Frame & Reference Podcast - 9: “Searchers” DPs Daniel Claridge & Martin Dicicco

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast Kenny talks with cinematographers Daniel Claridge & Martin Dicicco about the documentary "Searchers." To learn more about Daniel & Martin, check out their IMDb pages below: Daniel Claridge IMDb Martin Dicicco IMDb Liking the podcast? Leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app! Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry.

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we've got Daniel Clarege and Martin DeSico of Searchers, a recent documentary that was just shown at Sundance as part of our Sundance series of interviews. This is an interesting documentary because it's not necessarily, I wouldn't call it a traditional documentary. Essentially, you as the viewer are taken on a ride of multiple people going through people's dating profiles, online dating profiles. And it's fascinating. I mean, it just pulls you right in immediately. Yeah, it's just a very interesting concept and interesting execution.

and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So if you have the opportunity, please seek it out. It's a great film. And in this talk, we discuss the making of it. We talk about, you know, doing it the hard way, the grumpy man good old days and stuff like that. And, yeah, it's just really fun, interesting conversation that I think you'll enjoy as much as I had having it.

That's not good English. Anyway, like I always say, to keep these intro short. So without further ado, here is Daniel Clarege and Martin DeSico. So thank you so much for doing frame and reference. I really appreciate it. I was able to watch the documentary last night. And I can't say I've seen something like this. Where did you come up with this concept? Because the whole film is very interlinked, like the editing, the audio, the graphic. Like, it's all kind of one cohesive, uh, image. So where did that, where did that come from?

We knew from the beginning that, uh, you know, we, we wanted to use like the, the interotron thing. We wanted the direct eye line on the lens because we were making a film, we were exploring the idea of making a film about this intimate subject, which is like dating and specifically sort of online dating. Yeah. And so, you know, so the final form it took really emerged out of a process of experimentation. So we had the essential elements. We knew we wanted what you're calling sort of the Errol Morris kind of Interatron thing.

I wouldn't dare keep using his name like that. We'll just call it your interotron. Sure, sure, yeah. And, you know, so we shot some sort of like initial interviews, these kind of tableau, interviews with at that time it was really about like older folk and how they navigated dating on usually on match.com and then at some point in the process of experimenting we we landed upon the idea that kind of you see in the film which is like these these more close-up intimate shots of these people browsing their profiles on camera staring into the lens so

So it's to say that the inspiration was really, for us, I think, emerged out of a kind of playful mode of experimentation where we sort of came to this. Martin, I know you've sort of talked about this, but there's also like an element of taking note from the apps themselves, right, which sort of present the dating apps themselves, which sort of present people in these boxes, right, to be swiped on left or right? And so there's a kind of unified look to the way that people appear on these apps that I think also informed the logic of the of the cinematography and the visuals. Yeah, I mean, I came on a bit later than Daniel. But at that time, there kind of already was Pachu and you had already kind of figured out the basic template of how framing was going to be.

And to me, it was like immediately clear that these were frames that were exactly that they were reminiscent of like of what the dating squares were. Like so every every person who's who's swiping, who's looking through every researcher is actually we're viewing them as a potential match as well as the audience. And so that was like really when I remember Pacha showed me. the first kind of like sample he had cut together with all this and that's kind of the first thing that I saw was like oh well I'm also they're they're searching for their match but I'm also judging them as if as if they came up on my um dating up as well yeah it's it's really uh I really loved the the little intro where we don't have that overlay kind of sitting here where it's just some dudes staring into the camera going nah yeah now and you're like what the

fuck? Like, what am I watching? And then it kind of like fades in and you're like, oh! And then that sets the tone so beautifully. How much, because there's, you know, it's relatively easy, I suppose in my head to get the overlay there. But there's some really clever, like, if they move forward or back, like those focus racks that go in with the effects. How, did you guys have a ton of interaction with the editor? Were you guys the editor? You know, what was, what was that relationship like with the visual effects people so to speak motion well i i did so i ended up i did the i did the animations the overlays as well so um it was this kind of intimate team and that you know the benefit of that was we could be really we could be really specific about what we wanted to

answer the specific question a lot of those little tricks were sort of post interventions as it probably appeared um so we could we could sort of we knew that if we had you know we knew that if we had you know that if we were animating the overlays separately from the, you know, the production footage itself, we could sort of DJ that a little bit. And so that was like, that was a, that was a balance that we arrived at. The editors were absolutely Hannah Buck and Scott Cummings were absolutely instrumental in figuring out the right balance of, of that kind of stuff. Because there was always a concern, you know, it's always about like sort of reinforcing rather than getting in the way of like the heart of the film, which again was about this kind of naturalness and intimacy.

And so there was a question early on, like, oh, is this, you know, it's too many focus pulls, a little gimmicky. You know, those were all questions that had to kind of shake out over the course of editing and screening it down a bunch of times. Sure. Yeah, the thought that kept coming to me, A, I don't think it was gimmicky at all. I think it was really, really fun. And it also helped, I don't, for some reason, it really helps the doc go.

