Frame & Reference Podcast - 88: "Bad Press" DP Tyler Graim

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

This week, Kenny talks with cinematographer Tyler Graim about the Sundance documentary "Bad Press." Enjoy the episode! Follow Kenny on Twitter @kwmcmillan and give him some feed back on the show! 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 frame and reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and you're listening to Episode 88 with Tyler Graham, the DP of Bad Press, the documentary that recently premiered at Sundance. Enjoy. have you uh you've been watching anything good recently um yeah good question well at sundance uh i think my favorite film i saw was uh smoke sauna sisterhood uh it's in the world cinema dock competition okay man it's just like so powerful um so beautiful the cinematography is great I talked to the D.P. afterwards because I was like, how did you go from, like, outside in the winter to, like, in a sauna where, you know, it must have been, like, 140 degrees or something like that. Right.

Yeah, it just seemed like a technical feat. But, yeah, he got some beautiful, beautiful images, and it's just really powerful movie. We had to do that technically, though. Oh, I skipped over that. So he left I've done this in Florida before But I think he just had to do it for longer He he left the lens

He was just using one lens And he left the lens in the sauna For like two hours like while it was heating up So that it like acclimated to that Like level of moisture and like heat And he said eventually it would just like defog And be fine Interesting

Yeah but he couldn't like take it in and out Like I think he must have had a different Like, they probably just had to do all exterior stuff on, like, different days, I'm guessing. I'm wondering if you could, if you had like the same, if the goal was, for whatever reason, artistically to use the exact same lens. If you have, like, an outdoor lens and then you just swap it right before you go into the sauna. Yeah, yeah, totally. I, that's probably the case, although I wonder if, like, the glass.

The body would, like, fog. I think that would have. Yeah. If you brought the camera out. So you probably just have to, like, wait. There's, uh, so for whatever reason on like a specific corner of the internet, I'm like the Canon Cinema guy, which I've, I've like exclusively shot Canon cinema cameras, uh, all the way back to the X, XL2, but not like, not for any specific reason.

I just have. Yeah, those just happen to be what I bought. I mean, they're great, but like I'm not like, I did go to bathroom. all day. And so I got on Twitter some guy was like, hey, I'm going to be shooting in some adverse conditions with the might even be the C-100.

Oh, no, no, no, C-300 mark three. And I was like, oh, you'll be fine. Those things are pretty real. I have a C-500. It's like they're pretty robust. He'll be good. And he goes, no, no, no. And he shows a screenshot of his phone. And it was, he's in China, and it was negative 40. And I was like, yeah, well, I look forward to your article.

I don't know what I would do with that. I think you'll be okay, but at that cold, like, how do you? Yeah, I've always thought about that. Like, you must not change settings like super often because you have to be so bundled up, like, just the operator. Like, you couldn't really like, imagine you take your gloves off for like five seconds. Any amount of time. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, I love Canon, too. We shot this on C300 Mark 2. Yeah. Still great. They're old, but they're still great. Yeah, I know. I mean, you started shooting four years ago, so I don't think that the Mark 3 was even out at that point.

But, yeah, the image is still amazing. I think you, you know, the big thing on the new ones is like slow motion that that doesn't doesn't have, but I know it's a better sensor too, but I'm just still impressed with the mark two holds up. The idea, I have this big, I can set it to you if you're that kind of nerd, but I did a big comparison between the 500 and the 300. Yeah, and yeah, basically the differences. It's this weird nuance thing because basically the difference is the high speed, like, you know, it's the same body, different sensors, but whatever. But because of the DGO sensor, the noise floor is lower on the C-300, the Mark 3. But if you, because of the larger sensor on the C-500, if you jack up the ISO, the noise pattern on the C-500 is a lot smaller. So you can actually get away with more ISO and noise reduction, whereas on the C-300, if you jack it up all the way, like, the, the, the, the,

The noise is like bigger. It's kind of like rice grains and it's harder to correct out. Weird. Huh. And the C-500 tints magenta, the C-300 tints green. But other than that, it's basically the same. There's a nerdy thing for that. So you, wait, so you started, I didn't get a screener of this.

So you'll have to walk me through a little bit of the dock. But from what I saw, it was about, uh, I didn't, I only got like the little blur, But it's like Native American journalistic rights or something to that effect. Yeah, I can give you a little rundown. Yeah, yeah. The listeners, too. Yeah, so we follow a journalist at Muskogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma. It's the fourth largest Native American tribe in the U.S.

And they're a sovereign nation. So they make their own laws and have their own constitution. And right before an election, the Muskogee Media is their press organization in the tribe. Their freedom of press law was revoked. The legislation was revoked by their tribal council. Okay. Yeah. And so that was the beginning of the documentary was kind of like finding out why that happened and how.

all that that's kind of the inciting incident and that happened four years ago uh 2018 actually oh god yeah yeah so um yeah that's kind of um towards the beginning of the film and then it's basically about uh angel she's our main subject it's about her um battle to win free press back for the tribe what was the this is kind of you know obviously off topic for cinematography What was the kind of initial reasoning behind, oh, no, you shouldn't have free speech? So it's actually a pretty, it's kind of a unique thing in the Native American world that a lot of tribes don't have, most tribes don't have free press written into their laws and stuff. Although, you know, it's protected in the United States Constitution, it's still, because they're sovereign nations, it's not specifically protected for them. And so it's kind of like not really that uncommon, but basically like, I guess I don't want to give too much away, but...

