Frame & Reference Podcast - 89: "King Coal" DP Curren Sheldon

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

In this episode, Kenny talks with cinematographer Curren Sheldon about the Sundance documentary "King Coal." 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 89 with Kern Sheldon, DP of the documentary King Cole, which recently premiered its Sundance. Enjoy. have you been watching anything interesting lately uh you know i haven't really um so about this time last year and nothing against nothing against them because there's so many high quality television shows but my wife and i kind of just said you know what let's not watch tv for a year um it seemed like there are so many good tv shows and you know you get kind of stuck in that endless loop right of watching like what is basically i think a 10 hour movie instead of just watching like a

a great film. Um, and so we've really, we really started focusing on like, let's just watch films, you know, let's not spend so much time in front of just watching, you know, TVs and getting sucked into the, the cliff hangers and the, you know, it's like a pulp novel in a lot of ways. Um, so no, I've, I've sort of just focused on reading more and watching films rather than, uh, watching TV. But even film wise, we have an 18 month old. So it's really, he's really like torn into my, uh, sitting around and watch TV, uh, time. And so, and movie time. But, yeah, it was a very light year for watching stuff for me, actually.

I tend to, I can't see. My problem is I, maybe it is the same problem. I can't get too into television shows unless I'm like incredibly interested. I'm not, even Game of Thrones, like I was like, that seems like a lot. Like, it's cool, but I'm not, you know, like, I think Brake's bad had me by the throat, but that was like a global phenomenon. phenomenon, you know, but yeah, same. I've been watching mostly films and especially trying to become more film literate,

you know, trying to seek out films that, you know, like the whole criterion collection or whatever, just things that I wouldn't immediately jump for, you know, and trying to kind of self-educate. Because it's easy to buy like the, you know, Alfred Hitchcock box set and be like, I'm educated, but, you know. Yeah. No, for sure. my wife who were filmmaking partners is much more I know she has an MFA in media art

she studied film she's gone sort of that deep dive of you know film history and I've done a little bit of that but it's also something on my list especially for this year is you know watching the you know the great classics that maybe I've missed my first 37 years so uh yeah that's definitely definitely a big goal for mine as well watched quite a few Territz Malik films at the end of last year which was nice especially some of his earlier stuff I'd never seen But did you have a criterion collect that's a good one as well. Well, that was, I've said this a few times on this podcast, but my pandemic project was this podcast and just buying up tons of criteria in Blu-rays because I was in a real self-education kick, you know, because I couldn't shoot anything. So I was like, well, I shouldn't say I couldn't.

I know you made a whole fucking web series during the pandemic, but he goes, I suppose I chose. not to uh but yeah spent spent the time to try to like shore up the old uh back of the brain knowledge in that way you know no for sure yeah i think that's yeah it was uh obviously a tough time i was all so much work obviously dried up for everybody especially in this industry right documentary you have to get so close to people that it's pretty hard to do when you can't um and so luckily i has had a friend who lived nearby for the the series who has done some acting and she's done some directing and says like well let's just do a bunch of like outdoor know comedic web series and so that was just like a thing to do for a few months to get

through the toughest portion of you know not having work and not much to do so um and it was nice you know I haven't done a ton of like just sort of narrative scripted stuff even if it was skit based um and for comedic value but uh it was a lot of fun just to kind of keep those the muscles the muscles tuned up yeah did uh this is kind of like a instantly deeper question than normally to start, but like, I feel like it can be kind of, there can be a negative view of people making like YouTube video, like, oh, if you get success on, not just making YouTube videos, because no one will see those, but having a successful YouTube something, let alone trying to make like a career out of it, can be seen as a negative if you're trying to get

into more professional work spaces. Did you find that that, maybe it wouldn't necessarily happen at the documentary space, but what kind of response did you see from that positive or negative? Yeah, I mean, I think the series is definitely not for successful enough

where I was having tens of thousands of subscribers and was considered a YouTuber, right? It was more just something fun to do for a few months and funny or die published a lot of them. And again, you know, unless there's a ton of people who I work with on a professional basis who even saw the films by the people who did, whether it's just people I've worked with the past who were

Facebook friends or when I would post them. Yeah, I think everyone was just ready for a little bit of a laugh, right? And sort of a little bit of, you know, despite all the sort of dark moments and obviously real serious things that were occurring, it's, you know, some levity. It's sort of the weird cultural insanity that we're all going through, right? And it was kind of like a, you know, and making the films of just like having a social distance hang out and sort of the challenges of that, I think allowed a lot of people to just be like, oh, I'm not, you know, everyone else is having these same experiences, right?

Like, we're all kind of, you know, separated and isolated, but we're all kind of doing the same thing and trying to cope in our own ways. And so I think people appreciated it for that, you know, whether it was just friends or people in the industry. But, you know, it definitely wasn't successful enough for people to be like, oh, he's just a YouTuber. And I'd already been, you know, pretty much in the professional film world before that. So, yeah, more than anything else, just sort of a fun thing for people to have a little smile in their life at the time.

But no, it hasn't really come up in the last couple years since I did it other than, like, hey, you made those funny quarantine life videos. That was funny. So that was pretty much it. You mentioned that your partner had an MFA in film and whatnot. Did you also, like, go to film school, or how did you come to cinematography? I didn't. I definitely took sort of the roundabout way to. what I do now. I studied writing and journalism in college and I went to grad school for

professional writing. And so the first two or three years after grad school, I actually worked for a travel startup in New York City. And more than anything else, I chose to start doing video for the lifestyle. You know, I love movies. Photography was a bit of a hobby. I just did for fun on my travels. But, you know, what I really wanted to do was to have a life that wasn't at a in a office, you know, like I was working at travel startup. There was only eight of us. Like, it was still a very cool place to work. I loved working there. But at the end of the day, I was inside for, you know, nine, ten hours a day, sitting at a desk. And I just knew that's not how I wanted to live. And so this is, you know, early 2010, 2011, 2011, 2012. And, you know,

working at a travel startup, you know, my job as a, I was a content manager for a website. You know, I was trying to pull in writing, photos and videos. And I just kind of, figured out like, wow, there's, you know, for 2012, I thought there'd be like more travel, good of travel videos or travel documentaries than, you know, we could sort of populate the site and I just couldn't really find them. And so I recruited to buddy and said, let's go make films, you know, like we can save up enough money. We can teach ourselves how to shoot. And then we could just make short documentaries. And so we did. We worked for another nine, 10 months. I think we saved up, but it seemed like a lot at the time, maybe $7,000 or $8,000 each,

like not a ton of money and we just started traveling and said that hey every week we'll do one short documentary on a fascinating person that we meet fine um edited it in a week and put it up and so we created a series um called humanity and did that for two or three years and kind of unbeknownst to me it was sort of our film school um just by doing or you know we would go and shoot and be like man why does this look bad like why does it look jerky like why is like oh we have to focus on shutter speed and they're like how do you get to do you get to that blurry background, all these little things that you do when you're trying to figure out how to shoot. And so it was just sort of an amazing experience where you're always out, always shooting,