I didn't feel like I was sitting there for 80 minutes, you know, like it just kept, I was, I was kind of waiting to see if there was going to be a, a twist or something. And there wasn't. And I found that kind of beautiful, you know, that you're just, you're just there in the moment. And at one moment, I think it was the girls who were looking for, like, for lack of a better term, like sugar daddies, that I became uncomfortable. And then that was when I was like, oh, because I bet someone else made someone uncomfortable or someone else, like you were saying, like you feel like you're on the other end of the. the thing and you start because they're looking right at you you know that's um yeah i don't know it just affected me yeah i think it's like you're both like as martin as martin said you're sort of like you're sort of complicit but so you're sort of like judging them but you're also like participating in the judgment and i think for pacho like that idea of this of this like

refraction this way i think what pacho calls like this kind of through the looking glass vibe it was really important the way that subject and audience is kind of intermingled in this shared window into these apps and into this process. Well, and with him, they're also doing it. You know, having him in the bag. Also, I loved, this is completely an aside right here, but just when the sound girl was behind one of the subjects, and you gave her the little lower third anyway,

let us know who she was. That was funny. But Pacho, I forget, Pacho recently told me that he said that he ripped that off of, who was it, Nick Broomfield? I think he had, he had mentioned that he had ripped that off of Nick Broomfield putting the mixer in the shot. In the shot. I mean, but it's a, it's a delightful thing, I think. I mean, they did it in Mandabala, Jason Cohn did when putting the translator in the shot. shot with the person that is being interviewed.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, I have a... Sorry. Free package. No, I didn't mean to interrupt. I was just going to say, too, though, that, like, part of that gesture is also, like,

Paco is both, you know, Potcha's both the documentary filmmaker, but he's also a subject. And so I think what those kind of moves were designed to do was just to, like, reinforce this idea that, uh, to remind us that there's, like, the, there's, the documentary process that's happening, but also that Paco is, like, more intimately involved in this, this whole search than a typical documentary filmmaker. Well, and I think just the little touches like that keep it kind of light, you know, it is a fun documentary where I feel like if I were to have made it, it would have been kind of dark, you know, like, more negative for that matter.

So how did you guys get involved with a documentary in the first place? Have you worked with Paco? Thank God. Before? Martin, you want to? Yeah, I'm fairly new to New York, but I had known Paco's work. I had seen it before, but I had met him through, I don't know, the kind of similar filmmakers that I had met here with we met through friends.

in the filmmaking community here in New York and I think we had seen each other socially a couple times and then I don't know, maybe he had started he, I think had seen some of my work and the more we saw each other the more we talked about each other's works

and then it ended up being he was working on this and then called me for it. Yeah, and Patra and I, like I've known Patro for, God, something like 10 years at this point, and so we've just we've he was actually like a essentially like an adjunct professor when I was a student filmmaking student and so he was sort of like an early mentor and then we became sort of fast friends and eventually collaborators so I've just worked on we've we've worked on a few shorts together

on his previous feature American sector which is about these fragments of the Berlin wall that remain in the United States I did some camera work And yeah, I think it's just like we share our kind of sensibility and we also get along and that that goes a long way in this in this world. Totally. What got you guys into cinematography in the first place? Did you always know you're going to be documentary filmmakers, cinematographers, or was there like a shift for you? Or what was that journey? Like, I hate the word journey.

What was that like? I would say that I had I have I used to live in LA and I worked in film production for a very long time mostly I kind of went through the crew route I was an AC and then I got really kind of bored with ACing because it was the same job no matter what like what location you're in what what what genre of film what the script was is the same job and I got into doing lighting as a lighting technician, which I found to be more interesting. I quickly learned that the AC, because of sole proximity next to the DP who's usually operating camera, they always get to be so much closer to the cinematographer rather than what I chose to do, which is a lighting tech, which half the time on pre-rigging some other location. But I really loved it.

And I did that for like, I don't know, for many, many years. And then I basically became eligible for 728, which is the local in L.A. for lighting technicians. And I kind of was like, man, I don't want to be pulling cable like when I'm much older. And so I kind of felt like, well, I should be shooting. Why don't I just try that? and um yeah and i just started like saying yes to every single gig i could in in um in the city and in in la there's a lot uh there's a lot of crap too and and when you're starting out to shoot you got to shoot all that crap and uh i have like a mix i have a mixed video that i made like a music well

it's a mixtape music video of all the bad music videos i worked on um which is quite entertaining um But, yeah, I just, like, worked on a lot of music videos and shorts and narrative shorts. And then eventually, like, I worked on one documentary that took me, like, on a road trip around the country, this film called Soundtracker made by a friend of mine, Nick Sherman. And it was like, no lighting, no grip truck, none of that, just me and a camera and the director. and it was so much more freeing and so much more interesting to me to be on that road trip with the person we were filming with

that I was like, oh, okay, this is, this is kind of, you know, this is intriguing as a practice and how do I like keep doing this type of thing? And so I kind of got into documentary that way. I didn't stop doing other sorts of cinematography, but I really kind of like dug my teeth in a documentary after that film sure yeah and you know i in some ways i don't think of myself like

primarily as a cinematographer you know i i i'm a filmmaker a lot like martin and and i um you know i also i also am an editor and um and a director as well and you know for me like the i mean there's there's sort of like two answers what one answer is like i i i think that I value sort of like the the ability to make films sort of like independently and so part of the ethos that was kind of instilled in me in film school sort of studying like observational documentary with with Paco as well was about sort of like being out there with the camera and but also but also being the editor and this kind of like vertically integrated process, so to speak. So I've just sort of learned, I've learned the kind of from soup to nuts,

kind of the filmmaking process on this kind of small, on this kind of small scale. But there's also something about like documentary cinematography, you know, like the process of like looking through the camera that I just, I find to be really revealing. And, and, you know, I've always been a photographer, you know, a hobby photographer. And, you know, so I tried to shoot as much as possible. And that's, that's kind of how I've ended up working with Paco over the course of the years. You know, it's funny you say the like vertically integrated filmmaking because I feel like, you know, I'm probably a little bit younger than you guys. When I was in film school, it was before the 5D had come out. And then when I hit college, it was like right

kind of in that first red time. So it was still sort of like we have a cinematographer. We have a director. And now it feels more like a lot of people, especially younger folks, you know, if you're on doing YouTube or any kind of like small independent productions, there is a lot more of that. do you see that sort of person of many hats being a job going forward? Because I know it made it more difficult for me when I was getting started actually working to say like, oh yeah, I can edit, I'm a cinematographer, I can color, you know, whatever, hire me for anything. No one hired me for anything.