Sure, yeah, yeah, I get that. Yeah, but it's like political reasons. they're they're doing pretty hard-hitting news about politician yeah yeah yeah if you watch the film you'll find out but um yeah it's it strikes a kind of scary resemblance to the and some of the stuff that has been happening nationwide um sure lists and just um in our country as well as other countries yeah well i'm sure it's a there's some inspiration there yeah yeah i that was one thing that we you know when we were working on it we really noticed a lot of the parallels um and we were hoping that like a wider audience would see that and um people people commented about that at sundance

and so it was pretty exciting to see that that comes through um it's kind of this little like microcosm of um the larger landscape i think sure so how did you uh get involved with it because uh a that's a long time but i i don't are you native american or did you get picked out of the out of the wind i'm not native american um our co-director rebecca lansbury um rebecca Lansbury Baker, she got married while we were shooting it. She is a tribal member, and she's from Skowry Fugnation. She was a journalist at the tribe. So it's really like her story.

And the other co-director, Joe Peeler, basically Becca came to Joe with the story and was like, could this be a movie? Because she wasn't a filmmaker. She had like a journalist background. Sure. And Joe's a filmmaker. And he said yes. So that was the start of the movie.

But then basically he was shooting the film for like, I don't know, the first few times they went out there. And then he said he just because they were self-funding. And he just said he like kind of broke down after one shoot and was like, I can't do this anymore. Um, like emotionally or just like, uh, I think physical. Yeah. Yeah. It's overall. I just think he was like, I can't like it's too much to think about.

And he, he's not a DP like he's a, he came from like an editing background. Um, that is a big jump. Yeah. So I mean, some of the footage he shot is in the film and he did a great job. Uh, but yeah, he was like, let's find a DP and I've worked with him in the past. Um, and so they reached out to me. so what was your kind of uh because i saw a one review of the film that said that you you know the thing i like about this podcast there's not a lot of people like to talk about

dps very much so you did get a blur where someone said that you were shooting a lot of like they said widescreen i assume they made wide angle uh but what was your kind of look was there a look ethos going into it or was were you just kind of filming as it went like how um another thing too is like how uh involved Were you in these conversations that I assume happened, you know, where you were you kind of standoffish? Were you more in there? Were you lighting it all? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I saw that. I think that's in the variety review. Got a little nod there, which is. Yeah, so maybe we we did go with a two, three, five aspect ratio. And so it is like wider. So that's probably what they're referring to. But, yeah, I was really involved with the visual style of it. The exterior B-roll, that's where you really can see, like, the widescreen, like, shine in landscapes and stuff. You know, Oklahoma has a lot of beautiful, like, open grass fields, beautiful skies.

Yeah, there's a lot of that in the film. that was like kind of the the starting point for the style was like we just wanted to make it make it feel like Oklahoma to the viewer like make it feel like what it's like to be there not the play yeah yeah exactly so and you know that was really important to beka too she she just really wanted to kind of portray like modern Native American life um and part of that was just kind of the feeling of what it's like to be on the reservation and so that was like

that was kind of where I started with it and I think for that it was just like finding finding the colors finding the sounds and kind of putting those together to kind of like have it that kind of permeate the screen and another way

we did that is we have a couple sequences and um uh printing press where the newspaper gets printed oh yeah and it's i probably my favorite um visual scene at machinery and shit yeah yeah you go in there and it's just like so loud you can't hear anyone there's like grease everywhere you can just you know we so so we really leaned into that and it's like you can feel the grime on all the machines and like feel the ink and yeah it's um i used um i used a quarter mist for that scene and there's all these like fluorescent tubes in there and they really like glow and um yeah i love like the the look we got in there um a lot of good texture is that the criterion hat i didn't even see that oh yeah

that's fucking nerdy yeah god that's cool yeah Yeah, yeah. My wife got it for me, but love it. That was, that was besides this podcast, that was one of my pandemic projects was I ended up spinning. Like every time they're like, oh, 50% off. I was like, that's going to be a lot of money right now. And then I got them. I've probably, we got like 60. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's funny. I know it's like, it's hard to not to not do it when you see that pop up. It's just like, especially now that I'm trying to be a lot, like I was always cognizant of, I went to film school, right? Film history was part of it and all that, but I wasn't interested as, you know, as a teenager. I was way more interested in action and sci-fi and, you know, like any average teenage boy. And so over the past like five years, I've been like, I really got to like build my visual language a little better. So, you know, DVD special features I talk about all the time, but Criterion's like the king of those.