always in different scenarios. And though I never had in my mind that, ooh, I want to be a documentary DP or a DP in general, I was sort of training myself for that, right, just by being in an incredible amount of different scenarios and sort of tough conditions. So, yeah, that's kind of how I came about it. And then, you know, soon after I started doing video, kind of still training myself in New York before he left for that trip, my wife, who was just a friend of a friend at the time, the only person I knew who did video. And so I was like, you know, contacting her with my own question about my 60D. Like, how do you do this and how do you do this? And then what does this mean? So that's how we started chatting and a couple of years later got married and we've been working together ever since. And that's she's kind of one of the main reason. That's why I do more of the bigger doc stuff now. That's been her passion and sort of her focus in the last decade. I imagine the sort of journalism background helps the documentary brain, you know, kind of create the story. Because that's one thing that I've always said that editing makes you a better DP, but certainly writing is kind of the other side of that coin in terms of if one skill set was going to enhance your cinematography. oh totally yeah i mean i see what every one time um i speak with students or people who are learning

they say like you know what it was what's your biggest tip i always say edit your own stuff that's that number one right is like when you edit your own word you're the one getting mad at yourself right like when you an editor gets mad at you you you don't hear from them right they just don't talk to that most editors you know they take your footage and they they work as a director on whatever whatever it is they're working on but when you're editing your own stuff you're like man like why is like come on curran like steady up like hold the shot like all these different things that you sort of teach yourself to do but i totally agree that this or the second part of that is is you know the writing or the journalism or just the shaping of a story right it's like you know

pretty images are interesting to watch for about you know 45 seconds right after that you have to have a story you have to have characters you have to be able to keep people's attention with something that they're emotionally attached to that's it's hard to get almost i attached to just pretty images um and so i think yeah i mean journalism writing crafting a story all of that is intertwined with cinematography intertwined with editing to actually make a piece of work that is either enjoyable to watch or um or educational whatever it is that you're trying to to get across so definitely the combination of all those factors yeah did you uh end up coming up with a obviously at first you were probably thinking of way too many things but once you

out into the groove of it where did you kind of come up with maybe like a formula that you knew was going to make not only a good mini doc about a person but also your like whatever your flavor of that was yeah for sure when we started we were really focused on sort of more inspirational stories right people who were either trying to do things to help others or you know just had an interesting story around the world and so you know I think, you know, it's, at this point, it's probably a little bit of a, you know, Vimeo staff pick cliche sort of thing. But we had sort of that same, you know, approach where it's kind of you have those openings with like an inspirational quotes and lots of Nats sound. And then you sort

of drop that and move into like the bulk of the story and the person's backstory before sort of finalizing kind of like what, what it is they do. And, you know, when each film is, you know, three to five minutes, you know, there's definitely sort of a formula of how you do that. But it's, you know, it's kind of keep trying different things. And we tried to push ourselves when we were doing our series just to like, well, you know, what if we did split screen or, you know, whether it was technique based or editing based or editing tricks or, you know, maybe what if we told a story with, you know, where we actually didn't hear any of the voiceover, right? It was just images and, you know, natural sound. And so we definitely tried

different things just to see kind of how it would feel and look and sort of what emotions we could to showcase. And so, well, yeah, I think there always was a formula, right? Because at the end of the day, we're like, hey, let's not sit around and edit for four days of the week. Let's go out and actually have some fun. So we definitely tried to shoot in a day or two and edit it in a day or two. So we'd have a few days in between each video. So that sort of more than anything else dictated how quickly we did something or what formula we attached to it. Yeah. With the, were you kind of trying to study sort of the cinematic language at all? You know, like what each shot says about that situation, or was it kind of more just Verite getting the shot and then moving on?

I think, you know, I've always, because I was like, I was thinking about this the other day of like, we've been one King Cole, they were at Sundance, people are trying to talk to me about the cinematography. And, you know, I think in general, I'm just a very intuitive shooter. Like I kind of let myself in the moment and on the shoot day sort of see. And I think it's because of how I learned, right? Just two years of traveling all over the world and a bunch of different landscapes and a bunch of different cultures and a bunch of different places where as soon as I arrive, I'm like, okay, how do I get the best shot for this story? And I've storyboarded. I've done shot list.

You know, I've done all that. And then once I got on location, I'm like, oh, no, the plan I had is actually not as good as the one I come up with right here. right um and and so sometimes that's you know once in once or twice in my life that's got me into a little bit of trouble but generally i feel um like i can really sort of find the shots that i want to get on you know in the moments you know once i see kind of all the different places that that i am and what the other characters are moving and have um you know the way that they're moving to the scene and so um i think that's that's one of my strengths um but you know for in terms like this the cinematic language i think it was all subconscious you know like i i want

movies. I love movies. And when you're out shooting and you're shooting that much, you know, just shooting every single day. You know, we do pull it in and you just start realizing like, ooh, this shot like feels good for some reason, right? Like, why does it feel good? And luckily I had, you know, a good friend with me. And so we could sort of discuss those things and kind of come up with not by any means groundbreaking like ways to shoot, right? It's like it's all been done before. It's all been tried. It's all been shown. But sort of discovering it for the first time on your own, right? Sort of as you're teaching yourself how to do the skill,

felt like a big moment, you know, felt like a big discovery, even if we were, you know, the 10,000th person to discover it. Well, it's, you know, it kind of goes something I've said a bunch on this podcast is like you can learn the rules, I suppose. You know, there's a base level of knowledge that every set of photographers should have. But at the end of the day, you end up realizing that like feeling is more important. I mean, unless that feeling is bad, like, but if you, you know, I can't remember who said it, but you get into whatever art form you're in, because you have good taste. I think this

might have been David Lynch. But if you have good taste and you are someone who's aesthetically minded like that, it's better to trust your feelings on a shot because that's the, as my old directing teacher said that film is just getting the audience to feel the emotion when you want them to feel it so if you feel it as the DP they'll feel it as the audience versus you trying to like shoehorn a rule of thirds or whatever the hell you know into the shop oh for sure yeah I think I think that's exactly right and as a documentary DPP especially right when you don't know when someone's going to say something we don't know when the emotion is going to arise is that you just are always ready for that right you're always kind of looking at

for that. And so you, you kind of, to some degree, you know, once you have, you know, sort of the basics down, right, sort of the basic, you know, cinematography, um, tenets that you've learned and the rules and the things that, you know, can, you know, whether it's a low shot or a high shot or an eye level shot or, you know, through, through something, right, or, you're dirtying the frame, whatever it might be. Like, once you sort of have those, and you sort of can naturally do them on the spot, then you're always looking for, you're looking for emotion. You're listening for emotion. You're listening for kind of what's being said and what's most important and then sort of the secondary to that is, you know, okay,

how's the best way to capture this? And, you know, hopefully in some degree, if you do it enough, that part is so natural that it just clicks, right? You're like, oh, no, this person is talking, that person is saying something important. I need to get that now. And when you do that, you can do it in a cinematic way. And I think that's what's kind of, you know, fun about documentary work. You know, doing some narrative work and picture work, it's like also a lot of fun to like, you know, you can do it exactly as you want, which is sort of always the frustrating thing with documentary DP work is, you know, you don't always have the opportunity to do the lighting the way you want it or, you know, shoot in the location you want or shoot from the exact angle

you want. But it does teach you that whatever the person is saying, right, whatever the story is, that is more important than, you know, your idea of a perfect cinematic image, right, because it's all driven by story, it's all driven by character. And then when you do do commercial work or narrative work you always have that in your mind it's right you could do something cool but instead what if you actually just like focused on the emotion and the point of the story um and not draw too much attention right if you don't need to to the cinematography yeah i mean well the other thing too is like having done a decent amount of uh i would i would call it docu style work um i find that like especially you know for like corporate clients or rush jobs

if it's narrative like it's really nice to know that in the back of your head you've got I'll just show up I know where the lights coming from I'll modify it with one or two and then we'll go like it'll look great and the more experienced

