Frame & Reference Podcast - 97: "Extrapolations", "Wonder Woman" 1 & 2 & "The Mandalorian" DP Matthew Jensen, ASC

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

On this episode, Kenny talks with cinematographer Matthew Jensen, ASC about his work on "Extrapolations", "Wonder Woman" 1 & 2 & "The Mandalorian." 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 this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and you're listening to Episode 97 with Matthew Jensen, ASC, DP of Extrapolations, as well as films like Wonder Woman One and Two, and The Mandalorian. enjoy have you been have you been watching anything are you on a gig right now is that what brings you out to massachusetts yeah i'm shooting i'm shooting i'm doing a small movie out here gotcha and so that nor the i assume that means you haven't been able to watch very much recently not a ton not a ton um just research for the movie basically um so i'm not completely current on a lot of what's been released are going on. Yeah.

Where was your leaving off point? Let's see. I think kind of what did they hit the zeitgeist was the last of us. Oh, okay. And, yeah, you know, news about the flash. and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. To be fair,

everyone's answers to the past month or two has just been Last of Us in Succession. So you're not too far out. Yeah, my wife is a huge Succession fan. So she was telling me about it. I've managed to kind of see a few episodes. But it has never really grabbed me in the way that I know that it's grabbed other people.

So I watched the whole thing and then I went like, all right, that was interesting. Like, it's a great show. But it's, yeah, last of us are like and or were the ones that I was just like very excited about.

For all the nerd shit, I guess. Right. Right. No, andor is great. I really, I think that,

well, first of all, Tony Gilroy is a genius. And, He, you know, he made Michael Clayton, and Michael Clayton is one of my favorite movies and it's gotten better when they age. Totally. It's kind of this underrated masterpiece, I think. It doesn't get enough props.

But I really think that Andor is the way that Star Wars should go. And I think it would win over a lot more fans. um and have more staying power and in terms of you know for adults and and things like that and you know i and i say this because i spent a little time in the star wars world um you know essentially i know that look it was always about you know what governments do and how they transform and change and and um so and it all comes out of and of lucas's you know activism in the 60s you know that sort of that sort of mindset that he and copla and all those guys were in and uh i think if the the film sort of forgot about what's you know the the lore of the past and what it's been

in the past and focus on it as more of a metaphor for our culture it would be a lot more interesting. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was, I actually get to interview like, we're going to hang up in an hour and some change. And I'm going to have like 30 minutes to reset. And then I interview Adriano, who shot. Oh, right.

Oh, great. If you have any questions, formulate them. Yeah. I'll ask at the end. I will. But for years, I was always like, they just need to make a movie. Like, I want to know, or like a show.

like I want to know what law and order looks like on curassant like I want to know what the on the ground people are doing and then and then and then and or came out I was like that's fucking close enough I mean that's yeah yeah absolutely yeah that's the nuts and the nuts and bolts and the people who aren't royalty or jetties or you know a lineage of of you know elites it's it's much more interesting how does the and the The Empire seems so much more scary and oppressive in Tony Gilroy's kind of versions. Yeah. Than, you know, just kind of these buffoonish, you know, bad guys in, you know, in black and red. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I'll give credit to what's his face, Fabro and the other guy, because they're the other guy. All the story is fantastic.

They're Palloni. Philoni, yeah, just because like that, you know, Faloni's basically continuing his cartoon in real life, which is cool in its own right. I mean, you're given the opportunity. You might as well take it. But I agree it is more like a cartoon on that. So what is a kid's movie and anything?

But I'll talk to Atriano, but again, formulate some questions. I'll ask them. But you did bring up Coppola and Lucas and them. And I actually grew up in the Bay Area and learning more and more about them, made me want to become a filmmaker because it felt more accessible from that front. But obviously doing a little research on you, it sounds like you kind of had the same bug as I did where it was just like, I just kind of want to film things and make it cool, but then you also went to USC like those guys.