Totally. So it's, it's all educational, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I guess this like sort of applies a little bit and we're into like what we were talking about before. But the one of the things that I think is cool about the documentary is we have all these like close up B-roll shots of newspapers. and Joe and I just really wanted those to like all be practical and not just you know I feel like there's a pegs yeah and there's like a huge um I guess trend of that just with all the like Netflix like crime shows and all that you see one like pops out and you fly around and like we

just we just didn't want to do anything like that we just really wanted things to have texture and so I spent a long time a lot of time filming in my garage close-ups of newspaper newspapers and we have some shots where like one word will fill the entire frame and it's you know it's tiny and I had the only lens I could find that could actually do it is this Canon it's called the 65 millimeter it's called the canon mpe um and it's fascinating yeah it doesn't even have um like a focus ring um you have to like slide the camera like back and force uh to focus and it has this little like it's like it has a zoom but it's not a zoom it like it kind of just like pushes like the frame in and out um and you use that and you push the camera itself to

focus and so it's super tedious is that like that must be an old ass lens I don't know it's like meant for like taking photos of like bugs eyes and stuff like that oh okay yeah I thought you were going to say that Lawa probe lens that

everybody uses yeah you know I just with like a 2D subject I just I didn't want to be like that close to it and like it's so wide that you just also like the f stop um f11 i think yeah yeah that was a little

bit of like a limiting factor but um but yeah it's really cool like you when you see it on the big screen i hadn't really seen it on a screen until last week and um just like you can just see like the pulp and like little like ink spots and uh yeah it's so it was so worth it i you could like for me it was so worth it you can just like really see all that on on the big screen now um so i'm super glad you did that and also like we have transitions between all of those um and all of those are practical too um so like we do some things where i'd like get a shot and then whip out of it and then joe would like reverse it in post and he would kind of add more movement and stuff and kind of just mess with it.

And I, like, did the same thing with some, like, dolly outs. And he'd play it reverse and it, like, slams in. And we, one thing that didn't make it in is we wanted to do, like, a newspaper spin, kind of like a citizen game. Oh, the, yeah, like the Superman, Batman, I guess. Yeah, I don't know if it would have fit the vibe in the end, but we were trying all sorts of things. And I rigged this, like, newspaper onto a, onto a dolly with a, a, a drill, like, on, like, the thing that I had it, like, um, clipped on. And so, and, like, pulled it back and, like, spun it. And it, they worked super. Yeah, it worked so well. But, like, it just, like, story wise, we didn't need it. But, um, yeah, got real, um, we got real, like, kind of.

nerdy and detailed with trying to do that stuff yeah i mean it's it might seem tedious to some but that like i think that stuff kind of matters like people people notice when it's just whatever that preset is that that uh ken burns preset that everyone uses an after effects you know yeah totally yeah and i i did um i have been watching some other docs too and i have seen a lot of the like digital effects too and I every time I see that I'm just like so happy we spent the time to do that yeah did anyone officially recognize your efforts or did it kind of go under the radar well the one thing that was super funny is like when we were showing to other filmmakers um an editor was like oh my god who did your graphics i love them and joe was like oh those are uh

That's a real practical, but so I don't know. I mean, no one specifically called that out. I keep calling it out to any media outlet I talk to, but we'll see. I mean, for an editor to think that it's amazing visual effects is a compliment in and of itself. Totally, yeah. Because I could never do that. Sure, you could have a garage. Right.

Yeah, totally. it sounds like a texture was like a big part of the whole process then yeah absolutely yeah um i yeah i think all around it really was um and yeah i think those are those are the areas where you can really see it like the exteriors the um the b-roll shots and in the in the two different scenes um in the the printing press uh in the film um but yeah um the one other thing like i guess in terms of like references to other films that we looked at um and this was awesome because someone in one of the reviews actually said this but uh we always like talked about like newspaper movies is what we would call them and like all the president's

men was like our like holy grail tent of period um because we just wanted the movie to like have like that drive that driving force and that kind of drama that those movies have you know even though it's a documentary we kind of looked at narratives a lot um in terms of how we wanted it to feel um and i think you know that kind of informed shooting the practical newspapers um but also just like using mist and kind of making it um a little softer and i knew that we wouldn't be able to light like all the time like there was going to be a lot of air day um And so that's one reason why I use the mist is just to kind of like soften some some of the like harsher lighting that I knew we were going to encounter. But I think it kind of gives it a cool vibe.

And yeah, one of the reviews like referenced all the president's men and Spotlight. And those were like two movies that we talked about a lot. So it was just sci-five of the shit out of each other in the back. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I'm trying to yeah I'm trying to think I the other thing I did when I was looking at like the macro newspaper shots was I just searched for like old films where that like they would do that a lot and I like I found like a Hitchcock movie where they did a cool like zoom in to like macro on a on a newspaper it's the one with Paul Newman but I'm forgetting the name that like Wes Anderson kind of ripped off or um I didn't know Hitchcock did a Paul Newman film. Yeah, yeah, the way around.

Yes, super good. I'm trying to blinking out of the name, but someone can Google it later. But anyways, I think I kind of got sidetracked here. That's all right. I didn't want to know because sometimes it's different with different documentaries, but were you always a documentary guy? Because it sounds like narrative obviously has a large, impact on on your work yeah um no i i i i went to film school as well um i went to see you

boulder um and it has a pretty like experimental um kind of take on it because um stan brackage was a teacher there and he's kind of known as like the father of experimental filmmaking um And so I did like, I shot on Super 8 and Super 16 and did hand processing there and stuff. It was a cool, like, way to learn. And I think it just gave me like a appreciation for kind of like weirdness in movies. And I'm just kind of going with that. But yeah, I shot short, I've shot short films, short narrative films. I've never shot a feature.