I've gotten as a cinematographer the more I've realized like I used to overlight the shit out of things and it's like it really is just like find a window give it a little wrap maybe an edge of good like nine times out of ten that looks the most natural

and looks the most compelling you know for sure yeah I've done a lot of corporate work and with uh different hotel companies and so you're always trying to find you know like doing interviews at a master suite and nine times out of 10 you know I just put them in front of a big window pole the shear so it's just this diffuse light and then just do some negative fill on the other side and you're like that looks perfect right you know you can carry around a bunch of lights and try to light things but it is sort of a um sort of an ironic thing that kind of the more quit me you use sometimes the more fake it looks, right? The more you're trying to make it look realistic or dramatic, the worse

off it gets. So I'm a big component of sort of the one light with some balancer fill or whatever it might be, then rather than, you know, trying to do five different lights and, you know, put all different temperatures and kind of make it look a certain way. But that's probably the documentary DP in me. I love for natural light for sure. Well, and the, I don't know when I discovered it. But just realizing that negative fill was a thing. I think it's because all I learned on 16mm, and they didn't tell us about negative fill because the idea that you would need less light was absurd

when you're, you know, ISO 200 film. And then we get digital and, you know, I guess only recently. Same thing with old DV, you know, it's still, you needed a ton of light. So the idea of removing light, I think, is not new. but certainly in fashion now. And I remember, I don't remember when, but making that discovery of like,

oh, I should just carry like a four by floppy of ultra bounce everywhere if I can fit in my car. And that'll just solve a lot of problems. For sure. Yeah, or even one of those collapsible discs with a, you know,

black side. It's like, clamp that onto a light stand. You're pretty much good to go for a lot of things, especially comes to, to sort of corporate and documentary interviews. Like, that can go a long way if you have that.

Dude, the big one, well, our, I also used to carry, I had to tear it up for a gig, but I used to just carry a bolted duvet team that I'd throw on a C-stand. I'm not like nervous that those fold-out reflectors, like the black is still kind of reflective. Yeah, I don't know many. I want it to, Matt. That's neat, but it's matte and easy. Yeah, but the thing that I find when doing, like you're saying, like having to film in a suite or whatever is. I got this master, what is it, Roscoe, I think, Lee, maybe it's Lee, like master locations gel pack, which are just these little eight and a half by 11 gels that, so I'd go around because you get into, no, none of these corporate people care about the lights and their

ceilings, so none of them match, you know, they're all different color temperatures and I'm just going around with my color meter and like taping up into the ceiling, so they're all the same color. That's amazing. I love it. Yeah, my number one rule when going into any sort of hotelers or corporate setting is like just turn all the lights off pretty much, just turn them all up. And then if I need to like bounce something into a ceiling or yeah, add my own lights or, you know, just diffuse the sunlight coming through a window, that's always better. So it's yeah, pretty much any, any house

or room or place I go in, the first thing I do is, yeah, turn everything off. I don't start from there. The light I just picked up, if we're going to get, nerdy about it. The light I just picked up that I'm very excited about. I was just telling someone else about this different episode. But it's the Intellitech mega light cloth. Have you seen this? Oh, I have not. Hold on this. Yeah, they make them in Boulder, I think, or Denver. And it's a three and a half by four foot collapsible LED blanket. Oh, sweet. Yeah. It folds into a one by one square so you can chuck it in your backpack. The ballast is kind of big, but still, you could put it in a backpack. And then it comes with a frame and diffusion and a grid. And so

you've basically just got a portable window. And so that's just my key light for everything now, is just bring that little jam it up. And it's so big that like no one, it doesn't look like a light. You know, and screw it's with light or anything like that. You know, it just does the work for you. And it's super accurate. oh that's great I love that I just like the color meter guy

yeah yeah I haven't I haven't used them as much as I would like but last year I got the the light bridge cine reflectors

have you ever seen these oh yeah the CRLS man I tried to talk to those guys at Sinegear was it Sinegear Adobe Mac

and just they were very I can tell that they have sold enough that they don't need to talk to anyone totally this too they're pretty sweet

I mean you can stick them on a stand and then just beam a light from anywhere, just, you know, and hit them. It bounces off and just plays the sort of beautiful, soft light. And what's cool about is you can, you know, put it pretty darn close to someone, whereas you put a soft box in part of it would still be, you know, pretty harsh. So in tight situations, you know, you can just bounce a light off these things. It just comes off looking just so soft and pretty with a, oh, it's just great.

But I have not used them as much as I've traveled so much for work. And when you have, you know, they're coming in a giant case, right? So they're like, you know, of all the things you can bring, it's unfortunately something that often gets left behind on plane trips. But if I do anything locally and stuff, I always pull them out. And they're, yeah, they're pretty. But, man, I mean, there's so much cool stuff happening with lighting right now that, you know, there's just so much you can do. Yeah. Well, and thank God the LEDs again.

The other really good LEDs are the Keno flow, not the tubes, but just the LED panels that they have. Again, like super accurate. This is the exact conversation I was just having with a different TV, like two, two quote-unquote episodes ago or yesterday for me. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, the cool thing about the kinos is they have camera luts in them. So if you tell the light what camera you're shooting on, it will not create a color outside of that camera's gamut. Whoa. So you'll never get that every, like overset, you know, you'll like throw the factory let on it on something and then like something will pop too hard or whatever.

they won't do it and I was getting a hundred TLCI out of these lights in certain on certain settings Wow so they're I've been screaming about those for a minute now

because like no one everyone you know obvious aperture obviously we've got the sky panels which unfortunately head panels are not very accurate those don't photometrically are not great but the the key nose are

I'm going to have to message you now with every light purchase I make and just see what your readings are I, uh, so what I did was a few, this was like a couple years ago, but the guy who's developing what was supposed to be a website and then he's like, I'm going to make it nap and then I was like crap, this is too hard, was going to make it a website again. But I went to film tools here in LA and just metered every light on their showroom floor. And then also a bunch of lights that I owned and stuff. And so I wanted to make a, or I'm making, I guess someone

else is making a comparator or at least you could either use it to compare or you could just look it up basically but would just show objectively what the you know readings are for all of these various lights um because i thought that would be useful because you know like a light meter or a color meter is 1800 yeah obviously the readings are going to be they're going to differ between each unit situation or whatever but a general idea of like oh crap you know these like the old apertures used to be awful now they're but like the original ones were terrible go docs makes a decent or um nanlight actually there's stuff man light yeah i've got some nanlights i like nanlight nanley and some of the new apertures

yeah i just have my go-to kit um you know obviously affordability is awesome but also you know it's easy to easily to port them around and and you know just having nice even just the app um can actually out of some of these guys have you guys have you know you're have is just so useful once you, like, put a light up and you're like, I don't want to bring it back down to change color temp or, you know, change, uh, output. And so just having that is, you know, then a lot of ways that kind of speed, it's so much more useful to be than like an extra, you know, one or two score on like a CRI or something, right? So, um, I'm always, I'm always looking for that kind of stuff. Um, but some of the new name lights, especially, I'm definitely