But then the second I said, I'm a cinematographer, the job started to come. Yeah, it's interesting how both the 5D and the red one kind of changed. things um i it's hard to talk about this without like sounding like you're whining or complaining or or a lot i get it like we all have this conversation i feel but look i'll say this um this isn't a knock on like any position or anything i think it's

In terms of, like, when you're at a high skill level, it's a bit different now. I think you could, it's easier to get a job. Let's let's say you're a camera assistant. I think it's much easier to become a camera assistant on a big job and be worse at your job than people were back in the day. And that's solely, I think, technical. Yeah. because like when I was coming up and I like stopped wanting to be a camera assistant

there were people who I worked with that could take apart every 35 or 60 millimeter camera and rebuild it like take it apart and rebuild it right any kind of problem that ever happened they knew how to fix it because they knew how to take apart the camera but nowadays if there's an electronics problem first of all you don't have time to pull out the soldering board and fix it while you're on set. Sure. And a lot of, and the thing is you don't have the knowledge. Nobody really has a knowledge to fix that while you're on set. So I think that one thing that has changed in terms of getting a job, I don't know about getting a job. Let's keep that part out of it. But I definitely

know that one thing that has changed is the technical ability of, let's say, a camera assistant and what you're expected to do as a high level really good AC, I feel. was a bit lower than it used to be when we were working with. I would have to agree. And I would say it's probably because when you had to do it, quote, unquote, the hard way, there was, A, the knowledge of how each individual step was done for anything, but also there was a discipline to it. You know, the stakes were a lot higher if you could blow, you know, a film take, for instance.

And so now, like, if you were, let's say, filming your own stuff and you decided you really like acing, but you've been on autofocus this whole time, and now you're handed the little Ari wheel, and you're sitting there going, all right, let's get after it. And you just, you don't have that muscle memory or anything like that. That institutional knowledge, I think, is perhaps harder to get to. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, there's definitely a difference of like people who came up being able to pull focus without a monitor and people who have only pulled focus on a monitor. Then there's the people that have only been able to pull focus since Cynetape was invented, and then those who have the steel tape and take measurements after each take.

But, I mean, that's also its own, like, kind of specialized thing. You have to look for whether someone really understands how to pull focus and what they're doing in between takes to adjust that. But I'll say this. the availability of having a 5D I think certainly changed for the good your ability as a DP

or a director to be able to understand filmmaking. I think because you were able to have it, if you had any question or you wanted to rehearse, let's say you wanted to rehearse your film like in your living room with whoever lives in your house. Like you could actually do that. You have a camera, you have the lenses. You can see by yourself, what that shot looks like

oh actually okay that's what a 50 mil looks like that's what a 65 mil looks like okay well let me make a note actually I don't want that the shot to be like that whereas I don't know when I was much younger I didn't have I had like a you know a Canon A1

film camera 35 camera but I didn't have all the lenses so I didn't really know all the lenses because I didn't have anything in my hands that I could hold up I didn't have a director's viewfinder so I didn't know my lens is at the beginning. And I think now, I mean, you don't even need those anymore. You can use, you can do, you can use an app and see what the field of view is for everything. And I think that's something that has opened up a lot more for people to be able to to kind of explore

what methods they want to be filmmaking. I mean, I end up having this conversation a lot, both in terms of cinematography, but also in terms of editing, right? Because I mean, like when when I was in school, we learned documentary filmmaking on 16mm, right? We would shoot on bolexes and athons. And, you know, you had to, you had to know how to focus. You had to know how to expose with a light meter. And then, you know, we would edit on the flatbeds. So, you know, you had to make deliberate choices, both when you were shooting and when

you were editing. And so, you know, so now with digital cameras that have peeking and magnification and auto focus, you know, some of that, some of that, some of that deliberateness is taken out of it, which is freeing in a certain sense, as Martin's talking about. And, you know, the other place where we talk about this, as I said, is with the NLEs, with the, with the, you know, what was final cut when I was coming of age, Final Cut 7, and now is like Premier and even avid, the ability to, the ability to just constantly iterate and, and not have to, it's a lot of like it's a lot of like cutting and undoing and redoing and you can move at a pace that's you're

almost like you can your hands get ahead of your head a little bit did I am I am I still here yeah yeah so you know with these new editing you know with the with the NLEs which have now been around for a while like your your hands can get ahead of your head so to speak you know you can move but I'm I'm like sort of ambivalent I mean, I see the virtues in that kind of, in the kind of old analog ways of doing things on film and deliberately making cuts and splicing. And then I see, I see the benefit, too, of the, what could be called the sort of digital revolution. You know, it's, like, at its best, it's just unlocked new ways of new grammars and new ways of telling stories. But I certainly in my own life, like, I'm grateful that I had that kind of.

of more deliberate kind of foundation. Yeah, well, and I think that kind of sort of begs the answer to the question of like, should I go to film school? It's like, well, film school might teach you a lot of important stuff about the lineage of the filmmaking timeline, you know, it's a relatively young medium, but the thing that's kind of lost now is I don't know how many people. are, you know, going to school and learning. Like, I went to Arizona State. We were not shooting on 16 mil. I shot on 16 mil as a high schooler at New York Film Academy. Learned way

more doing that and like, because you have to be so deliberate. And just like, in confident, too. And I think if you start with something that has all the tools in the world, you don't have that mental acuity for it, I suppose, if that makes any sense. Because I am trying to go back to Martin's point about not sounding like an old fogey and trying to be like, got. But I think it is like the new tech does not give you, does not imbibing you old institutional knowledge that you need to do a young craft such as filmmaking, relatively young. If that makes any sense. I've only had half a cup of coffee today. No, totally. Daniel, do you still, you said you're a photographer. What got you into photography?