And I've shot a lot of commercial stuff that's not based in the dock world. But I would say the last like maybe like five years or so, a lot of my work has been in kind of that dock space. Even if it's commercial, just kind of like the docky style commercials and or like you're on kind of thing. So that's kind of more of a thing of those are the jobs that are coming your way versus like a super strong interest. Because I've interviewed some DPs who are like, I only shoot documentary. I don't even watch movies. You're like,

I'll show again. Yeah, no, definitely not. I mean, I definitely have an interest in both. I think there is something special about documentary in terms of just like what you find while you're filming. And just kind of the spontaneity of it. You know,

that happens in narrative too, but it's just a little different. Sure. But yeah, I appreciate, like, and just like when you're in a moment and something crazy starts happening and you all know it,

and you're capturing it is like, it's so cool. And that happened like several times on this film. So many times that we were just like, what's going on here left? Like, we're all used to just like, you know, things not working out. And so I think it was just, we knew it was a special project. Just, and it's mostly because of Angel, our main subject.

She's just an amazing person and really brave, courageous individual that kind of like made a lot of those moments happen. Yeah. So how much, this is kind of more of a editor question, but like, it's interesting. interesting to nerds, how much footage were you generating over the six years or however long? So yeah, I think for, I think from like the day, Joe's, because we weren't, we were not there like when the repeal happened. So that part is in interview just basically. But from the day they started shooting until like Sundance, I think they, basically just hit four years. So I think the shooting took place over like three. Basically, we thought we were finished at one point and then COVID happened and like that extended things

and then just stuff, the stuff just kept happening that related to the story and we were like, oh, like we were planning on submitting to Sundance two years in a row and didn't end up submitting for this year but i'm so glad that we like had the patience to wait because it's just such a better movie now um but yeah that's a good question and i asked i asked joe because he's he's the direct co-director but he's also a co-editor as well and he was just like he's like i don't know and it seemed like it stressed him up to even think about it but our our movie is only um 98 minutes long and so good editing yeah yeah and it took so yeah they did a great job but it took a long time to find find that story in there um and so yeah it's thousands of hours i'm sure like these i'm

maybe i'm wrong but it's it's got it's got to it's got to be up in the high hundreds like because there's like all multiple entire interviews you know but we're just not used in the film at all um yeah uh and just because of like story changes and um basically like other things started happening that were super interesting and um you know i think people would have liked but like when it got them to it it was like if it's not about freedom of press um and it's not about angel then like that's not our movie um did you start having thoughts like well maybe if we send a like a second unit to go film that I can make a follow-up film or like a tertiary film totally yeah yeah I mean there's like a supreme court case happened like while we were doing it

and it had like a huge impact on the tribe and we have a bunch of great footage about that but it was just like a big hurdle we were we had to get over was just like teaching the audience so many things because just as like as an outsider myself I was just so ignorant to a lot of this stuff and I think we do a great job of doing that but not at a boring way well I mean to your point I think like if anyone is even I was about to say remotely film literate but I don't even know if this film's that popular or not but there's this film you may have seen it called smoke signals, I think that might be anyone's only point of reference for Native American like res life. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it's, you know, it's definitely changing. Yeah,

you know, Becca, like anything that was like cultural, um, about that area, about being Muscogee, Muscogee Creek, um, you know, that was home by Becca. I'm like so glad. that we had her perspective but um i think for like a outsider like white guy audience or white girl white guy audience um it's it's uh it was important just to know like what people wouldn't know wouldn't understand um yeah so we always kind of had that in mind but yeah it's it's so awesome though like this year sundans really did a great job of um programming native um films there's a big narrative film called fancy dance um that i got the name yeah yeah it's awesome i went to the premiere and it's really good um and they shot in oklahoma too um and then of course

res dogs um right is like the big one right but yeah they shot in the same same town as where like we shot like that's where muskogee creek nation headquarters is um we actually bumped into the crew once yeah yeah it's kind of crazy we also shot a little bit in pahuska which is osage nation and martin scorsese was shooting killers of the flower moon um when we were there and it was just like the biggest production i've ever seen like they were basically rebuilding like this entire downtown of pahuska like making it a dirt road redoing all the facade on the buildings, like, just bonkers. And like, we show up with like our,

I think an Armenian hand with our, you know, four person crew, three cameras and a clipboard. Yeah, with the C-300. And they thought we were like, uh, like an EPK or like operazzi or something. And you just just said, yeah, for the, the Bluroy let's walk around a bit. Yeah, but it's cool. I mean, I'm glad that, um, the story, you know, those stories are getting out there and um it's so important to have like the native voice um they're just uh they've just been treated terribly and those stories have been kind of forgotten

and so i i'm so glad that um those are getting out yeah i mean so i went to arizona state but then i lived in arizona for another four years uh and so that opened my eyes quite a bit to res life because you're just surrounded basically by reservations. And yeah, it's disconcerning to say the least. Dude, the other one, speaking of Oklahoma, I was driving through, my buddy Trent from Oklahoma, and he's can't tell you what kind of Native American, because I'm a bad friend, but he is.