interested in trying some of those out. Yeah. The, uh, the, the one time I use is a few years ago, but when I was finally introduced to wireless DMX, I was like, why can't we do this with everything in an aperture? It was like, well, you can. Yeah, you don't own any aperture. I own those MCs, but like, yeah, like, yeah, I can exist. I just want, I just want more lights to have the X, Y coordinates. Because again, if you have a color meter, right, like on the, on the kinos, like, if corporate interview, whatever, or really, I keep saying corporate interview, but this, this applies to any time you're trying to match a light. Like, if you're characters sitting in an environment and you're modifying existing lights or even you're on a

stage and you've got a film light that you're using like a m18 whatever the hell you just meter it get the x y plug in into the keynote and it gives you the exact same light and it's just so valuable and saves so much time of thing oh it's totally there was just one light it was just announced that have and it has that uh sort of xy um i can't remember what it was was one of the new nam lights that was just announced like last month I'll have to look that look that one up but I think there is only you can you can sort of just change either the magenta fur green shift or anything like that just kind of just enough to match something else so yeah that's that's the other one is without that system

kind of like crossing your eyes and fudging them so it so you can see two lights and and like adjust the yeah I don't be like that's that seems close okay moving Yeah, it's close enough, yeah. That's great. Were you in Utah for Sundance? I was, yeah. So our Lovita film premiered at Sundance, and so we premiered on this past Mondays,

but we got there on Thursday. So yeah, we were there for about 10 days. Jeez. I've yet to go to it. How was that experience for you? It was fun. You know, I've never been, actually. My wife, who's the director of the film that we worked on,

She's been once before, but this is the first time we've had a film at Sundance. And so it was just an awesome experience. I mean, I know they've been online the last two years. So this is the first in-person Sundance in three years. And so you can just kind of tell everyone's jazz to be together watching movies and, you know, have theater school. And it's just cool to go to a film festival where, you know, you have five screens and, you know, two or three of them are sold out. And, you know, there's also really well attended. And you go to other premieres and, you know, there's a lot of people in the audience, right?

You never, like, go to a screening no matter what time of day or what category it's in, where there isn't somebody, you know, a pretty good amount of people in the audience, you know, excited to watch that film. So to be in that environment, you know, just movie lovers and artists is just really, really exciting. Yeah. I also, I mean, I was in Colorado for December and January, and we were getting dumped on left, right, and set. or was it pretty uh are you do ski at all were you able to kind of hit up for a second i ski a little bit but i did not get on the slopes at all which was a bummer because nobody was

on them i guess sundance week is like dd time time to ski because like the skiers don't come because it's can't be crazy because all the sun dancers and then no sun dancers don't don't ski so it would have been a perfect time but oh man it's no you'd wait it up and there'd be six more inches on the ground every day like you could sweep off your porch and then wake up the next morning there's six more inches just the softest powder i've ever seen in my life So it would have been nice to ski, but that didn't make it on the slopes, unfortunately. I do eventually want to go to something like that because I can only imagine the sort of creative energy that you get from being around. Like Adobe's got a cool event called Adobe Max that's mostly aimed at designers and photographers and whatnot.

But there is like a little bit of premiere in there. I look, you know, but it's definitely not cinematography at all. But even going there to cover it for Pro Video Coalition, like, I get jazzed just by being around other, you know, creatives and stuff like that. I can't imagine something like Sundance was, uh, what leaving there just being like, I got to go make stuff. Yeah. No, totally. It does. It's like, uh, as you leave, like, man, just, I mean, we just released this and we just premiered it.

It's got a long road of, you know, chill festivals and fine distributor and all that. ahead of it, but, you know, I'm just like, oh man, I can't wait to go out and like make something else, you know, to just, because it's just like having that audience is just so special. You know, we've made a couple films that have done well in the past, but, you know, when they go almost straight to streaming platforms or have a very short festival run and straight to the streaming platform, you don't really have that, right? You can look online and look at reviews and, you know, see people say nice things on Twitter, but that's just completely different than having 300 people sit in your audience and watch your film, right, for the first

time. Like, there's just no, there is no substitute for just a really great theater experience. And that actually one really fun, one thing that it, Sundance was, I talked to the Canon reps there for about an hour, hour and a half about, so I used Canon cameras on the film that we just shot. You know, just talking about them about the cameras and, and the design and kind of what I was hoping to see in future models. So, yeah, just having, you know, being from Knoxville, Tennessee, you know, it's not like Elliott or New York where you can go down to, rental shops or you know big stores and actually see all the all the new stuff so it's like oh it's just nice and like all the new lenses irbank yeah exactly it was a holy showroom and um

so that that was a lot of fun as well it's just you know having that energy and and sort of the tech side of it um present at sundance as well yeah the uh that brings up two questions in my head i guess i'll go with the tech one first uh i i have a c 500 mark two uh and uh love it but I have some thoughts what would you like to see in a potential revision you know I well what did you shoot 500 or 300

we use the 300 mark three and then the C70 C70 is so good the valence proposition on the C70 is nuts it is nuts and they just keep updating the firmware over and over again to you know add raw on SD cards

which is amazing and then I mean they got new auto focus a new intra-frame codec they just released that as a smaller bit rate like just a lot of stuff that especially for owner operators is just so nice but yeah we use the the c300 the c70 mostly because you know they have the same exact sensor they have mostly the same codex uh at least the ones we shot in which was you know the 4k 10 bit 422 um and either obviously wildly different cameras right so you can use them in different scenarios so whether it was you know c70 obviously can fly in a gimbal very easy or if you need to hike into the woods for a while, it's easier to throw in a backpack and take

with you. So, yeah, those are the two cameras we used. And I think, I mean, I love the C70. I think my big sort of designing switch would be, it's already sort of a small box. I'm just kind of looking over here, so I'm looking at it, but it's already sort of a small box. But, you know, I would almost like this back screen is kind of a weird position for a cinema camera, right? It's like, it's trying to be like a DSLR. It's a little too big for that. You can't really hold it out in front of you for that long of a time. And so I would just, you know, close off that back, throw a V-Mail diet and then almost make it like a box and stick the screen off the handle, you know, like the C-300. But other than that, you know, I think that thing is pretty, pretty amazing for the size and the price

and what it can do. The funny thing about this. So I think that the C-500 and the C-300, you know, Mark 2, Mark 3 are like basically perfect cameras. And I keep saying like, man, I wish the C-70 just had like an SDI port. And then I'm like, well, if it's like that and one other thing, now it's just a C-300. Yeah. That's true. I think it's pretty much all. I mean, yeah, it's pretty much all is missing is an SDI port, more or less.

And the screen, the higher bit rate raw. Yeah, and the nicer screens do. But I don't know. I mean, yeah, the C-70 with like a full-frame sensor on that would be awesome. I would love that. But I'm also not crazy about the full-frame craze. I only say that because all the lenses they make for these cinema cameras now are full-frame lenses. So it would be nice to actually use the focal links that they give you rather than sort of a slightly altered version of that.