Yeah, I mean, I always just, I always just, you know, took um you know it's it's hard to say it's sort of like a weird kind of affinity that one one develops like what got me into film i don't know i started like a lot of us i think just you know i i got a video camera when i was 12 and it just seemed like the coolest thing in the world you know i was shooting films as a teenager sort of similar with photography but yeah through high school in college i was shooting you know 35 millimeter film and then i got it in college i you know i shot some medium format. I never had the privilege of doing any darkroom stuff, which I think would, you know, is something on the, on the bucket list. But I think it's just the process,

it's like a way, I don't know if it says something about like a kind of like outsiderness about me or a kind of social anxiety or something. But, you know, it's like there's something about having the camera as this like way to mediate, you know, your interactions in the world, right? and so I was always like I was always somehow more comfortable like calling myself the photographer than sort of like participating in the in the events somehow and that's like that's you know it's both the camera becomes both a kind of barrier but also this kind of way of way of also engaging with the world you know like I find that um you know I'm of two miles like you know I travel I travel a bit and I always make a point of bringing a camera. And I'm always of two minds about this kind of

stuff because you go to these wonderful places and you see people who sort of are just like, it seems like they're taking photos and they're not, there's the kind of like cliche about sort of not taking in the scene around you because you're so obsessed somehow with like documenting it for your social media accounts or something like that. For me, it's actually, I find the camera like forces me to pay attention to things that i never would have i start to like i start to pay attention to the way like the light is hitting the mountains you know like around me and it's just it's like it's just another way of sort of seeing the world and so i guess i've always just sort of yeah i've always sort of approached it that way yeah i actually uh i can identify with that pretty pretty

solidly because i was not a very uh social person but you do wouldn't you agree that it's it it is that I think there's documenting, like, people, you know, the person with the iPad at the concert, just filming it, it's like, put it down. It's right there. You're fine. Versus, I don't know, highlighting something. You know, when, I know in downtown LA, I'm sure this is true in New York. Sometimes the sun is just hitting the buildings in such a beautiful, like, kind of perfect way that you start to see frames, you know, and you're not, you're not thinking like, oh, what a pretty building. You see these compositions, maybe. that I don't think maybe a normal person technically has. Yeah, and it's also like, it's seeing in frames, but it's also like suddenly I'm crawling, you know, I'm like, I'm on the ground, you know, I'm like I'm lying in the grass, you know, or I'm climbing up on a rock to shoot down at something. And it's like, that's, that's something I wouldn't do if I wasn't, if I didn't have a camera.

Or if I did it, I would look kind of crazy, but the camera gives me license to sort of like put my body in weird places, you know. So, yeah. Right on. Martin, we'll start with you for this double-sided question. How did you guys, going back to the documentary, how did you guys come up with, not how did you come up with, but kind of like walk me through how the interaction was with the subjects when you have to show up and set up, you know, the Territron or whatever it's called into the interrogation box. And, you know, like the sort of technical, like, all right, we're going to

have the phone here and just tell us what you need to do. and like how you approached lighting each person was that natural that kind of thing yeah i mean i have to say you you kind of have to break up the production of this film and the answer is question to pre-covid and post-covid okay um but yeah pre-covid last fall when i had kind of started on it um i mean we're shooting at shooting with people who are volunteering to be in it. So some people were happy for us to come into their homes. Some people didn't want us to come into their homes, in which case we do it somewhere in a public place. So walking in, you're walking into someone's apartment that you've never seen before. There's no tech scout.

And we also had a very minimal amount of stuff. Because the contraption and the computer took a lot of kind of time to set up um it was a thing that pottsman i had talked about to kind of like minimize the lighting because and um minimum not only just for footprint but for time's sake um so we kind of embraced whatever people had in their apartment and you know a lot of that would depend on what time of day we were shooting at when people were off work or if it was on the weekend we were in daytime and so with that you kind of like just i had we had we had one or two LEDs with us. There were small ones and I brought a bunch of like grip stuff to play around with whatever lighting they had. So, you know, I always tried to travel with diffusion

and then duvetine to either to, you know, amend whatever window lighting, daylight was coming in through or throw something on a lamp that we can bring close to their face or something like that. So it was all very kind of like improvised. But then the public places, and Daniel, you shot a fair amount of those public places too. You know, that was also, it was, we found like really great locations, but sometimes they were quite hard to find because, you know, we were, we didn't have like space allocated for us beforehand. So we would, Pasha would have a place in mind and then we would go and try to figure out where that was and then we'd immediately kind of like take over you know uh a city i think daniel you should you had shot on the sidewalk somewhere like

when shack is doing that that first one i think isn't that on the sidewalk it's yeah it's sort of in a public walking area not quite on the sidewalk but yeah but fairly fairly uncontrollable and public for sure yeah so like coming up with with the finding a place in in public is a bit of a pain in the ass. Also because time of day is really, was really difficult. You know, it's hard to shoot these things at Magic Hour because it takes a long time. And it moved slowly. Some moved quicker than others, but a lot of the times people, they take their time with it.

