelly Slater surfboard or whoever surfboard to go for a quick surf but just borrow his surfboard like you know we all do yeah yeah yeah or any of the pros because I would be traveling with them so I would you know would trade off but um I think, I mean, I don't know if it ever rubbed off.

I mean, it just made me realize that I wanted that someone should be getting pictures of these guys in, these waves, and these angles that people never got to see. Like, you dive under a wave and you see a guy go by. Back then, no one see that. Now everyone does it, but like 30 years ago, 40 years, I think it's been 40 years since I started shooting. No one did that back then. And so it was kind of so cool. I think that's what intrigued me is to get these. unique shots that I saw when I went surfing myself.

And then, yeah. Yeah, it is, it is interesting. I mean, overall, the ocean's, you know, the least seen of any part of our planet, let alone just, you know, below someone. So it is really cool to be able to share a more personal experience with people, especially if they're, you know, not part of that culture, that world. Yeah, and you get intimate. And then you get underwater, you got the whales.

and all these kind of things. So we do a little bit of, you know, natural history stuff and all that kind of stuff, too. And I do think it's, it is just beautiful and interesting. And you're right. The ocean is, so it's kind of like going to the moon or some, at the space, it's still so uncharted. Yeah. You don't have to if you don't want to, but I was wondering if you guys could share some, maybe some surprises, some, some happy things that happened and maybe some setbacks that

maybe people could learn from or, or, yeah, you know, maybe some, some, some, some, some, something that didn't quite go the way you planned and how you problem solved through it. Well, I mean, traveling with all this equipment is hard, too. I guess getting from Hawaii to chase a wave and they say, you know, you need to be there in three days. It's going to be 100 feet. And to get a crew of people and equipment through customs and through all that and get everyone there. I think right off the bat we kind of learned that that's a problem

and so we kind of ended up staging most of our equipment there so that that was a big mishap I think at the beginning because it was a little scramble there. Quick, you probably have some better ideas. Quick puts out most all the fires. He said, do we have a, I don't remember there being a scramble to get the equipment

there. We got it all there, so that worked. We succeeded. Yeah, we have to move equipment all. Like I have like around me on my desk, I have like multiple Carnay documents just sitting around for different gear that we have in different places around the world, uh, or that's ready to travel. Um, I, I, I would say, you know, if you're, if you're, if you find yourself in the industry and you're, and you're going to have to start traveling a lot, uh, and you have a big kit like we do, which we normally

travel with two or three pallets of stuff. Um, you know, you want to get a really good sort of like freight broker. Ideally, one that works in the film industry or the entertainment industry, someone who works for, someone who moves equipment for like, you know, big band, like ACDC and things like that. These guys can make magic happen. So we have a guy named Adam Prohaska. His company is Atlas. And he, I mean, he's moving gear for us right now. He moves gear for, we have equipment in Tahiti that's on his way back here. Like he's moving at Carnay's there. It's all coming back, those, having guys like that are lifesavers where you can email them at like 10 o'clock at night the night before. I'm like, oh, I got to get all this stuff to Portugal really, really quickly.

And then the next morning, he's like, okay, there's going to be a truck at your house at like 10.30 in the morning. And at one time, we just had like someone in a minivan show up to pick up some gear. And then I was just like, I hope this is the right person that I'm giving, you know, like a, you know, $1.3 million worth a gack to. And then they just disappear with a van of equipment. And then you fly out the porch going, no, there it is. It's all, it works. So that's great, you know. So you find somebody that you trust and then you can really travel. Big, I can't really think, big speed bumps. I mean, every day is just, you're just living on a speed bump. So I guess you're just waiting for the mountain. Right. I don't think we ever really hit any mountains on this one. You can't plan.

The second we would try to plan, we'd wake up, you know, before the sun comes up and we're standing out there on the cliff and you can't see anything. It's a spa. You know, you can't even see your hand in front of your face. Everyone's all ready. And then you just get phone calls. Like, nah, uh-uh, we can't shoot anything. So weather out there, you can't overcome it. There's no, there's no lens that'll just shoot through fog.