Right. Yeah. How did the SC world kind of affect you? Most of the people I interview from New York for some reason. Oh, that's interesting. Well, S.C. ultimately was a really good experience for me. And, you know, I was there at a time when everything was still on film and we were cutting on film and, you know, we were shooting 16 millimeter and aggling circles. equipment. And SC had so many connections to working professionals. I got exposure to a lot of people. And they would just come in and they would show their movies. There was one class in particular

where they would bring in a guest and they would show their movie and we would see a 35 millimeter print of it in a great theater. And then we would go back to a small classroom. with like, you know, 10 to 12 kids in a roundtable and we would sit and talk with whoever that guest was. And we got some stellar people like, you know, Conrad Hall and John Schwarzman and Stephen Goldblatt and those three DPs. But then also John Totoro came in. He had directed a movie called Mac in the early 90s and Norman Jewettson and you know just like some some heavyweights and your teacher was Woody Elman's eh yeah Woody Woody was spectacular and very supportive and helpful particularly to me and you know he was I think he was a real get by the school

because he his career was kind of winding down he would still leave on occasion to do movies especially if Eddie Murphy called him he was sort of Eddie's go-to guy and coming to America and all that yeah and and yeah Woody was just a really upbeat very positive person and very supportive and

just and he was able to bring in a guest that he knew from the ASC and we would do workshops with them and where we would be the crew in you know like Conrad Hall get a scene for us

and like we were Conrad's crew and that was mind-blowing And, you know, I look back on it very fondly. I think when I was, you know, 18, 19, 20, I had, there were a lot of issues I had with the school, but I don't remember what they were anymore. So I think we all did with all of our universities. Yeah, exactly. because somehow it did not live up to, you know, the hype that somehow it was going to instantly transform and change your life. And, you know, it can't, you know, it can't do that. But the great

thing about it is that I was exposed to a lot. I had an opportunity to make movies. I met a lot of great people there who either became some of my best friends to this day or are also working in the business and are successful and we all, all of our

collective success has sort of propelled us through the industry and I got to make a lot of mistakes and ultimately they you know, it's just a student film, you know, so

there's no cost to the mistakes really so um so i learned a lot and and the greatest thing that i could say is that i shot on film the entire time and i got to expose film and know the labs and know the equipment and uh i had quite a leg up by the time that i got out of school yeah i uh now you've one thing you'll you'll notice by the end of this discussion is is my brain will constantly fork out. So we're just going to go with the first one, which is, I love the forks. Great. I've got hundreds of DC magazines.

So whenever I have a guest, I'm able to research. So I got your Wonder One here. And to your point about shooting film, it sounds like when you guys were working on that one, that you pretty much shot on everything. You had a 65. You had a regular Alexa, you had a bunch of film. And I was wondering if you could kind of speak to, obviously, we all love film in the article. Patty Jenkins talks about how much she loves film and how it can only render the image in a certain way.

But then in the same article, you're quoted as saying like, oh, between the Alexa and film, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. So I was kind of wondering what your opinion is, especially now being five years removed from that. What the, not what the point, because I love film as well. I learned on 16 as well, so I have, it has a special place of my heart. But yeah, kind of what, obviously for practical reasons you shoot Alexa, but what's, you know, what's the difference there in your head? like at this point would you just say screw it let's shoot alexic because it's more practical or is there still film in your head that um what are the advantages of either i would say it's a 40 minute question uh got it's it's really a it's really a very lengthy and nuanced discussion um perfect for this podcast yeah i think i think both mediums are completely legitimate and have their advantages and disadvantages. The great thing about film is that it's tactile.

I love the smell of emulsion. It smells like power bait. Yeah, exactly. I love the, you know, I love that, you know, you thread it through a magazine and that it's a mechanical process and a photochemical process. and there is something that I love about shooting film

because in terms of your rhythm on set, the way that you have to have a mag change after 12 minutes, and there's a little lull, and then you get back up and go, there's an ebb and blow, the thing. There's, you know, once the camera starts rolling, there's a sense of like, we got to be on our A game because this purr that's happening is expensive, you know? And so there's, I think, a greater attention to detail

when you're on a film set. I love not being feathered to a monitor. I love to be able to just flunk down the camera and look through the lens and start lighting. And it's in my head and my knowledge of the film stock. and nobody else really knows what's what it's going to look like except for me and I love that kind of control and also the feeling of like I don't need all these electronics and tables and tethers and it's just me and my light meter and looking for the lens and that's what I'm what I'm

doing. I would say that it does it. Overall, it affects just how you run. So, and there is a psychological thing that happens when you see the dailies a day later. And I always go in in the mornings before set so very early you know 435 in the morning and just work with the color timer and just setting a couple of looks um they've had my i've taken stills on on set and i've done a basic grade on them through lightroom or something and sent them as reference um and they're kind and then generally the dailies colorist is in the ballpark but then i go and i tweak it for a second and then I see the dailies and it's my time with the with the movie and nobody else has seen the dailies yet and there is always a lift that comes a boost that comes with seeing the work

a day removed and um I'm I'm generally on a high going into the next day that I just don't quite get in the digital workflow and I don't know why that is and maybe it's because I've been watching the monitor all day and I got you know I know what it looks like so yeah exactly and so I really love that aspect of film and in terms of image quality I mean it I think

it's it's mostly a textural thing you know you're you've got the grain and there's halation

and you know and so there's a different feel to film than an ultra clean digital signal but in terms

of like get the field and the way the lens it lenses render I mean all that's yeah