But I agreed. I mean, I think the C-300 and C-500 as well. I haven't used it too much, but thinking about snagging that for a feature I'm shooting in April. So I'm hoping to do potentially little anamorphic work on that. And the C-Sats, that's nice thing with the-c couldn't pull it off. Yeah. Yeah, the, the animorphic on full frame looks really nice. And in Texas, I did like a little, what do you call it?

Not a demo. What do you call it when you make a spot for free for yourself? Speck. Oh, yeah. I did a spec. I did a spec ad. And, yeah, we used the Atlas Animorphics on the C-500. And that just insane, even for such like the Orion set?

Yeah, the Silver Series. They let me borrow the silvers. I actually got to see the Mercuries because I'm like kind of friends with Dan Cains. He was the guy who made Atlas. He was actually in the podcast two years ago. So we were at NAB and he was like, hey, come here. And he like took us into this like secret room that they had at NAB and showed us the new mercuries, which were like that big.

Flair home. Amazing. I do have two pre-orders in for the, was it the 42 and the 70? I've found strange focal lengths. Like a 36 of 42 and a, is it a 70, 75, something like that. Something like that. Yeah. So I'm hoping to use those on the feature I'm shooting.

But if not, maybe I'll snag some Orion's. But the Orion's cover the C-500. Some of them. Yeah. It's really, I mean, the thing with the full frame, so I'm actually, I was, a, I wouldn't say I was poo-pooing full frame, but I was, I, let me, be delicate. I don't think, I don't by any stretch think full frame matters, quote unquote. Right.

If fully, you know, Alexis super 35, the new Alexis super 35, C300 mark three, super 35. But the added flexibility of full frame is nice. And also, I did. a test between the 500 and the 300 and while the 300 has a lower noise floor, because of the added physical real estate of the larger sensor, the noise is smaller. So when you ratchet up the ISO, it's more easily corrected out. It looks more like thongrain on the 500 than the 300. And so I found that to be, I don't know if that's worth $5,000.

Well, yeah, it's certainly like if you're holding the two, you know, objectively looking at the footage, you're like, I can do more. The image looks sharper and you can do more with it when you crank the ISO on the 500. Plus, obviously, the anamorphic looks nice and stuff. And then also you can, you know, if you're shooting primes, just throw it down to Super 35 mode. And now you got, you know, Twix or whatever you want to call. Totally. I mean, that's, that is a huge, a huge help, especially in doc stuff. I mean, the beauty of, you know, a full frame sensor is that everyone makes it 24 to 70, 28, right? And like that is such a useful lens in documentary. Like, as much as we all love to, like, shoot on beautiful primes instead of a primes, a lot of situations just, you know, it's better to get the shot at 90% of the quality than kind of miss the shot at 100% quality, right? And, and so, you know, on Ice Super 35, that suddenly, like becomes not quite wide enough, right?

And so that's why sort of having a full frame option is just so nice on docked stuff. So the point where like I've used like a Panasonic S.Y.H on quite a few stuff just because it's just so nice to have that range with a full frame sensor. And, you know, what a 2.8, you can still, you know, kind of get that subject separation that you would get with a faster prime where it obviously on a Super 35,

it just comes a little bit more difficult, but still obviously very possible. Yeah. the um oh but what i was going to say about the the coverage thing is like i found that pretty much every quote unquote super 35 lens above 20 millimeters pretty much covers um yeah like my sigma 18 to 35 i can use from 20 to 35 i've got all these tookina cinema zooms here that all cover for the most part the full like range from like 11 to 135 I think um the orions the orions were weird because there was like one in the middle that didn't cover but everything else did like the wides

covered and then there was like a 24 or something that didn't and then I used their 21 that thing was weird dude and that's 21 on full frame look I mean I could practically see my shoulders like I don't see some footage of that I'm just like man I can't think of anything I'd shoot where I would use that but I kind of want to figure something out well the spec we shot we were shooting in a bathroom so I was sitting on the sink and looking at someone's face you know actually two people's faces because we could stage them

you know and it worked great for that but the anamorphic world so crazy it's just like so much new stuff has come out in the last couple of years that's you know it's hard to tell kind of you know whereas there's a few on those the cheaper side that I don't think I would use for anything you know that really really really cared about but even Lawa I've always lit up la Wawa lenses the Lawa yeah I think so uh those yeah yeah what those those new like they have the new proteus anamorphics that look pretty sweet

they're kind of in that same price ballpark is as the mercurries obviously quite a bit cheaper than the Orion's at a two-time squeeze so it's a pretty pretty, yeah, going on. And even the tests I've seen from the 1.3, 3, 3 Viltroxes, look beautiful. And they're kind of that sweet spot. You know, I kind of always go back and forth. You know, I know, like the deacons of the world,

they're just like, you know, only use spherical lenses and not animorphics, right? And, you know, I'm like, oh, I can actually like the, you know, vintage look or the animorphic look. But then every time I'm using it, I'm like, ooh, I wish this was more, like, clinical. It's weird. So I can't decide if I am, you know, that person. who might be in the deacon's camp where I was like I just want my image to not be drawing attention to itself too much right I wanted to to just you know focus on whatever it is that I'm shooting

and those Viltrax is they're sort of like they have a little bit of the anamorphicness to them but they're really subtle and like it's still kind of adds a sort of a just a beautiful sharpness that I did not expect from such anamorphic lens that's full frame and under $3,000 so I'm going to try them out but they're hard to find I had to come to terms of the fact that I do sometimes I am a basic bitch and I do just like fudgy anamorphics like I've got the anamorphics adapter from lettuce 35 and

oh yeah yeah yeah it just it you know you put the cool thing so I got the I don't have it built out right now but on my C500 I got the 40 millimeter cannon pancake and then just that animorph X adapter so it's this small setup right

it's only that big but I have anamorphic auto focus anamorphic so okay right and it's just kind of cool but the adapter's not like optically amazing so it really does lodge everything up and I'm like that but that looks cool like I yeah I like it totally totally I mean for so in the film that we just prepared at sundance in cold there's sort of a magical realism side right it's it's kind of part documentary part fable and for that magical realism side you know we wanted the image to look different than everything else right like right a lot

the film is sort of in a world that is, you know, very sort of observational. Like, this is how things are. This is how things have been for 40 years, right? So everything in that world is locked down. It's on sort of perfect spherical lenses, right? Sharp corner to corner. It's just like, here's the world as you see it. And we just sort of let people move throughout the frame, but we ourselves are just observers.

And then sort of the other side of the film is sort of this magical realism elements that is imagining what could be. So the film's about the region of Appalachia and Central Appalachia and Coal Country. And so we're sort of imagining like what is, who are we beyond coal, right? Who are we as a community, as a region, you know, when the king is no longer around. And so for those scenes and that section, we wanted something that had, you know, a little bit of a magical feel to it. So I tested a bunch of vintage lenses, kind of the usual suspects. Like, I love that old contact Zice, you know, 50 millimeter 1.4, or the Hollywood, the F2, 28. And I'd use those in a bunch of projects in the past.

And then, of course, the Helios 44. But actually, see, that's, that one's too much for me. Like, I don't like it. I love it, but I would never use it. Yeah. No, exactly. I did it. I was like, I bought it and nothing sitting on myself, but it was $40, but it was sitting on

myself for about six years and using a fun, just a couple, just for fun things. But we ended up landing on a Voigtlander Heliar Classic, which is a really new leg. It only came out like two years ago. They make nice lenses. They make really nice lenses. But this one is strange because they specifically made it to sort of be a modern Helios, I think. And so it has sort of just really interesting, like bubbly bouquet, but it's not overwhelming.