That's what you get the best answers from. And, you know, so like, we weren't like, we didn't have like, we didn't have exterior your gripage around. I think the most gripage we did was Pachro and his mother's interview because I had I was like, well, Patra's mom's going to be there. We have to like make it the best. And he wanted to shoot in this. He wanted to shoot. It was on Randall's Island, which has like the, you know, the East River behind them. And I knew that it was just going to be like middle of the day shooting into, you know, in the middle of summer, like shooting into this nuclear background. And I was like, we have to, I was like, Patrick, we have to rent, you know, 12 by and all this and overheads and all that stuff.

And he was like, okay. But, you know, it's, it was like, we got, we got like tried to, we got shut down like three times or we got, it was an attempted shut down like three times by the Randall's Island Park police or whatever. Yeah. So that's basically how we kind of walked into every situation. And I think, too, it's like, you know, the nature of this shooting was like we. we set the camera up you know and and the subjects are sort of free to like they have their own kind of relationship to the camera because the camera for them is also this like way to browse their their app so they're sort of it's like a lot of documentaries you're sort of the camera's almost

like this thing that's like invading their space and it's moving around them and it's sort of like dizzying for subjects but I think here like the camera was I'd like to think it was sort of more it was like more friendly and approachable so um and the process of like browsing i think was you know it would take a few minutes of uncomfortable feeling out but after a few minutes like subjects really kind of lost themselves in the process of of looking for love yeah i wonder too like because that that that's been a question i've had with a few of the um documentarians i've interviewed recently. And that is the effect of the camera on the subject. And I'm wondering if by having the big screen of an app or a website, that's actually something the subject is more used to seeing.

So it's a little less aggressive maybe. You know, instead of the lens, which is kind of a dark hole, you've got just the screen, which is like, oh, yeah, I'm used to that. Yeah, I think that it gives them something to focus on. which, as Dana said, takes them out of feeling like they're the subject that a camera is being pointed, that a camera's pointing at. And so, I don't know. I think that, yeah, they do have to get over the initial weirdness of, like, browsing with other people in the room that aren't their friends. But, yeah, I think it, if the activity of them browsing was not part of this,

and it was solely Pacho interviewing people about their dating life, I don't think we would have gotten as many intimate kind of stories or feelings from these people because the act of the browsing thing, I think, you know, alleviates whatever fears they have about being in front of the camera. Daniel, talk to how being an editor has changed the way that you tend to shoot, because I know for me it's definitely made me a better DP. Yeah, I mean, it certainly depends on the project. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I've, I've edited has been sort of more kind of verite stuff,

in which, in which case I'm, I'm always sort of surprised that at the lack of sort of like, I want to be kind to my, my cinematographer colleagues, but the lack of sort of verity. experience, you know, like it's, it's, it's often kind of a frustrating experience as an editor in a certain kind of like American issue film kind of documentary, which is what I find myself somehow editing a lot, that there's, there's not a kind of, yeah, that there's not a kind of, yeah, there's just, so what are I trying to say? I'm trying to say that when I'm, when I'm shooting, I'm very aware of like what, what the needs are of the project and the, and the editing room. So if it's a verity kind of thing, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm making sure to grab kind of, you know,

the standard, the standard shots that I need, cutaways. You know, it's like, it's amazing how much the reflex is to just sort of react to what's happening, you know? And like, and I think cinematography so much is about sort of like keeping one eye open and one ear listening to what's, what's going on and about to happen. And, you know, I find like so much of the footage I end up getting is like, as an editor is like really beautiful but it's it's sort of just like whoever's talking we're just kind of like on them and there's not a kind of faith in the power of I mean both in fiction and documentary like the the shot of the reaction shot can almost do more work than the shot of the person sort of like taking the action so but in this case it's like this is like a different

film in the sense that it's very sort of structured you know it's like there's there's sort of rules to the cinematography, right? We're going to, we have these kind of locked off extended takes. And we know in the editing that that's, that the logic is going to be sort of similar. It's going to be, we're going to meet 20 to 30 of these of these searchers and they're going to, they're going to browse the apps for two to three minutes. And so as a cinematographer, you start to think, okay, like within, within that rule bound world, what becomes, what becomes dramatic, you know, for an editor, right? And suddenly you realize, like, the moment that there's two people in the frame instead of just one, like, that's a huge gesture. That's like, that's

an interesting evolution that becomes, like, dramatic in the film. Or when there's, when there's action happening in multiple planes of the, of the frame, right? When there's, like, Martin, some of your stuff in the city where there's, like, there's people taking selfies, you know, getting married, and then there's jet skis in the background and there's this sense of the city teeming, which in other documentaries may feel like beautiful B-roll, but in this film, they put sort of independent thoughts in your head about what it's like to search for love in the city.

And so, yeah, so like, knowing that this is the way that Paco is going to structure the film, knowing that this is, knowing that these small differences take on a kind of magnitude of meaning in the context of this sort of constrained, very deliberate film, I think is important for the cinematography. Yeah. If that makes sense.