I don't know that's it's all i don't know that i see a huge difference there and um there is i still think that film is kinder on faces um and i think it's because of the way that the um the film is layered uh in terms of the colors you know that you know the red and the green and the blue and the you know or the cyan magenta yellow you know the layers of the layers of the film and um combine with the grain and all the inherent characteristics of a film image, I think, you know, it just, it's, it's gentler. Less resolution, less what people would say K's, you know, to a degree. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think the resolution thing is, I find a little limiting.

and frustrating or reductive yeah it just doesn't ultimately it doesn't um describe the the the the image you know and i think you see that in terms of how airy has developed their their sensors um where they have they have felt like color is a primary the primary driver of of the image you know and so Um, but on the other side of that, yes, absolutely. And look, I mean, I'm using the new Alexa, uh, right now, the Alexa 35. And it is stunning in terms of it, it's imagery and, um, uh, and, you know, what you can do at 3,200 IFO is just like, my God, you know, it's unbelievable. And it's not that noisy. And, um, and, um, and, and, and, and, and, And the color is just spectacular. And you can work with a lot more saturated colors I find on digital because just because of the difference in the sensor. I found that in film, like if I put a half straw gel on a tungsten lamp,

I always felt like that was a lot. But if I do that on the digital sensor, I'm still like putting on more and more making the, you know, the sky panel warmer and warmer to get what I feel like I used to get very easily. I could push color into film much more easily. So, and I think that has its advantages because, you know, you can shoot in a lot of environments where you can't control the lighting and you don't have the same kind of problems that you used to on film. I can easily go into a supermarket and shoot with the overhead fluorescence and then hand to the windows and the difference between the, you know, the daylight looking magenta and the

fluorescence looking green is not as egregious as I found them that, you know, when I was shooting primarily film where, you know, I would want to go and replace all the, all the fluorescence or I would only want to shoot towards the fluorescence and then in another setup shoot towards the windows so I could control that and um so um yeah I mean I but and for a low budgets I really love digital it I find that I do less in terms of lighting I can use less equipment um uh my power needs are smaller um uh so you know there there are a lot of tradeoffs i mean if you you listen to steve yedlin i you know he his name dropped him too many times i swear to god he's avoiding me now yeah well i mean steve is i steve is highly technical and you know very um some sort of

genius when it comes to all of this and he makes a lot of good arguments about You know, the capture, he's sort of agnostic about the capture medium. What's interesting about his approach, though, is, you know, at the end result is that everybody wants it to look like film. So you're still, still your standard is what we, of a good looking image is what we know from a film, a film-based image. And that's, I think that kind of boils down the argument to something very simple. It's like everybody wants it to look like film, why don't you just shoot film? Well, and another thing to your point about like jelling out lights or swapping bulbs or whatever is I've noticed because film seems to have that inherent, as you were saying, like emotional change on set, people are more on or whatever, sort of a gravitas. if you will, if you get to say you were shooting film,

a lot of younger creators or newer creators I've noticed lean into those artifacts. You know, they want to shoot 16, super 16 instead of 35 or, you know, no one's shooting IMAX in college. But because, you know, that's too clean. And so they won't gel everything. They'll leave it green because it those artifacts, you know, that heavier grain eight millimeter shows that they're shooting film.

And they get to be like, look at me. You can tell it's film off rip instead of, right affecting it later in post or whatever right absolutely and and there's kind of a an authenticity that comes with that it seems um yeah i'm i'm a real filmmaker i'm shooting film right well what's funny is you couldn't get away with those same i see that a lot in you know in music videos especially you know like oh just kind of un you know uh lab scan one light uh smaller film stock left as is but you would never get away with that with exception in like the regular film world where they're trying to go cleaner and cleaner and cleaner

yeah to get muddied up and post again to the to a specific degree this time yeah absolutely absolutely um yeah and i mean i think at the end of the day because the real problem in shooting film is the lack of lab support um there are there are very few labs worldwide now um There used to be, you know, hundreds, and so many of them have closed. And if you're not in one of the major hubs or near one of the major hubs, you don't have the support, so it's easier to set up, you know, a kind of remote dailies station. And, you know, the film I'm doing now, I mean, we're doing a very simple workflow

where I had no DIP and I had no Daly's colorist, it's simply, we spent some time developing some LUTs and that LUTT is just applied to the Dailies and, you know, that all the footage gets uploaded by an assistant editor to a portal and, you know, everybody's used it that way. So it's very simple. And it's also very disconcerting to me to get Dailies. at lunch from the morning that you just shot. It's like, wait, let's, can't be right. I haven't approved.