You know, it just doesn't, there's no, there's no solution. So it's just, it's really just time and effort. That's really all we could ever do for that. But, you know, we have stuff break down all the time. I mean, you know, we people get hurt, especially surfers. Our crew, you know, we do everything. we can to keep our people safe and ourselves safe, but the surfers that are going out there, they're doing their own thing. We're not calling up surfers saying, hey, go jump in the water

and do this. We're going to catch it. You know what I mean? Like, and not just for liability reasons, but we don't want to put anyone in a position where they're uncomfortable. So doing something, but these guys, the people that surf Nazare, I don't think they, they're missing something in their brain that tells them this is a bad idea. You know, they don't have that fear, you know. Like, I wouldn't get in there. Mike, would you surf Nazaree? No, it's just a gigantic sure break. It's scary.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess having one scare is getting people in the water and out of the water safely, you know, especially cameraman. That is one reason that we did that gimbal so we could, you know, minus one guy out there. But, yeah, I think we didn't have any major hiccups. I mean, we did have some antennas, and then they shipped the wrong ones. And so, but then it was a shipping thing. And they shipped the right set of antennas to us. but it took so long that I think I think we got back here and it was like a year past

COVID and then they they arrived like a year later. Oh, geez. So we made stuff work, but I mean, I guess you're always going to have a little backup plan, you know, how to how to get stuff doing. So, yeah. Yeah, two is one, one is none, as they say. Was there any like happy accidents or any like any kind of magic that you were really stoked, things that went better than expected?

I think we got some really good waves of the guys. And we got, it is a lot about guys getting injured and how rough it is in the ocean. And so we were lucky enough to get some really good surfing and to get, let people feel how scary it is with the accidents. And we had people on the beach getting accidents. And we got all of that without having a really bad accident. So no one died. And so I guess, and people got to feel what it's really like to be out in these big waves. So I think that was that was kind of a.

win thing because no one got hurt, you know what I mean? That's an intense win. No one died. Yeah. I mean, people ended up in the hospital, but no one died. Yeah. I think a lot of people ended up in the hospital, but no one died. But I mean, it's that kind of a show, you know, it's very dangerous

out there. Yeah. Well, I mean, you got an Emmy for it, so it's, you know, the people recognize the skill. Because, yeah, like movies, you know, one of my favorite snowboard movies when I was in college was Art of Flight, which obviously, like everyone, everyone saw that.

And if you're listening and you didn't, you definitely go see it. But that, even doing those massive mountains, like unless there's a, well, except for the Darwin range. But in any case, you know, massive mountains, unless there's an avalanche, it's not the most dangerous sport, so to speak, but people are still getting, you know, wrapped up and falling over and stuff. But the ocean just is far scarier, in my opinion. Although I don't surf, so.

Avalanche sounds pretty scary to me. Avalanche does, yeah. Yeah, avalanches are not chill. Yeah, you don't know how you guys check in a ton of bench. Yeah, people will just throw chucks, like sticks of dynamite out of helicopters and just go, that looks good, you know. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, there's people who are, you know, super experts at that.

But yeah, I guess with, I've never been caught in one, but I guess with avalanches, it's like, yeah, you don't float to the top, like you said. and it's so it becomes fluid you like you can't tell where up is and you can't like I imagine getting tossed by the way then it becomes yeah then you're locked yeah then you're just like and then you're breathing and it turns into like cement yeah oof um happier topic let me think you know with all of the uh this is a weird question but um how do you make how do you make a documentary feel more cinematic and less like uh i mean these days a lot all documentaries are incredible but like what are some of the those things that you

lean on to make it feel more like a a film or more like um a story than just kind of maybe an old school uh veraet kind of thing hmm because especially in the action sports world I've seen the level of cinema get higher and higher, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that was essentially our job on this entire project, you know? Right.