And Cherokee, I'm going to go with Cherokee, if that makes any sense. But so we're driving through Oklahoma. because we're on a road trip and he and he just offhandedly goes like oh well and you know that's kind of where the land run started and I went the what and he goes you know the land run I was like I don't know what you're talking about he goes they didn't teach you about the land run I was like in what world I grew up in the Bay area no one no one described this to us and uh for people listening the land run is when a bunch of white people showed up to Oklahoma and set up little

plots and then decided all right at the count of three you all run and put your flag wherever you want to live and that's yours now yeah they didn't own none of that shit yeah just straight up took it crazy you have um carol what i'm saying the reason i'm laughing is because it's such an insane like fact of uh american history um sorry just i'm just stopping real quick. My wife came into Lurga. Oh, no, no, always. Okay. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I feel just like grateful and appreciative that I was able to be a part of this project and learn so much. But yeah, it's the way it's taught to us should definitely be different. Yeah. Yeah, it's frustrating. I did want to touch briefly on when you were talking about like kind of the experimental

film and stuff. It's always fun to talk to people, especially people around my age, about learning film, because we all caught it, like, right at the tail end of, you know, when digital cameras started popping up. And I was wondering if there was anything specific that you can think about that shooting film, and especially, like you're saying, like, even self-processing or anything like that, what that did for you as a sort of digital filmmaker or, if anything, transferred over. Because some people, you know, they're like, hey, it's about the same. yeah less time right right yeah um i mean i i think it gave me like an appreciation for um kind of uh making a decision and like going going with it and no matter of kind of just being like well

that's that's the decision we're making and because like when you're shooting film it's like that's It's kind of it. Like, you got six minutes. So, yeah, I think that was like a big part of it was just kind of being like the value of being decisive when you're shooting. I think that was part of it. And then, yeah, I think just like having an appreciation for things that don't look super sharp. and, you know, 8K, whatever. Like, I, yeah, I think I just appreciate grain and softness and shadows and all that stuff.

And, yeah, I, you know, I think it started there. Not that you can't appreciate that stuff shooting digital too. But, you know, I mean, I'm definitely completely adopted digital. I haven't shot film for a long time. I did a music video on 16 after college, but I've never shot, like, any significant project on film. It's just not super feasible on a, like, tiny budget. And it's, I mean, it's funny because on the one hand,

I don't know how online you are, but it does seem like there's this, even greater nostalgia for film now than there was even five years ago, 10 years ago. But it's not based in reality. Like it's complete, the one that frustrates the shit out of me

is when people put that 16 mil of that super 16, or I guess it'd be eight, but there's a sprocket hole and the digital footage goes into the sprocket hole. And I'm like, you guys don't even care. You just like want dirty? I don't know what this is.

Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think like that's one thing I've always kind of thought about, too, is like, well, if we're shooting digital, it's like, that's what we're doing. So let's not like try and make it look. Well, now people are even leaning into like mini TV and stuff. That's becoming popular. Yeah. One of the co-directors, Joe, he has a feature that he's trying to finish besides this one that we did finish.

but yeah he has a picture that's almost finished that he i shot i shot on it as well but he shot it completely on um sony high eight great it's like it was like a beat to do that with the tapes and stuff and like transferring it to digital and pretty wild decision to make but it's like it's so cool when you see the footage it just has like the flares are like super weird and Yeah, it just has this, like, weirdness to it that I don't think you could really recreate. I was able to jerry-rig together a way to record. I still have my Excel 2 from when I was 16 years ago, 17 years ago. And I was able to the tape deck.

I remember my friend David Breschelle, if he's listening, broke the tape deck portion. And I had a fire store, which was a firewire. tiny little Firewire 800 port on the back of the XL2 that went to a hard drive and that broke as well but mostly because it was a crappy little connector all fireware ports not just the one on the canon but anyway a couple months ago I was able to Jerry rig away for the S video to go to HDMI into my Odyssey 7Q

so it was up res to 1080 sort of and no tape that's amazing and it looks about as you remember that's great oh man that's so funny yeah i mean i love like the things people are doing now to like make it work um like i have a friend in l a who is like a co-owner i think of this uh place called media pollution and they they do like huge like um keep like t r t tv like installations um for different things but they've also gotten into like they own like a bunch of like tube cameras and like VHS cameras and stuff and like they did like a live stream like an actual like live stream show for Nike like with the tube cameras and I just like you guys are incredible for figuring all this stuff out I uh I can't remember which DPI I was talking to but he was like incredibly knowledgeable on he he had worked with all of them someone

have to remind me. But he was saying that he believes that the only cameras you can't replicate these days is tube cameras. He was like VHS, MIDI-TV, high eight, any of that, you can, with enough work, you can make it look functionally identical if you start with like a really high-quality source file. But he's like the way tube cameras flare and stuff, you can't, you can't fake that. And so he still owns a couple where he was like sometimes like Ikagami's or whatever.

He was like sometimes if that's the move, you got to. Oh, I think he maybe he worked on that winning time or what, that, that Lakers thing. Yeah, I was just going to say winning time use those Ikagami cameras. Yeah. Yeah, that has a wild look to it. Yeah. Very, it just or like I think Silk Sonic recorded a few of their music videos on those things because that's a very, that music just wants. the two can't that's something I'm trying to think about with like I'm doing my best these days to not be the old man screaming at clouds you know so when like I'll see you know this girl on the old TikTok the other day and she was like filming the local mall with my vintage camera and it was like a Sony hiate you know from like 2003 and I was like let's not say vintage vintage vintage is 1979 and before we all know this but I'm trying to wonder like

Like, what is, because right now I know it's, you know, especially if you're young, there's just kind of like a cool funk to it. But because I'm the type of nerd I am, I'm like, what is that language saying? What is it? Because I haven't heard anyone articulated now. I've heard people say it's aesthetic and I'm really sick of people using, not fully using the word. It is aesthetic. Makes no fucking sense. Get it together.