But then it doesn't have all the sort of, you know, problems that a lot of vintage lenses do, right? Whether it's chromatic aberration or just really hazy or it gets, you know, blown out. or washed out. And so it's just like, I mean, it's just a beautiful, beautiful lens that just adds this sort of kind of weird magicalness to it, but still like it's sharp and especially in the middle,

just sharp and pretty and, you know, just kind of renders a really, really cool images. So it's always fun kind of testing, testing different lenses like that. Yeah, that makes me think of a few questions. But the, oh, and then there's that one from before.

I'll remember them all. I'm, you know, three years in the podcast. I'm good at remembering. man that first year was a lot of all show me um in it on top of the lens choice for the sort of magical realism sections were you doing anything with the lighting or any kind of production design or anything like that or were you just kind of still trying to stay within that more naturalistic look well since most of the the magical realism elements are all they're all outdoors I think almost 100% hold on playing the movie back from

my mind. But yeah, so most of them are all outside. And so we were working with a lot of natural light. And, you know, as you know, all the cinematographers know, kind of listen to this podcast is great cinematography is kind of first and foremost great light. And then it's, and that it's production design, right? Or just location, right? If you, if you're in a really, really nice location, it's generally easier to get pretty images. You know, I did my travel dock series in Iceland for three weeks. One time, I was like, man, the sun sinks just hang so low along the horizon that it's impossible to not get a pretty image. The light's always soft. It's always good. And you just need to figure out, you know, where to position yourself with your subject to

maximize that. And so that's kind of what I really focused on is like, you know, I'm from West Virginia. And my wife's from West Virginia. We spent most of our lives in Appalachia, you know, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky. And so we just knew sort of all these different locations. And if we didn't, we'd ask, you know, our friends or, you know, our associate producer who lives in West Virginia, like, you know, where can we get something like this, right? Where can we get a force that is just all moths on the ground and big pines and all these things? And so it was really about, you know, finding great locations to sort of heighten the, the magical realism elements along with the lensing, along with, you know, the camera movements and along with all the other, all the other different

things that, you know, make a great image and sort of evoke that feeling sound design, I imagine. Oh, man. This film, so our post sound supervisor was Alex Furman, who was the post supervisor, or did some of the sound. I'm not sure if she was officially the post supervisor, but she was one of the sound designers on everything everywhere all at once, which is maybe the best sound design movie of the last decade. So, yeah, man, we would all. out on the sound design for this film. It's just a completely sort of a transportive experience.

And that's why it's so cool to have people watch it in theater. It's like, we wanted to make it visually like grander and bigger than anything we've done before. We wanted to just stown. Like, you just want to be enveloped by this film. And one person, you know, commented, or a couple people commented, like,

that was more of an experience than a film. And we're like, oh, amazing. That's exactly kind of, yeah, kind of what we were looking for is like, it's just went to experience. you know, 80 minutes of, you know, this place and this story. Yeah. I actually interviewed Larkin Seibel for the podcast, the DP of everything everywhere all at once.

But it's funny because I interviewed him before the movie had come out. And I got to see it early. And so he and I were just kind of chatting like, well, you know, hopefully people like it. We'll see what it does. And if it's like $70 million comes out of one of the biggest. the year. Well, and every he I've talked to since has brought it up at least

once, so it's like, it's I got to get him back on and hopefully he'll hopefully he'll come back on. Oh, he totally said. Yeah. That movie's so good. I love it. 11 Academy Awards casual. No big deal. I did want to ask because

you had mentioned about you know, what's Appalachian going to do when coal leaves. I was wondering is coal kind of the maybe not the but is coal the main factor of keeping that community locked in place culturally

because it does even from that little like trailer you showed me that you know the football team is tapping a lump of coal and stuff like it's odd to me that an energy resource is so central to the identity of an area for sure

and the identity really I think comes from or two factors. The first big one is it's jobs, right? So it's how people make a living. And it's a tough place to live, especially where most of the coal is extracted is like you are sort of deep in the, you know, the hollers and deep in the mountains. And so if you weren't going there to mine coal, there's just no reason for humans to go there, right? Like it was, it was, you know, hunting ground for the Native Americans before, you know, we arrived. And so as Europeans and people we're trying to extract coal. And so, you know, it's not a place that's easy to, like, build towns and build cities.

It's just, you know, it's just, even to this day, a lot of the main coal towns that were sort of some of the richest towns in the East Coast in the 30s and 40s don't have highways to them just because it's too difficult and too expensive to do. And so as the coal industry sort of bottoms out, you know, I think, you know, back in its peak in the 40s, you know, 140,000 people worked in the coal industry in West Virginia. Now it's 12,000. I mean, it's 90% of the jobs

have evaporated for lots of factors, mostly automation, right? You've used machines to do the jobs that lots of people used to do. But the sort of political side and the cultural side of coal is still sort of the main pride of the region of the area.

And I think that's the hardest thing to move past is, you know, once you've become defined as this one thing, right? Like Appalachia's value is totally wrapped up in how much coal can you provide for the rest of the nation, right? It's, you know, it was used to fight wars. It was used to build the cities. It was used to make steel. It was, you know, all these things that people found a lot of pride in as they should, right? And then as it's sort of the public opinion on coal has turned, right? I think a lot of people in the region feel a little slighted, right? It's like we did this extremely dangerous and tough job that's, I mean, honestly, it's just a, you know, you're underground for 10 or 12 hours a day, right?

It's not like a job that, other than the fact that pays really, really well, especially for Appalachia, it's no job that every human, any human really wants or should partake in, right? It's just not how we're meant to live underground. So I think that has sort of contributed to the cultural hold of coal, right? It's like it's a community thing. A lot people talk about it as a brotherhood, you know, as something that's dangerous. You know, it's had a very sort of almost similar terms of like the military, whereas because it's so difficult, because it's sort of almost looked down upon in a lot of ways,

it actually binds, bonds people together. And then that's sort of obviously seeped into the politics. It's steeped into, you know, different areas of the community. And at the same time, there's this other side of Appalachia that is, you know, about storytellers and music and you know all these different you know art forms um you know some of the greatest musicians are just people you've never heard of sitting on their porch playing amazing you know banjo and fiddle and guitar and all those different instruments so you know it's it's sort of this weird dichotomy between the two right it's and i think there's there's some some tension um

at least it seems like it from like a from a outsider standpoint but ultimately it's the same place and the same people and the and sort of the same uh individualistic and self-reliance um nature of the people who live there and grew up there and have been there a very very long time yeah i always wonder when stuff like that um happens to where like in this case automation taking over the majority of the jobs in a i guess it's in my opinion, my personal opinion, in a just society, automation frees up people to pursue more human things. You know, we, we were not born to work. We were born to create. I think isn't necessarily a controversial stance. But instead, automation either makes people destitute

or makes people work even harder. I like the one phrase I've heard a lot is like, oh, you know, if a factory makes 100 pins an hour with 20 people and they get a machine that makes 200 pins an hour, they just make those people sit around, you know, instead of taking half the day off,

they're there the whole day and they're going to surplus of pins. Yep. Because we're so tied, at least in this country, but certainly many Western countries, to the idea of the work being who you are. I know there's plenty of people who, and especially older generations,

you're about my age. I'm sure you've heard like, oh, you know, you've got to be loyal to your company because they're going to take care of you and we know better now. But, you know,

that may have been a truth. I think for my father, definitely was. For my wife's father, it was. But I think what's kind of interested about it is the automation, actually does

it does provide I think the exact term you use but it does provide a sort of an easier life or more chances for humans to create rather than work, right? It's just not the people who are doing the work before, right? It's like the automation sort of

obviously eliminates those jobs right, for talking about coal mining, whether it's the automation of mining coal is like it takes those jobs and it's not those people necessarily who now have the free time to create and so that's sort of the unjust nature, right? It's to some degree.