It's a handful of really good, you know, Veret kind of, you know, documentary filmmakers. And then our job was essentially to come in and try to, and try to capture these waves in a really cinematic way. And I think ultimately that sort of comes down

to cinematic movement, right? So, I mean, like Mike and I, we did everything we could to get really great high-end cameras, cinema cameras, you know, stabilized and in locations where we can rip it up and down the beach on an ATV and then get these what appear to be sort of like dolly shots and we could do push-ins. So we were doing the things that you would normally see done on a regular film set, you know, with a techno crane or something in a controlled environment pushing in and moving around. But we're doing it on a larger scale with like ATVs

and stabilized heads. the illusion of control that's fascinating that's actually a great way to think about it yeah the illusion of control I think it's a good thing right so we don't really so we're trying to you know we're just sort of thrown out into the ether

with these devices that we're trying to capture this image with and it's a lot of trust right we're just trusting everyone everyone who's got their hand on a record button there's a huge amount of trust that we have to throw their way so it's a lot of vetting all our guys were

totally vetted but then we also operated right so it's like you know I would be on the beach and an ATV Mike would be controlling the from up above the cliff he'd be controlling the jet ski camera so it's like we're all playing all these different roles all the time but yeah I think that was ultimately how we were able to try to make things a bit more

cinematic also using much larger sensors than one might normally use you know from the get go we're like we want to shoot everything full frame you know in the early stages it was a originally going to be sort of, they wanted to go IMAX with it.

Kind of like dark night style, you know, like the opening scene and dark it's all, it's all this large format and then they cut back into, you know, so it's sort of like that. It was going to be all the stuff on the ground with the guys was going to look very normal and then everything in the water was going to be like this insane vista sort of footage.

Everything was going to be larger, larger format, you know, more pixels, darker, you know, angrier, scarier. It's supposed to be sort of like those nightmares that people have. Sure. Yeah. And I think that's probably how we did it. If we just had a bunch of guys with long lenses on the cliff, it would, you know, it would look like a contest, right?

It would look like a broadcast. And in this case, we were able to run around and do some pretty over-the-top stuff with the equipment that we'd built. Yeah, what was your data management set up like? Because that's something a lot of people don't necessarily. think about on the lower ends of things yeah i mean it's a nightmare for the editor that's for sure i'm the editor yeah it was stuff you know i mean we kind of just kept it um per guy per day per guy i mean you know kind of the footage yeah we had it i don't i don't think it was um it's nowhere you're not the first person to ask us this question um and i think the answer that i give is

always not the one people want. I mean, it was, it would be, if you were to go out and do it, it would probably sort of, if you just by yourself, it would be the same way. It was essentially a handful of guys. All the cards came in at the end of the day. And there's like me and a couple other people in a, you know, in a house that's rented and we have hard drives stacked up and battery backups and like a laptop. Like everything was done very, very slowly and methodically. everything was mirrored off to different drives, and it took, you know, it was like raising a child. You know, it took a village. The whole village, it was everyone's responsibility to make sure that when something was done dumping, you let someone know.

You know, it was like everyone, everything was rotating through. So it was because, you know, in essence, it's a documentary with a, you know, with a documentary budget. So we don't have, you know, a different DIT for every camera system. You know, we don't have data managers for the different units. it's kind of just it's a tight-knit group of people that are working and living together in Portugal and it ultimately worked out so but it's nothing glamorous on that yeah sorry if I let you down no no that's the I mean but I think that's almost um what I'm I'm trying to say like I think anyone at any level hearing that goes like okay it's not makes things feel

more achievable if you're doing it the same way, you know, someone at home is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. No, it's great. Yeah. I mean, we were responsible for all that media. Yeah, it's spread over such a long period of time when with the budget we had. Everyone had to have a few different jobs. Of course. Yeah. The, you know, it's especially nice with programs like hedge where it'll send you a text message when it's done dumping. So you don't have to just stare at it the whole time. Hedge is great. I haven't transitioned to Hedge yet. We still use shot put.

I have a PC, so no shot put for me. It's all right. Hedge is great, though. I love Hedge. Yeah, yeah. We have one of our favorite DITs uses Hedge. And a lot of the companies in Europe that we work for, they require hedge. So like some of the natural history guys, they want us to use Hedge.

like Wild Space Wild Space Productions they want Hedge and I don't know if Silverback BBC might I don't know I've only encountered it's only been people in Europe

that are like you need to use this very specific program to check some you know yeah that probably is BBC I've spoken to a few BBC cinematographers

and they've said that they just get mandates this is what you're going to do yep okay that's how they do it they give you mandate they give you very yeah it's