But I want to know what that visual language is. I guess, do you have any thoughts coming from more of the experimental education? I came from not that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think there's, you know, there's always going to be certain projects that kind of call for something like that, you know, and you can kind of figure out a way that it adds to the story or to some element of it. But, like, I think that's what, like, I'm always thinking about if I'm going to make some decision like that is like, how does this like actually, like, add to this specific project and like make sense for this specific thing?

Because I do understand what you're saying. It's like just using it just because you think it's like cool. It maybe is a good, good reason. Well, it could detract if it doesn't make sense for the project, it could actually make the audience experience worse in some way. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, yet. I mean, it's just, it's something I think about sometimes because me and

Ernie Gilbert were talking the other day. He's the editor of, he's an editor and a director, but he edited, This is America and season one of Barry, maybe season. Oh, wow. Some of the land are all kinds of good stuff. And he's a friend of mine and we were just kind of, we, we're going to have to do a part two of his podcast because we spent the first hour just talking about like where trends are going. Yeah, because we're friends and we hadn't talked in a while. So just blew an entire podcast.

We're like, all right, we should actually talk about your project because he's having something come out on Amazon soon. Um, but yeah, it's kind of just something that I think about a lot is like where, where film narrative documentary is kind of separating from pop culture now. yeah because it used to be the pop culture and now the form of film visual media moving images is separating and there's pop culture for that and then there's cinema which is becoming seems to be becoming more niche and not this big thing that it's been for the past 100 years yeah yeah you mean like just kind of in terms of like what you were saying like TikTok and all these things yeah yeah but art film per cent right or TV, yeah. Well, and how the zeitgeist changes the popularity and also, like, terms, you know, people trying to get in. Like a question, I've said this few times on this podcast, but like when people ask me, like, how do I get into film? I'm like, do you want to get into film or do you want to get into the film industry? Because they're two completely separate things.

If you just want to get into film, go make something right now. Yeah. If you want to get into the film industry, you've got to be a PA so you think you can dance. license it's a it's a machine that you have to agree to get into and you will not have agency yeah totally yeah um yeah i mean that's the thing is like every time someone asked you that it's like there's there's not like a formula like no everyone's like see how story is just like so different um but yeah i mean like like i went to film school but uh but whenever people asked me of the if i think film school is like important or necessary i'm like no it's not necessary

like if at all like i think for me it was it it allowed me to realize that i wanted to do film production and i don't know if i would have found it another way or not um so that was super important but like in terms of like experience like i think just what you're saying like starting to pa or just making your own movies is probably a better experience and maybe a better use of money than time. I definitely, like, I went to New York Film Academy before I went to college, and that taught me everything I needed to know, literally, about filmmaking. I did, however, need those four years at ASU specifically. I'm actually happy I went there.

The film school was not put together at the time, but I needed those four years to just get my personal shit together, you know, and actually some time after that to really become, you know, my own man, as it were. But I think had I not had that time, I would have absolutely failed. Yeah. Because that walled garden that college can provide. Like, I think it's more important to go to college and enjoy that experience and learn things that aren't film than it is to go to a strict film school because you can kind of pick up filmmaking from a lot of places but like the pardon me the personal experiences I think are much more important to you as a storyteller yeah and just not being so dialed on you know quote unquote the film world sure sure

because then you start making movies about making movies yeah totally yeah I mean I think you know I think there's like you get advantages of from going to a film school in terms of like connections and stuff like that but it's definitely not the same as it was when you know spielberg and lucas and russia we're at USC like um i those those connections still exist but i think it's kind of up to you to to like keep those and and uh make those work for you and um yeah just kind of yeah it's definitely an industry of like networking and Staying in touch with people. Yeah.

I was just talking to, on another podcast, I was just talking to someone about how, like, networking is very scary. And, uh, but that's just because the phrase networking makes it feel like a business. And we both agreed, like networking is really just making friends the normal way, just hanging out with regular people and not bringing up business at all. And then somewhere down the line, maybe you guys work together. Maybe you don't. Yeah.

But to, to get the business. card transaction out of the picture. Like, don't even think about that. Just make friends like a normal person. And eventually something might come of it. That's not working. Yeah, that's,

yeah, that's so true. Yeah, it's such a good point. I think it's like, someone I worked on set with, like really early on was like told me like it's 90% about hanging out. Like 90% of his is the hang.

he would say like on set with people he's like you're spending so much time with these people like you have to like each other and it's like yeah so like networking it's like just be yourself and yeah don't don't try and make it make it something every single time you're talking to someone yeah well and people can smell that desperation of mile away yeah totally like don't try to be cool that's that your thing i did want to ask because uh i got away from it um Did you have any, any hand in the coloring? I assume you must have, the coloring of the film and like, what was that process like for you? Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so we had a colorist. His name's Dan Edwards, super talented guy. He is in L.A. And to set the look, since I'm in Denver, I've never done this before. It was so cool. He shipped me a calibrated iPad. Hell yeah. Yeah, it was really cool.