And I'm not getting paid to create. Right. And some degree, like, I mean, if you look at my wife, right, her father was a coal miner, her grandpa's a coal miner, or her great grandpa was a coal miner, right? And because they did those jobs, but now through automation, like that there's not as many of those jobs, you know, there obviously are

women in the mine is not a ton, but, you know, instead she's a filmmaker, right? She's the one who's sort of benefiting from, you know, the sort of struggles of of the past generations. And so I think that's a tough part right is the automation obviously creates generally wealth on a larger scale right of whether it's on the coasts and the cities or for creators in different locations but it doesn't necessarily

happen for the people in the community that they have lost their jobs and Appalach is a great example of that there's a lie in our film that I think it was in the 1960s West Virginia was the 12th richest country in terms of things just wealth created in the country but it's been 49th or 50th in terms of actual on-the-ground living conditions because, you know, all the wealth that the state created went other places, right? It went out of state. It went to other people. And so that's, I think that's, you know, it's tough to see people sort of hold on to that. And it's like, no, you can be, we can be something else, but we have to let go of this past, right? We have to let go of this identity

that we're nothing without coal because we can be other things, but we have to imagine what that could be in order to move past and or move on yeah i mean the the creative in me kind of goes like and i'm an idiot but like you know you you can romanticize that history you know it's it's a relatively uh i don't know everything but it if for my limited knowledge it is a relatively unproblematic thing that you could uh celebrate about your your cultures you know your your your your area's history as opposed to you know slatery and uh you know and you can romanticize that and be really cool about it and move on you don't have to be a part of like lineages don't go forever for a reason otherwise like some people might be against certain levels of progress but

no progress is uh stagnation and i don't think stagnation has a good definition anywhere yeah no totally and i think that's that's really the what we're trying to get a crops in the film is, like, we can be proud of this and still want better for the future. And I think it's kind of one of the, it's definitely the most fun film I've ever been a part of because visuals were so important in telling that story, right? Like, I've shot quite a few documentaries where it's just like, just get the shot, just get the story, make sure you don't miss it, you know, and this, you know, you can't do it, then someone else will find someone else who can't, right, more or less, where this just felt so much like,

you know, especially for Elaine, she was the only person who could make this specific film, which is pretty exciting. And then I kind of in turn, feel like I was one of the only few people who could shoot this film and shoot it in the way that we did. And so that made it a lot of fun because that's the kind of story we want to tell, right? It was you could be sort of proud of your past and still move on. And then you look at some places that are, you know, tied to coal country, like the Rust Belt, right? Like the steel country is like they have sort of, you know,

And, you know, Pittsburgh's like a great example of a city that, you know, had that giant fallout in the 70s and 80s and had to come to terms of the fact, like, we need to be something else. And now, you know, Pittsburgh's growing and is unbelievable. And it's got tech and healthcare and all and universities and all these different things that they've really sort of leaned on and, you know, been able to move past. But, you know, again, that all comes back to. Yeah, I'll come back to, yeah, exactly. Sydney Crosse and sweet, sweet hockey. And sometimes it comes back. the geography, you know. It's a town that's right on a giant river and has a, you know, a lot going for it in that way, whereas in central Appalachian, it's so difficult to get in and out of, you know, it's hard to sort of be reborn in a place that people can't visit or people can't find or have no reason to in a lot of ways. Other than just, you know, come, come visit for its beauty because that's an unbelievably beautiful place. Yeah. Well, and the thing that I'm kind of stoked for you guys about is it does seem like a it's not a downer of a dock you know i i could see how easily this could be like a oh this could be a sadness doc and it seems very uh joyful in a way which is cool

uh 100% yeah actually at sundance we came out of a few screens and we're just like how nice is it that like we made a film that's hopeful and that people are like smiling as they leave right i mean the previous two big films that my wife and i made together were both about the opioid crisis and though they were films about people who are trying to help and make change, it's still, you know, just such a heavy, heavy topic. And that takes a toll on you for doing that for three years of a filmmaker, but also it's, you know, you're showing to audiences because it's important and you want, you know, what people to sort of connect to the characters that you filmed.

But at the same time, no, having a film that, that is joyful in a lot of ways. And, like, it's about hope and imagination and about the future, you know, is a lot of fun, a lot of fun. The, uh, this perfect, uh, lineage to that earlier question I was going to ask and then I'll, uh, you know, let you get out of here in a couple more questions. But, uh, going to, I know that, um, going to festivals, and I don't think a lot of people know this if they're starting, just getting into filmmaking, but like going to festivals is where your stuff gets picked up. It's not promoting it online. It's not having a big Twitter or Instagram following. It's literally showing it any festival, let alone Sundance. And so I'm wondering with your experience, because you actually have won some, or at least been nominated for some pretty intense awards, the Academy Award, if I'm not mistaken, at least one. Nominated for an Academy Award and then I've won two Emmys, which is pretty exciting. They can fucking go, bud. But what is the sort of, I suppose, for lack of a better term, networking experience at a Sundance versus Ohio Film Festival, you know, whatever?

ever, just like one of these kind of smaller ones that are still incredibly valuable to go to. I think my buddy's doc who got picked up by MSNBC nominated for an Emmy, I think it got seen that. I think it was Ohio. Like it was one of those small, you know, Santa Barbara, something like that where you still, those opportunities are still there, but I imagine Sundance is a different level of Erson walking up to you. Yeah. No, for sure. I mean, I guess one of the cooler things So at Sundance's, you know, I had our third or fourth screening, you know, probably in the smaller theaters. It was like 8.30 in the morning.

I was like, okay, this is probably going to be our least well attended screening. And it was, but it was, you know, still maybe three or fours full in a small theater. But afterward, a couple people from Zeiss walked up to me and said, wow, it was really pretty. And I'm glad you use Zyp3s on, you know, some of your film. And I was like, oh, so it's, you know, it's just like people like that, right? Like the Canon reps are there, you know, the Zeiss reps are there. And then obviously just the amount of filmmakers that are there who have a chance to see your film. You know, there's filmmakers who I incredibly admire and love their work in the dots space that were at our screenings, you know.