I guess they've been doing it for so long you know they don't want to take any risks that's actually brings up an interesting question is like working with ostensibly every network under the sun and plenty of studios like do you is there certain ones that you

really love working with that obviously you don't want to say which ones you fucking hate but like are there any ones that kind of like stand out is really cool to work with and let's give you a lot of creative freedom maybe I mean I would say all of them really do I don't think we hate any particular

they're all just people right like there's all you know when you're when you're first getting started and you look at these companies and you know like oh paramount or you look at these big companies and you think oh it must be terrifying all these people in suits but then you know you especially during the age of COVID you have these meetings with people and it's no different from what's happening right here it's just some guy in his living room or whatever talking about like a great idea and we're going to go shoot it or something

but yeah most of the natural history people are it's run very much like a business so on their end it's you know it's a lot of they've been around for so long you know when you're like when you're doing a we did this one thing Mike what was that thing we did I think it was with a volcano what was that called oh I can't that was a David Attenborough

that one yeah it was a David which was insane right to go shoot stuff I got to interview Gavin Thurston. Oh, that's very cool. It was called The Perfect Planet. Perfect Planet. There we go. It was a perfect planet series. I think it, ultimately, I don't remember where it went. I think it went. Was it, I don't know, maybe it's Netflix or some.

Probably not Netflix. It's probably something else. I'm not sure. We watched it. It was great. And like, that company is Silverback, Silverback. And they're, you know, they're just so pro. It's like everyone working there. It's just everyone's so professional. Well, they're very good at, like, even when they ask you, like, you know, for like, if they want to, get stock foot it's like basically ask for the moon right they want all rights in perpetuity all this kind of stuff and i think they have this this this thing they go through and then tell you like oh no you can and like okay no problem but and they they present it so that you get kind of scared

like oh no okay if i'm going to make the sale i got to do it there but you know you can actually negotiate and say hey you know because it's like you know if you got a UFO and then you sign that then it's gone and that one UFO you know they're going to shelter all their shows so yeah UFO Oh, I've been saying something that, you know, Captured. Oh, oh, wow, I didn't.

Duh. Like, you know, we got some lava. We got some stuff that, you know, you don't get that many times in life and then it's valuable. And then we've sold some and then we've got tricked into like selling it for, in perpetuity that we can never sell it again.

And we basically lost that whole footage for just a quick sale. So, yeah, they're very talented and they know exactly what they want. And they still, yeah. Yeah, because I saw you guys sell stock footage on your production's website. It's just right there. You can get it.

Is that a, because there's obviously like on the extreme lower end, you know, you've got creators selling lots or whatever production packs. Is stock footage like a considerable part of your, like does selling stock footage kind of enable you guys to do more or is that just kind of a nice little side of thing? It used to be huge. Way back in the day, it used to be gigantic. We used to get so much sales and stock footage. But nowadays, you know, everyone has a phone.

Everyone has a GoPro, and it's kind of, it's definitely gotten watered down. But it is, every once in a while, we do have some, you know, like someone, Samsung or someone comes out with this great TV and they want to 8K this. And sometimes you can make a big sale that's like, oh, this is a good sale. But then it's happening less than less compared to like. Years ago, years ago, yeah, there was only like five or six really good photographers running around, shooting film, 35 millimeter, 60 millimeter of this stuff. That footage was valuable and you could sell it over and over again. But now, now people got it and then 100 other people got it, you know, at the same time because of their iPhones or something. You know, it's like, you can't do anything illegal nowadays.

You'll be busted, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That is actually a big part of action sports, at least the ones I've been privy to, is just stealing, shots like crazy? Is that probably not this documentary, but was that a larger part of maybe the earlier work?

I mean, guys do like all the time people, I would just watch stuff like, hey, that's my shot. And like, but really by the time you go through it. Oh, I, sorry, I meant like stealing shots like going to a location you're not supposed to be. You're talking about actually stealing your footage. Oh, yeah. No, people actually, yes. Oh.

But going to shots that you aren't allowed to, like, we kind of like, like all the spots that we hit, just because I was a surfer to, we don't really go to secret spots and shoot a secret spot because you don't want to blow them up piss off the locals and everyone will be that everyone will hate you so even like we're doing some stuff for Red Bull and surfline right now it's just traveling all around the world chasing big waves and but we're not going to shoot secret spots it's only like well-known spots that we're not going to piss people off you know like for pipe lines

yeah yeah does that uh that's an interesting thought does that change kind of the approach from the athletes like do they know all right, we're going to a popular spot where this is more like almost like an ad or like an exhibition? You know, it probably does. Like, I think if they go to a secret spot, they're going to, with guys with class, they're going to be very gentle and they're going to slowly go out. They're going to try to mingle with the guys and go. But if they go out to just jaws or pipeline or whamia, they're going straight to the peak and they're going to drop in the first big way that comes at them. They're not going to worry about any pecking order or whatever.