Mentally prostitist. Yeah. So, yeah, I, look, I think that, you know, in regards to, I think your original question about film, I, something that we discovered on Wonder Woman is that we, in our testing we shot some action sequences and um um shot film and shot Alexa and then intercut them and we got Patty and me and Zach Snyder and Debbie Snyder and Chuck Rovin and everybody in the room and showed it and no and the fast cuts nobody could spot it. Right. So, you know, it's, once there's a little evening out and post,

and also it's digital projection, you know, so that's, that's also the great sort of unifier in all of this. I would be really curious to view something shot in 35 millimeter, projected in 35 millimeter against something shot digitally, projected digitally, and really see side-by-side what the comparisons are? Not that I'm going to remember this very well, but when the Matrix came out for its 20th anniversary, I saw it, you know, it was like the, I guess you would call it the Blu-ray version, but it was like remastered I think Bill Pope did his like okay on it and then almost immediately after they showed it at the new Bev and I got to see it in there and it's the nice thing about the digital one from my perspective was that like I had been watching this movie on DVD this whole time on a modest television and there were just little details that I could tell him the big one that and I think this goes back to your point about being nicer to skin tones or skin and stuff, but little things that I didn't notice when I was watching it in the big digital

projection. And I was like, oh, crap, there's like little things in there. And there's like, I was just pointing stuff out. And then when I saw it in film, it just felt different. Like, it felt like the matrix, you know, which is a silly thing that not like it felt like we were in the matrix, but like the movie. You know, it felt like the movie that I remembered. Um, so there is kind of an amorphous, uh, intangible to it. Yeah. Yeah. I. And I think some of that, you know, what Quentin Tarantino says about digital projection is just watching TV in public. Right. And, you know, it's a typical sort of Tarantino comment.

But, like, you know, he's got a point. You know, the public part's important, but. Yeah, exactly. And I just hope that that doesn't get further and further lost. But, you know, the funny thing is, is I remember I saw Dunkirk in 70-millimeter film. And the flicker was so intense. We've gotten so used to seeing these kind of perfect digital, you know, projecting projected images with no weave, no gate weave and no flicker or anything.

I was like, wow, was it like this in the past? You know, this is really intense. So I was really unprepared for my reaction to it. And I mean, you know, the colors are stunning and there's something, you know, there is something, you know, like you were saying, a gravitas to it. Um, you know, the new Beverly showed just recently, um, uh, a technicolor, uh, IB print of the Godfather part two. And I wanted to, and it was sold out all three nights before, before I'd even blinked. It was sold out. And it was great to know that, you know, that there's still a demand for that kind of thing. But, um, you know, to see that.

movie the way that Gordon Willis had intended it would it must have been a thrill and having no memory of seeing an IB print you know and I've seen a lot of I think in film school I saw a lot of classics a very good prints but I don't think anything as stunning as that and you know Willis used to sort of back in the back in the 80s was lamenting the the state of labs and I think what it happened is that after the Godfather 2

Technicolor had shut down the IB printing process and so he didn't have as much control ironically in the digital age we have all this control but back then it was a series of film matrices and you know he could really control

the blacks and you know the saturation and all these kinds of things in the printing process and um so it's just funny how these things kind of ebb and flow yeah well and what's fun i love when this works out uh that was the first fork the second fork was uh learning under or you know working so to speak in film school with people like gordon willis or or conrand hall or whoever um what are some things that maybe you pulled from that that you still keep to this day that you know maybe pop in your mind as you're working on the set you're working on today yeah i i think um well i i was looking enough to uh i shot a movie a small movie called man on the century this was

1997 was black and white uh on film and you know batman forever and I was lucky enough to the lab connected me to Gordon and I spent two very lengthy phone calls with him and he was so generous with his time it was I think it was two two hour conversations oh good happen yeah and he was just dropping knowledge and because I was having some issues at the lab and in my test and you know Gordon's information was so specific on how to sort of root out what the problem was and he gave me a series of tests to do and I followed them to the letter and I was able to you know catch the lab in its mistake and um and uh and everything played out exactly as he said