And just, you know, it's just, I don't think you can beat that type of networking, if you will, right? It's like now there's eight, nine, ten directors who had films at Sundance who have seen my work on the big screen, right? You just, you can't, there's no substitute for that. So I think that alone is exciting. But, and then I think at the same time, like any other film festival has that same possibility, right? It's like it's, you know, at Sundance, obviously it's Sundance filmmakers. But if it's Atlanta or Cleveland or Nashville, it's like it's still filmmakers who are making great work. you know, I've, I've made films that have gone over 40 on the Sundance or on the film festival

circuit, right? It's like 40 rejections on film freeway or something. So like I know that it's not easy to get into any specific film festival. And so I think every, every film festival is a chance to, you know, meet people and potentially collaborate with folks and find other people that, you know, you can get your workout too. So, but yeah, Sundance is definitely kind of one of those one of those next levels. Yeah. Yeah, that was a hard kind of lesson to learn when I was a bit younger of like, all this effort I put into like, well, I shouldn't even say I put effort into it.

But me and a bunch of my friends all had the same, you know, kind of like late millennial idea that like, oh, you'll be seen. And it's like, no, you, it's still film festivals. I went to a producing class when I was very young. And the guy was like telling us about, I don't know if they do this anymore. more but basically these these distributors would like rent out hotels and they would clear out all the beds out of all the rooms and then you would just go from like room to room showing your short or whatever and then they'd buy it or not and it was like a whole fish market for for

like speed day and yeah for fel yeah for distributors and I guess they don't do that anymore but in my head I was like oh that's old we don't do that we're on the internet now it's like nope festivals you're doing them yeah keep doing it's true I mean yeah the internet it's like where content goes to die in a lot of ways. Yeah. That's not this podcast. Not this podcast. No, this one lives.

That one lives on. Yeah. You know, I've had a lot of fun. We're a little oversaw. I'll let you go. But I end the podcast with the same three questions. Gotcha. So the first one, and this is, I'm starting here because I've learned that this one invokes a long pause.

a lot of people ask what the best piece of advice they ever got was and I found the answer is always like stick to it so I want to know what the worst advice you ever got was

that's a good question well it wasn't actually advice I received but I was in the same car of someone else giving it so I'll do that I was working on I won't name what

because then that person listens if I figured out it was them but I was working on a show I've only ever aced one show in my life, and it was this show. The DPs, they were great. Then there were some PAs, and one of the PAs asked, like, oh, I want to be a D.P. Like, how do I, how do I become a D.P? How do I get to do what you all do?

And the D.P., you know, a generation, half generation, you know, above me. Kind of went through the very standards, like, oh, you know, try to get, like, a job at a rental house and work there for four or five years, like, learn all the equipment. And then, you know, try to become an AC on smaller level things. And then, you know, work your way up through the ladder. and well I think that's great advice and I think everyone just gives me advice of whatever they did right like that right advice I was like

you know this was like six years after I picked up a camera you know just had finished two Netflix films as the DP it was working on another so I'm kind of like listening to this guy like man that's like 10 12 years of work to get to like you know well this this point where you know

and not even probably where that person who's giving the advice is now right that's probably 20 or 25 years down the land so I would say you know there's the old models of sort of working your way up through the system and then there is the new way of teaching yourself and just figuring it out right and just doing your own thing right there's no substitute to making your own work um because it's the only thing you specifically can uniquely do um and so i would just say yes it's you know if you're trying to be a great dp just shoot shoot shoot and make as much work and complete the work right just shooting isn't um you know isn't enough you have to

actually have completed work right like all the pretty shots that I really, really love in King Cole or nothing without the completed film in a story, you know, that tells a story and actually functions as a film. So I would say, yeah, that was probably the worst advice I've heard given was, you know, sort of work, basically work your way up the corporate ladder of the film industry for 25 years. And then maybe you could be a DP where I'd be like, I just grab a camera and start shoot, just start shooting. When your back's blown out, that's when you can find you're simple enough.

Exactly. with you uh second question uh you are um programming a double feature with king cole what's the other film oh someone actually said this the other day um someone stole my idea but someone stole your idea actually but but i actually i've not seen the film they said you shouldn't screw with this one it was our color it's actually a few weeks ago they made a film about uh diamonds i believe in afa and there's similar similar things but um i would say I I would probably choose Bombay Beach by Amma Harrell. I love that movie.

It had sort of a similar kind of just winziness to it. I mean, King Cole might be a little more serious, but Bombay Beach has a little bit of that sort of heaviness mixed with reality, mixed with magical realism, mixed with whimsy. And so I think that would be a pretty nice pairing and very different parts of the country, right? ones in the deserts of, I believe, California, but it'd be in somewhere else in the, in the southwest. And then obviously central Appalachos, very opposite of the desert. And so, yeah, I think that'd be a pretty good pairing. That's a great one. Not super long, you know, not like three-hour

movies back to back. It's like, we love a 90-minute film. Oh, they were a 78 minutes perfect. They're like, oh, man, 78 minutes perfect for a dog. Oh, that's lovely. Awesome. I was the last night, or not last night, like two nights ago, I was like, you know what, I gave, I didn't give Batman, what was the last Batman food, not the Batman, but, um, Dark Night returns or whatever. Yeah, dark dark dark eyes is. Yeah. I was like, I didn't give that one a fair shake because everyone said it's their favorite now. And I'm like, all right, I'll watch this again. And I turn it on it at the little like progress bar pops up. And it says like, two 41. And I went, oh, come on. And I'm like, nope, I'm out. damn it never mind I started this

always people are saying that's the best one in retrospect I need to go and rewatch that then because obviously it's the dark night

right I will say now having rewatched it I get why people say that now because having distance from just the absolute white hot fervor

of the dark night makes the dark night rises better like you just watch it for what it is versus not being the Joker. You know, not being... Perfect.

Okay, yeah. All right, yeah. You do have to give it three hours. Yeah, that's true. And Michael Kane obviously just fucking destroys you by the end of it. So it's good. Everyone's good. Oh, yeah.

But, okay, so final question. I asked this one of all the documentarians. What is your shoe recommendation? Shoe recommendation. Is all the documentaries, we stand it all day? this is actually funny because my wife voice says don't ask current about shoes yes so I'm one of those like

I'm one of those like a hard for minimalist guys actually I'm pretty I'm pretty anti-shoe in general so anything with padding I feel like just does board damage then it does then it helps so I'm a vivable barefoot or zero shoe's guy there go but to be fair

if I'm doing something specific like, you know, gimbal work or something that needs a little bit of padding. I'll get something with a little extra. But I have to sound quite sound it yet. But I would say probably the thing I wear most often are go-ruck boots because they still have, yeah, not too much padding. And they don't have, you know, they're not zero drop from back to front. But, you know, they're fairly close.

So, but yeah, don't get me on the shoes and the evils of shoes. Well, you also look like if I go back to me, so that'll work for you. Yeah, if people and you go barefoot, I would. Fair enough. I mean, most people are like blunt stones or hokas, but recently I've started to get new answers. You know, some Adidas over here and someone hanged to wear. So we'll just, I, but my, the conceit is by the end of this season, I'm going to create a list of all the shoes that have been suggested. And just host them alone.

Those cameras used and those shoes were. Yeah. Well, you can probably tack one for minimalist shoes and or barefoot, which is where I'll be. I'm the anti-hoka. Yeah, yeah.

We'll just put an asterisk and it's like, it's just him. It's just this guy, yeah. Well, thanks so much for spending the time with me, man. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, I appreciate on the film. Thank you so much, Seth.

Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. 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-Art Mapbox logo was

designed by Nate Truax of Truax 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.