They're just going to just go for it. But if it's a local spot and they've never been there before, They'll mingle with the crowd, kind of make friends, and slowly work their way up and then, you know, take off, you know. Actually, that is something that completely unrelated to filmmaking, but I'm sure people are fascinated by. I think surf culture is one of those things that hasn't been really explored because it still feels very secretive. Like even, you know, magicians or skateboarders, you know, those evolved in these previously kind of secret societies, so to speak, have been explored. but surfing still feels very like, oh, there's secret spots or a pecking order or whatever. Is there any way that you can kind of explain to people listening, like what that culture is

like to, especially to you as a surfer, like what that familial experience it kind of is and how that sets itself up? I mean, it's really simple, really. Basically, just imagine if you grew up at this spot and there's a little wave out in front of your house. And so you're a little kid, you've been paddling out there, you've been surfing that same wave with all your neighbor kids and there's 10 of you and you grew up surfing there and you surf it every time you know there's all you go out there surfing you're having a great time

and if some person or three kids from that you've never seen before just walk out and just like take over your spot and come out and just start catching every wave you're going to be pissed off and then you're going to probably if they're bigger kids maybe you're going to flat their tires or do something and so that's that's grown into a thing with the surf culture you know like they have this war like it was localism from spot to spot um the big name spots like pipeline Ryan, why may that? Those are just open to the public. So everyone just goes out there. There's still a bit of respect for pipeline and those spots of like the right guys get the little bit advantage, but pretty much everyone out there's a right guy because they're all,

they're all the big names. So it's kind of a free for all. So I think the localism comes to like those secret spots that you grew up surfing as a kid and then you want to chairs. And then you also don't want some cameramen coming out there shooting your secret spot. because then they're going to expose it. There's going to be a magazine cover. And then you're going to have, instead of those three kids coming out, you're going to have 50 kids, and then you're going to be defending your spot.

So I think localism is not letting other guys kind of surf your spot or tell people about it and then not shooting it. You don't like camera without shooting it. So, I mean, I have footage of all these spots I grew up, of all my friends surfing there, but I would never give it to anybody because it was like our secret spot, even though it didn't work because they're packed with people now. But, you know, 40 years later,

back then I was hoping to keep it secret but it didn't work you know it's yeah because surfing definitely feels like one of those sports where you can't just drop into it and uh go you have to like kind of ingrain yourself in the local community wherever that is not just Hawaii but like um you know that it's it's it is a community of people you all have to share you know so it's not like oh I'm just going to go over there and uh do my own thing but it kind kind of comes hand in hand. It's probably like snowboarding as well. Like surfing, you got to go, you know, you got to paddle out and it's one foot. You got to learn how to get through the little one foot whitewash. And then you're bigger. And then there's two feet or six feet. And you're

learning how to deal. And then it's 10 or 15 feet. And then next to you're out there and it's 70, 80 feet. You've worked your way up these levels. And a long way you're working away up these levels. You've learned how to deal with the localism and the different people along the way. So it kind of all comes hand-to-hand. Just like I think snowboarding, if you went to snowboarding up to a mountain and some guy just came up and you guys were about some half pipe and some guys just dropped in front of you, you'd be like, what the hell? But at some remote peak

and in the middle of nowhere, you can just drop down anytime you want because there's no one around. Yeah. Well, just to what you were saying about having the right person go ahead of you, like, I don't think on any mountain you don't really recognize anyone unless they're absolutely sent. Or if it's what's his face, the flying tomato.

with his hair coming out. You're like, oh, there he is. But yeah, it's a little more remote. You know, you can just, like, go off by yourself and go to any mountain and, for the most part, and do your own thing. But, okay, we got to get you guys going. So the way that we'll wrap this up is next season, I'm going to come out with two different questions than these two. But we're going to stick with them because I don't have any other ones yet and consistency. see. So the first one

is if you were to schedule a double feature with your, I guess this is a series but your docu-series and another one, what would that other film be? So I guess we've got two separate films.