Yeah. I would add to that that I think that once you've been kind of shooting, once you, I think that everybody, especially who is working in documentary, once they've been shooting for a long enough time period, kind of already know how to edit. I don't necessarily think it certainly helps that they've like had to deal with they've been an editor themselves and had to deal with other people's footage and then they're like oh I get how I should shoot but I think that once you do it long enough you kind of already understand how to cut in your head but what I find it like most beneficial is actually having communication with the editor which I think is the major thing that never happens is that you shoot the stuff you don't. You dump the footage and that gets given to the editor and you never even talk to the editor. And then the editor relays what they want to the director. And sometimes the director doesn't relay that to you or forget something or just so there's, so Pacho did on this.

Like when we were trying to figure out what the city shots should be like it was an email that everyone was on. You know, Hannah, Hannah Buck, our editor was on there telling me like what she what she wanted. And Pasha was there to weigh in on that or not. And so I think once there became a thing where I was able to talk to Hannah as well, and the three of us could talk about what city shots we needed, it helps you kind of like, it takes the guessing work out of what the editing team wants. Yeah. What, I forgot to ask this because we were talking about the, I just keep on wanting to call it the interrogator.

Uh, what was the shooting package, which is it all like, did you keep that super consistent across the border where you just kind of grabbing whatever or the cameras you owned? It was very consistent. I don't, I think it was from day one from your experimental, uh, time, Daniel, you guys were shooting the C300 mark two, right? Yeah, Potra had a C300 mark two. And then he had the really beautiful, um, Zeiss 28 to 70, right? to 80 yeah 28 to 27 yeah um and so that yeah that was the lens that and then i i know martin you may be shot on one or two other lenses for some of the more telephoto city stuff right yeah we got the so it was the vice compact zoom um the 28 to 80 and then um the matching you know uh sibling of it the 70 or 200 which we were using out um when we were shooting stuff in the city but like Yeah, I mean, it was the C-300 Mark 2 the whole time, and then I forget now, because it was a bit fluid, but we even basically shot the same millimeter for every, I mean, it was kind of a range between, what was it like?

It's depending if it was a two shot or a single, but it was basically between like, let's say, 25 and 60 millimeters. And then that changed when we start shooting COVID because I had to be further back. sure and and some of that was like overdetermined in the sense that like you know we wanted that kind of wider effect so it felt like we created that sense of like the box that they're leaning into but also like we needed to find a place for the camera where subjects could like read their profiles so they had to be fairly close to the lens as well so um so that that focal length just was like the sort of obvious solution to those two those two considerations but that became a problem when yeah when when we were during COVID we like we were we were like oh we should we were self

policing obviously because there was no like COVID compliance officer but it was like oh we need to be a bit further away than we have been before um but then like when that happened it was like oh shit we didn't think about this but this people can't read or some people like they couldn't see the profiles very well or read their names or what the profile said and it was like oh okay so we maybe inch a little a little bit closer but that was kind of an unforeseen thing we had to we couldn't expect yeah what the what was the interaction like with the colors was there a colorist or would you did you just kind of do one of those classic like 709 looks good do a little adjustment on the exposure let's take oh yeah Daniel's a whiz I did the yeah there's a little

little bit of the like jack of all trades master of done going on but but but but no same man I can get it but um no I mean in this project like the reason it made sense for me to do the color was because you know I was also doing the the overlay animations and so that just gave us like the the ultimate amount of time to sort of like endlessly tweak tweak them in concert I think like to figure out a a remote workflow with a colorist somewhere first of all it's like how do you even evaluate the color remotely, safely. But also, like, it allowed Martin and, obviously, Paco to, like, workshop the VFX stuff and the color with us.

So we could just, we could afford to have as many eyes on it up until the very end. And there was a lot of, like, you know, like with the with the overlays, they may have worked, you know, when you're looking at the sort of, like, low contrast log footage, even with like a little bit of a lot in Premiere, it might have looked one way, but suddenly when you when you lift the contrast and bring out some of the colors, you notice that, you know, this part of the frame needs a little burning or dodging to really make the stuff work. And so I just think it was like it was a super practical solution to that, that finishing process. Yeah. Did you have, what was your approach to coloring then? Was there,

were you trying to, were there any references that you had or were you just kind of going with what you thought looked nice? I mean, more of the latter, I mean, I would say again, like, a lot of the film was about, as Martin said, we didn't, we didn't overlight anything. We weren't like, these weren't like, we wanted to embrace a kind of like naturalness. And so the, the color process was sort of the same. It was just about bringing out the skin tones and boosting the levels. But it wasn't about baking in like a sort of look into the film. And again, a lot of it was like how it. intersected with these overlays which were you know crucial element for about a third of the film um so yeah i mean like all the standard stuff

like rec 709 um uh you know gamma i mean what was strange about this this finishing process was that sundance premiered online right so you're like not you like can't really know what you're what hell like how people are going to watch it whether they're gonna

you know be in their beds on an iPhone, which kind of has a different way of like interpreting the, the, uh, rec 709 2.4 gamma or 2.2 gamma. So that was like a little bit of a, of an experiment was like figuring out how do you even QC this thing? Like how do we know what we're looking at is how people are going to see it. And the answer to that is like, we don't. We just have to kind of take an average. So we have to like, you know, we have to color it in, in, you know, Gamma 2.4, rec 709, which is what you would do for the theater for a DCP. And then we converted the gamma, the gamma to 2.2, which is just a fancy way of saying we darkened

the image because we know that like computer screens are brighter than theatrical stuff. And so, and then it was like, let's watch the film on an iPad, on an iPhone, on a kind of shitty like smart TV and on an iMac and let's make sure across the board nothing is like too dark and nothing is too bright and I think that's the best you can do in these kinds of circumstances I'm curious to hear like what others experienced in that process of like finishing for an online premiere yeah what did they do with all that money they saved from not having to go QC it into theater and make a DCP and all that stuff right yeah exactly spend it on the rap party

by yourself no but I mean when we did coloring so Daniel Daniel did it and then I for the set like the session that I was in on I went to Pacho's place and me and him sat next to each other and watched it and and then we kind of gave notes but we watched it because it was going to be an online premiere you know we did something which I'd never done before

which was give color notes while watching the film with the windows not blacked out. So, you know, it was like daytime when me and him watched it. And I thought about before I went over there, I was like, should I bring like some duvetine to black his windows out? And I was like, no, because that's, we're watching it on IMac because that's where everyone's watching it on the computer screen. I was like, no, we'll leave the windows. And I think we left his lights on and his apartment and everything. And it was a bit of a weird thing. But yeah, I mean, that's, and it works.