And then he has like a program where I can see the changes he's making in real time. Evercast? Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Or similar to that. It's something like that. And then the directors were there in L.A., like in person. And so for the initial look, that's what we did. and then he just kind of it's so much footage you know that he was like okay this is a good place to start

and then he worked on it kind of like because basically we got into sundance and then we hadn't done color music composition sound mix um any of that yeah so we were like oh here we go and we had like you know two and a half months to do or maybe even less to do that and um so yeah like he like through the holidays he kind of did like a big chunk of the work and then I came out to LA for the final color and like QC and I was a producer on the movie too and so I was doing I was in the QC on the graphics and working with the graphics company too but yeah he was awesome and just like I think it was challenging for him because he does a lot of commercial work and you know that stuff is

where if the DP knows what they're doing then everything matches pretty well and it's the same cameras and controlled lighting. And yeah, and this was like, different cameras were used over four years. And like, there's one, there's one sequence, really the only sequence that's like multiple cameras is where we, we film an election. And we had to be in like multiple, like, watch parties for the different camera date, election night. And it's, I'm like, it makes the movie. So I'm like so glad we did it. but we just, we didn't have money to get three C-300 mark twos and the same lenses and stuff.

So just kind of like used whatever we could. Yeah. And so like, I match my XT3 to my C-500 all the time. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I notice some things still, you know, but like I think most people would. And Dan did like a really good job just like figuring that out.

But yeah, we, it kind of has like. a cooler tone to it um i gave him like a bunch of references um like what um me look i let's go play yeah yeah i um i can't get it's for instagram i actually i it wasn't necessarily like um like films i i looked on instagram at like different like colorists work um okay and kind of picked out like it's a lot of like commercial stuff um but uh i picked out like some of his previous work and um just some other colors that i i follow um and he kind of like through like his you know kind of colorous brain he was like i see some like similar DNA you know in these um and basically i wanted it just to be like saturated still so that like those oklahoma like

colors and things like still came out um but like also have some character so it has like a little bit of a cooler tone like to it in general like more in like the shadows but we kind of kept um just like the warmness and um i just wanted to keep like accurate skin tones um that was like really important but then also like we would focus on just kind of like creating like shape when we could on people's faces and um when they ever does yeah a little bit yeah he he he did some of that for us um and then um the one of the like key sequences is when they repeal free press and we did a lot more like sit down like style interviews with um just bigger lighting package um yeah we just were able to control things more and so those interviews

We just wanted to add, like, more drama to that scene because it's such a key scene. And so Dan kind of like helped us like enhance that a little bit, like with some power windows and just, you know, kind of setting the mood. But all that stuff looks awesome. He did a great job. What was the lighting package? Or just a general kind of set up for those interviews. No, yeah. we had a we had this a similar thing for most of it so i have i i have two one by one astra

uh like yeah yeah and so we i would bring those that they're just so good for travel you know and pretty powerful for what they are but then we also had a light mat um s four or s three one of the big ones and that would like usually be the main key um just because it's big and soft and doesn't take up a lot of space but for those bigger interviews um i would blast that or one of my panels through a six by if it was like interior just to make it like super soft and then we had another six by uh and some like floppies for nag um that was like a big thing was just like taking away light on shadow side um in a lot of the interviews um and then like there's some exterior ones and so like um one of them i like kind of bat lit backlit the subject with the sun

and then use the six by was ultra bounce as the key um so yeah i like tried to make it really soft but then always use like megfill to kind of give it more shape and um yeah i think overall they look great we that you know it's like i wanted it to still feel real like an in there like lived in spaces so we didn't want to like clean things up too much and like produce too much but um one of the references i used for that was the documentary the imposter um it's really great i think they shot on film because it was like 2005 i think um but it's about it's a crazy story it's about um this guy who this family had a loss of their child had gone missing like a like a long time ago And then all of a sudden, this kid in, like, Spain was like, I'm, I'm him.

Like, I think I heard of this. Yeah, yeah. And the family, like, takes him in and stuff. And it's not what, it's in a wild. Yeah, yeah. It's a crazy movie. But they do, like, such a good job of, like, like, when they're interviewing someone, it's like, oh, this is, like, a real, like, place for this person.

And, like, their things are around. and like there's i just love that where it's like because it's a documentary like i don't want to like produce it and make it clean too much you know put up my photo backdrop yeah yeah yeah totally with that with that cookie cutter on the back yeah yeah but like yeah but if you watch it like they still it's still like really dramatic like nice lighting too so um yeah that was like my main reference for those interviews very cool yeah uh so yeah i'm not i was seeing um about oh go ahead oh nothing i was just going to say like at this point i probably would have had some sort of aperture unit with me but i think at the time they weren't quite as like um ubiquitous

so uh yeah but yeah i'm always like trying to figure out like what's the best like kind of travel like lighting kit i have an answer for you uh granted it's only by color oh yeah i'm sure they're working on it and it's actually they're out of boulder i think oh maybe denver Um, have you heard of Intelitech? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they had a Black Friday sale and I got the mega light cloth that they make, which is three and a half feet by four feet. It's the size of a fucking door, dude.