No, it can be anything. So it'd be a double feature with 100-foot wave and then we pick the other one. Yeah. or two in this case. And it can mirror it, it can contrast it, it can be, you know, mirror it. I mean, it's, it's your, it's your double feature.

Ah. Like the edge unknown is kind of like a mirror of it. Have you seen that one? I was gonna say, I had not, no. I was gonna say no country for old men. Okay, cool. Start with that, right? You start with that and it's like this weird, no sort of soundtrack,

Right. It's just like this weird thing. By the time the movie's over, you just have this very eerie vibe about your being. And then you just go into like a nightmare situation of six episodes of crazy waves trying to kill you. That's a great answer. So it's like humanity is coming after you in the first one. You know, there's this darkness that exists within us people on the land in the world. There's no water in that film like whatsoever, right? No. And yeah, it's like all out like West Texas and stuff. Maybe something at the border. I don't remember but uh and then immediately to now you're in the ocean where nature's trying to murder you so it's like you're just not safe anywhere yeah that's a that's a great answer that'd be my go-to yeah

i like it i like it i like it where are you talking about now are you in california me yeah i'm in los angeles um yeah my uh my favorite answer uh not my favorite answer but the one that got me asking this a lot was jeff cronan with um yeah fight club and all that he he was on here for um being the ricardo's okay and i asked him that question and he goes uh alien versus predator i was like hell yeah um should done like army of darkness and then hundred foot way that'd be right yeah yeah just yeah uh uh actually anyway um she completely flipped it yeah i i was about to be like i

just got to set a playing cards from Army of Darkens. Really? Huge fan. Yeah, it's the, it's the, yeah. So, I collect playing cards. It's so fucking nerdy. The second question for these two questions is if there is a piece of advice or maybe something you've read or a resource

that has helped you out or stuck with you over the years that you'd like to share with people. advice advice is a weird one because it's like you don't have to give advice to something but just like maybe something that stuck with you over the years and so maybe like a mantra or something that you kind of repeat in your head often or something to that degree

again I need to read I need to retool these questions but no no you're good I would say a piece of advice would be you should you should get American cinematographer oh yeah like if you're a couple thousand of those you know if you're like 22 years old and you don't have like a stack of 450 american cinematographers sitting in your house somewhere then you're making like a massive mistake um it's it's really because technology especially nowadays technology is changing so much you know you can learn how to film just from reading those magazines because it's just insight to there you go look at that yeah look at that yeah even just get it even just get it digitally or something i mean it's like that's to me you know people always say oh you should get like you know there's all these out the five Cs of cinematography.

There's all these old things. You should really just be getting that magazine physically at your house and you can see what the best and the newest and brightest people are doing and how they're doing it and how they did it. So I feel like that's probably a more reasonable route to go than to just look for one little piece of advice from someone when you can get this subscription that literally is just filled with advice. And then you learn how human people are.

Like, you know, famous directors of photography will tell you how terrified they were, you know, like, we didn't think it was going to work, you know, like this was, you know, these are like, you know, like Janish Kaminsky's, it would be a huge person and they're just like, oh, I had no idea. It worked out, though. It was great, you know, a lot of happy accidents there. Mike, what about you? You mean for advice? Or just something that is kind of, I mean, I guess the, I mean, for me advice, I mean, I would just give maybe a little advice is if you have any physical things. Like, I, I'm paralyzed from the way. waist down that don't let that anything kind of hold you back you know i i when i first got injured i thought that i couldn't do this or do this kind of work before but i um i can still do stuff i got you know good guys like josh these people helping you and you can still do great stuff even if you get injured so don't give up yeah well especially now with the uh not now but

you can you can you know with the wheels you can still operate you can still yeah yeah we'll control this and gimbles on there there's stuff you can do we have these underwater sea bob that you can write on and stuff. So there's always stuff that can be done. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, guys, for your time. That was a really fun conversation and the documentary is awesome.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And then, yeah, I appreciate all your time. Frame and reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly and the F-AtR map box logo was designed by Nate Truax of Trouac's branding company.

You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.