But then, like, you can do all you want about, like, trying to get the color to be the best. But then you have this other additional wall hurdle to get over, which you have no control over, which is the buffering speed of whoever the viewer's internet, right? Yeah. Which, I watched a few films at Sundance, and they had one of the best. I've watched a couple of online film festivals this year. And all the ones that even had the best, like, quality, they all still have trouble with dark blacks. And you still see that, you know, that little patch of squares up here when it's quite dark.

And it's like, it sucks because that probably looks like an amazing shot. You know, I'm a fan of, like, things being really dark. And it just sucks to watch everything become a gray square. I think it's easy to get, like, a little bit techy about this stuff. And certainly, like, the color, like, Blago's sphere is this deep, dark hole that you don't want to. go too far down but it is true that like one of the shames is that there's not a kind of standard there just doesn't seem to be a kind of standard um display profile for all these different devices and so it's really hard to control as martin says like what you know a shot that would

look great on a on an ipad uh looks less so on an iMac um and even within a sort of like family you know even within all apple product like they all interpret the um the color information differently and so like the DCP was like a wonderful solution to this problem in theaters because it's like okay all these like projectors are going to interpret like red is going to look the same across all these like projectors and there's not really an equivalent in the um in the uh you know the online space and i think that's like i think it's like a matter of time before that happens because like so much of this is shifting for better or for worst to like online premieres and online distribution. And so there just has to be, yeah,

there just has to be a kind of standard that emerges. Totally. Well, and I think too, like that used to, oh, go ahead, Martin. I was just going to say, but the standard is, is just for us. Like, I, I just feel more and more that, like, nobody cares about whether the blacks have, have, have, are blocky and, and like, there's no detail in the white. Like, nobody cares about any of that. And yeah, I care about it and I try my best to make everything look as best as possible because

I want to view it like that. But I'm also like, yeah, like nobody cares about any of that. And so I'm like. You're totally right. I mean, like it's a kind of the myopic of working on the on the film. And you know, it's like

we watched the premiere on my TV downstairs, you know, in my like the den and it's got some sort of like horrible like um baked in like color profile so everything was like super saturated and but you know i watched it with my family and they loved it and they had nothing to say about you know whether there was noise in the blacks or so it's a it's a good reminder martin that it's like it's you know after the first three minutes it's like this it's the film that matters it's not you know it's not like the the black levels or the gamma or something Sure. But I mean, to the other side of that coin is like, I remember the first Sundance screener I watched was out in my living room. And I'm sitting there taking notes to ask questions. And again, this is more of like a DV thing. But I'm sitting there going like, wow, this isn't really pink. And I'm going through it. I'm like, this is an interesting choice to make everyone so pink. And then I was like, hold on. And I whip out the phone because it's like a TCL Roku TV, you know, it costs 200 bucks. And sure enough, the normal profile is way tweaked. And they're like, you have.

have to go down to the dark one, which is technically like the movie version or whatever. And that looked what was showing on my color calibrated laptop. I was like, oh, so this is an issue. And I think, too, like the regular viewer kind of just cares about having the best thing. Like I'm sure you've seen people talking about the new iPhone like, oh, it shoots Dolby Vision. And it's like, you don't know what that means. Like I barely know what that means. I don't know if it actually does.

so maybe if we just kind of push a TV and display manufacturers to like have a unified thing like we be we be the unseen hand that just forces viewers to have the good thing you know give them the given the spoonful of sugar as it were sure but this gets into like right now is great this gets into that thing about um god i forgot the i forgot her name The cinematographer who did this push to get Samsung and other TV manufacturers to disable the, like, the auto-shutter mode of TVs. Was that Todd Bizarry? I don't know.

Or Stu? I don't know. I thought it was. I thought it was Reed Moreno or somebody was champion. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it could have been her. But, like, yeah, I totally appreciate that because I hate seeing TVs like that. But I see so many TVs like that.

It's like, yeah, we can push TV manufacturers to do it. But like, they don't care. I mean, they don't care. They sell TVs to around the world way more people than people like us who care about that. Why would they care about it? Yeah, maybe you just have like a sports button and a movie button. And we just have to have control over the movie button because a lot of movie buttons still don't do what we wish they would, you know? Yeah.