Like, and it comes with its own, like it literally folds up into a one by one. I can put it in your backpack. It's one by one in like this thick, like maybe a few inches thick. Yeah. And you can just chuck that in your, but the ballast is kind of big. But you could chuck the whole thing in your backpack if you wanted. if you have like a different way to rig it but it comes to like this pop out frame and diffusion and a grid um but yeah it's like it's just putting a window wherever you want it's and it's so

accurate like that's i got a color i'm the kind of nerd that color meters everything and they've done a very good job with their with their LEDs uh that's cool yeah so it's kind of pricey but highly recommend it yeah i mean that's the thing is like you know i love book lights but it's like how much shit do i have to have with me to make that word or space yeah that's the big thing when you're doing interviews it's like you don't know where you're gonna be like you might be in someone's like studio apartment or whatever and it's like you can't you just can't fit that in there yeah and that that's yeah i'm always looking for stuff like that too because i the other thing about like book lights and things like that are they just like spill everywhere

and so it's like how do you scroll like without having a million flags and a crew and stuff so that's awesome yeah they keep they keep having 20% sales so i think the uh black friday was a little more than that i think it might have been like 35 or 40 but um okay yeah you can get them for i think It's $2,400. But it's a very impressive light. And the Keno Flow, it's massive case, but the Keno Flow Diva LEDs are similarly excellent. Like perfect. I was getting 100 TLCI out of these things.

It's on certain settings. So they're perfect. But they've also got camera luts in them. So if you say like, oh, I'm shooting on Alexa. I'm shooting on Venice, whatever. it will only generate light that is within the gamut of that camera

so you'll never have a light that oversaturates or clips wow that's weird it's so you can do generic 709 generic P3 obviously got XY coordinates I fucking love those kinos

so that's my setup is the two kinos and the mega light cloth that pretty much does every documentary style thing that's cool yeah that's interesting I feel like most people

these days say like aperture stuff so I like hearing um aperture's great they're affordable yeah yeah right right their newer stuff is definitely like more accurate it's better

but I'm not necessarily a photo they have the I love aperture I don't have anything bad to say about them but I just don't prefer them you know sure although those little MC lights are great oh yeah I've used those little those little puck lights yeah

those are good and then honestly like the like some of their Ameran stuff's really good like the little light mats that they have for that they're just made out of plastic but if they want to sponsor this podcast please and we are a little over time so I'll let you go, but I end every podcast with the same three questions. So we'll start with. So a lot of times people will ask, like, what's the best piece of advice you ever got? I want to know what the worst piece of advice you ever got was. And name their names and where they live.

Oh, geez, that's tough. The worst piece of advice. Or one of. It doesn't have to be, you know. Yeah. Oh boy. Sorry, give me a second here. Yeah, this one always takes a minute.

Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like I gave you, like, one of my, like, best pieces of advice, but yeah. Let's see. I find that the worst piece of advice tends to be very educational. Whereas for the longest time, I'd be like, what's supposed to be advice you ever got? People would be like, stick with it. And I'd say, all right, have you heard that enough?

So, I think maybe it was, maybe it was like, let's see, The worst advice was to, for me, was to, like, get into the film industry and, like, work my way up. Because I just, it just wasn't right for me, and I just, I didn't want to do that. And I'm glad that I, and I was doing it for a little while, but it felt like I was kind of getting into a, like, a hole and I didn't want to like stay there so um I kind of just like made my own way and I just wanted to be a a DP or a camera operator and not a PA or an AC or yeah I don't know if that that's no that's crazy that word yeah yeah uh second question uh if you were to program a double feature with bad press and another film

What would that other film be? Oh, man. I mean, I guess I kind of have to say all the president's men. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I feel like that was like kind of our like North Star for like drama and just like a journalist film. So. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I don't remember. Normally there's a different third question that I don't remember. And I normally do it in a different order. Maybe that's what I'm going to write a blanket on it. But I do have a documentarian question. We can end on that, which is I ask every documentary in the same question. What is your shoe recommendation?

Ah. Danners. That's a new one. What is that? It's so I like their, I think it's called the trail shoe. It has a number in front of it too. It's like the 2560 trail shoe or something. And it's sort of like a lower, like, hiking boot.

Like, it's not like a full, like, ankle height. But it has, like, kind of the same, like, genetics of a hiking boot in terms of, like, the really great soul. And it's, like, water resistant. But, like, super comfortable. And I still think it looks pretty good. So there you go. Yeah, yeah. I think for, like, more, like, studio things.

and I haven't fully gone down this road, but I love blunt stones, and I know it's like become like a very, yeah, and I, I really love them. I think I just like haven't fully committed to like fucking mine up yet. They're so nice looking when you first get them. I will say I have running those ski trips I mentioned.

Like I've walked around in the snow. I've stepped into a, in Breckenridge four weeks ago. I stepped into a puddle that went up past my ankle. yeah you know mud everything they don't really i got gray ones so they kind of spot but they look kind of cool they don't look like they look like a patina it doesn't but they they don't they really don't get fucked up okay yeah i they're so comfortable and like yeah that when i went to sundance i wore those the entire time like some people i was with got like big like serrell like straight and i was just like yeah i can wear these like here and just like walking around

Not to mention, like, I just wear like regular ankle socks in those things, even in the snow and like my feet don't get that cold. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, they're great shoes. Yeah, some, I was in this like group with some other DPs and they were going to Sundance and someone was asking about footwear. And she was like, I don't know if I should just like wear my blundstones or these like these other boots and someone else was said, but if you don't wear blundstones, how will people know? you're a cinematographer. Yeah. I just like, then a North Face. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Frame and reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F-at-R-Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truaxe branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to ProVidiocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.