I mean, it's weird. Like, I remember this, there was this thing online that. I think, like, around the time that that Gus Van Sant, I think this is when I saw it, that Gus Van Sant movie, Paranoid Park about, like, the skaters in Portland, that is that Chris Doyle shot it. And I remember after I saw the movie, I watched this thing on YouTube about some Q&A he did,

and he was talking about. So I don't know when was Paranoid Park. But it must have been right around the time when people started watching videos on their phone or something because he was saying, like, I live in China. Everyone in China watches things on their on their phone and nobody here in the US does but you will be soon and I remember seeing it and being like I would never watch a movie on my phone and I still think that but like I've watched so many YouTube videos on my I've watched stuff on my phone all the time and you go down the street you're in the subway you see people watching stuff on the phone and I was like I was like oh it's like the humor like I was so arrogant to believe that that wouldn't be how our society was going to go and Christo I was saying it like 10 years ago. Well, and I think, too, like that, just even speaking to the display issue, so to speak,

is like that's going to change how we frame things, right? Like, if we know that everything is going to be on a five-inch screen, although phones are getting bigger, are we going to be just shooting tons of close-ups? Like, how's a wide going to play on a tiny screen? Yeah, it's true. It won't have the same kind of emotional pun. as seeing it big in the theater. I mean, it comes down to, you know, my, my girlfriend's a graphic designer,

and they have the same kinds of questions. Even to take the narrow example of, like, graphic design and film, it's like the logic was always, like, you make the titles, like, twice as small as you think, because on the big screen, titles look bigger than you always, you always guess. And now it's like, yeah, now it's like, do you make a version of the film for mobile and for, I'm glad there are smarter people than me thinking about these questions, because it's a brave new world and things are changing in front of our eyes.

And this year was just like, this year was just like crazy. It was like the experiment was accelerated, I feel. But. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's sort of, I think one thing that we have to, that I've certainly started to think about more is like what do we do about vertical framing i just started shooting some stuff in this past year which has been um the mandate was for vertical for social but they needed the resolution so that they didn't want to do any cropping so it was like okay we'll flip the camera but you know it's it's it's really kind of messes with your head because you're so

unused to shooting humans or framing humans in a vertical way. And so I kept finding myself like, oh my God, I mean, I have so much headroom now. And I was like, well, what are we going to do? I start thinking this week, like, what are we going to do with all this headroom? How do we make this headroom interesting in framing? You know, and how do we, are we just going to be used to cutting people's shoulders off all the time? Like, how do we get away with? Yeah. So I just think it's something that I'm trying to explore like this is a new way of viewing things right the vertical framing and how do we make that interesting yeah I was doing a we got to wrap it up here but I was doing a project with Tom Brady's company where we were interviewing sports fans

outside of games and yeah it was intended for Instagram live and yeah the second you get two people like you got to be on an 18 millimeter backed up just and then exactly like you said like how do you get like a single isn't too terribly difficult necessarily but yeah it's it's a very strange and like how much belly are you going to be showing you know you got to put them on on their shoulders you know one's got to sit on top the other shoulders i think is the way to go exactly yeah just playing the backpack game yeah um so uh to wrap it up i've been asking everyone the same two questions um one what every everyday thing has helped you in your life career as they've intersected and two do you have any personal projects that you're interested in pimping i guess i would return to the like i guess it's not totally unrelated to my career but the the benefit of having a camera with you you know and not just the iPhone but but continuing to exercise the muscle of like looking through a lens and thinking in terms of how a camera interprets the world. So I've just made it a practice more so in the past few years

to always have a, you know, often a 35 millimeter camera with me wherever I go. Totally. I got a F2 do the exact same thing. I was going to say, I was like, what's the real thing that has helped me a lot? And I was going to say having a smartphone. but actually just thinking about it the everyday object that is even better than a smart phone

that's helped me in my career has been comfortable footwear I think it's the most the most important thing you can do when you're either an operator or a cinematographer do you have a recommendation Martin I'm just about to ask yeah who are you going to plug well they haven't sponsored me yet but are they the australian boot company because that's for me oh blenstone yeah um i i i actually just got off of blenstone but they were for i wore them for many years they're quite comfortable um i have a favorite model of

adidas that i wear for for almost everything um they should sponsor me they should i was about say we need to get you that adidas yeah but maybe they should sponsor a steady cam operator. I'm not that good. That's more important. Yeah. What are you working on, Daniel? I'm in the early stages of developing a project with Pacho, actually, about UFO sightings and encounters in New York State. Pachro and I are both from New York. And there's been this kind of like interesting uptick in sightings that I think has a lot to do with like, smartphones and social media but but less interested in like the the questions that often emerge when you talk about UFOs which is about like speculating about the nature of UFOs or about

government involvement or cover up and and more about sort of like the personal experience and how it transforms the way you experience the world so um you know it's we're still at the beginning but the idea is to make a film that's about people telling stories and uh and the and the the uncanny feeling that happens that occurs when you see something unidentifiable and then the challenge of like talking about that thing you know with other people I think is kind of the holy grail for us that sounds right up my alley I'm excited for that Martin cool um well I have been working on a film of my own feature, I guess, which before this pandemic really kind of had some legs and now we'll see how I have to adjust. I've been trying to figure it out because

it was going to take place in like eight different countries. So that hasn't happened yet. But I've been working on this for about two years now since like doing initial research on it. And This film is basically kind of disparate geographic locations that all speak to one another by means of their geographic circumstances. So they're all somewhat isolated places that share something, even if they're across the globe from one another. There's individual stories and community stories that all share some sort of. of that have some sort of symbiosis because they're from an isolated geography. So I've shot already in some places. And so I've been tinkering with the footage I've shot and been doing a lot of reading and writing for future filming whenever that becomes available.

Cool. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for spending the past hour with me. I really enjoyed that conversation. Hopefully when your guys' projects do come up, we can have you back on and talk about those. Thank you, Kenny. All right. Take it easy. Take care.

Frame and reference is an Albot 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 Ethad Art Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Trax branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Pro Video Coalition. or YouTube.com slash alabot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.