he said now okay so this is what's going to happen they're they're going to deny it and then they're going to rush and and back to you and say okay we changed all the chemicals in the in the bath and we started printing it at a different light and and he's just like you know they just don't know what they're doing. So you might want to go to this lab or that lab and talk to them and everything played out to the letter. And I still take that, you know, how to test, how to work with a lab, how to communicate with a lab. All of those were very practical things. And I think that that's the beauty of working with guys like him who, you know, they were not only artists, but they were technicians. And they had methods and quantifiable ways that you could just practice

your craft. And they, and it was almost like doing a, you know, a workout or a stretching routine to get ready for, you know, you know, the Super Bowl or something like that. They just, you know, they just, they had methods that were exacting. And then, you know, with Conrad in the workshop that we did with him, and then I had a couple of conversations with him afterwards. And something that I will say in sort of a life lesson that I learned from both of them and then several other DP, you know, DPs that I knew at the time who were very, generous with their time and they there was a sense of that this knowledge had to be passed

down and that you wanted to bring um the younger generation up in in a in a way that um where they were they understood that it was a craft and that it was acquired and accrued knowledge and um and so I've tried to do that with just give, you know, give back a little bit and some mentorship things and answering questions and, you know, being accessible in that regard because they were extremely accessible to me. But then jumping back to sort of a technique that that Conrad would do, and I tried this for a while. I don't really do it much, but every once in a while it comes up is like he was lighting and you know he would put all his and these are all fernel tungsten lamps he would put all of them on spot and i was like spot really that's normally you you flood them all out

to get a nice even beam and but he was putting them on spot and then bouncing them like he would bounce like three weenies in the mirrors and kind of send the in the set send the light all in different directions and they would be overexposed by three stops and um and he called his ambience room tone and he would put some muslin or on the floor and he would bounce light in the floor and he would just get the barest amount of light in the room and he would shoot wide open you know at one nine or something like that which was crazy to me on film yeah um and uh and the results were so stunning you know i i think that he i nobody really likes like him he had such a particularly later in his career he had such a

a unique style and it was hard light and everybody had morphed into soft light at that point you know big sources and cutting them and you know shaping them and but but he was almost like a you know a pointless paper a painter and so his technique was fascinating fascinating And it still kind of blows my mind that he was able to see that and work the way that he did. Those guys in particular, I think, were innovators. And I think a lot's been written about that generation of cinematographers who were coming out of the 60s and into the 70s. And they made a real mark on American cinema after, you know, they were influenced by Europe and the technology was changing. And it was also a great time for American movies.

And they just, they weren't doing things in a traditional manner, but yet still had the craft to back it up. Yeah, that, that, pardon me, that mirror thing is starting to kind of have a resurgence with the, the Lightbridge stuff, the CRLS stuff. and I just got to talk to Jacob, it's sitting here. Have you used that at all? No, I haven't. I mean, enough of my, I suppose, peers are just fascinated by the idea, but it's not even hard to get a hold of Matthew sells them. I think just most people don't, you know, you got to test it a bunch first, which I'm

hoping I can. But was the, do you know if the mirror thing was just to get the light further away to try to get it a little more natural looking? Was that the, yeah? Yeah, to get a harder light, basically. And when he was in a small set, if he couldn't really back off his lights, yeah, he was doing that. And also, the mirror did kind of funky things to the light. It wasn't a perfect beam, you know.

And I think he liked the texture that it picked up. So it was kind of, I just remembered going back. To the other fork about Wonder Woman, but watching that film, a gorgeous film, great job, but it definitely has what I would call that kind of Zach Snyderness about it. And I was wondering how much, obviously he had some influence, he produced the damn thing, but how much influence does he have on the look? Because you'll watch something like Army of Dark, no, not Army of Darkness, Army of the Dead. and that looks very much like him or you know 300 or whatever things that he kind of really had his hands on and then Wonder Woman which is unique but still feels that way and I'd seen that you in that same article were shooting film but had like a gentle correction filter on it to not fully bring it from daylight to tungsten or however you want to think about that um yeah how much of that look is just inherent in film and he shoots a lot of film or how much was that DIY well um first of all zach uh was um you know was around but he was he left and you know he left most of the movie to patty and i assume so yeah basically he's he was very supportive um but i i think

you know, Patty and I felt like we couldn't, you know, there was a world that he had set up. And so we weren't going to completely get out of it, you know. And so I forgot, I forgot he made the whole DCEU. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's, you know, whatever. Some fans love it. Some fans hate it, whatever.

And, you know, now it's something else. But, um, um, yeah. I mean, you know, essentially Wonder Woman shows up in Batman v. Superman, which is so funny. A little Seg, we, I think we shot that, we started that movie in 2015, and we shot, it was a lengthy schedule. It was like over 100 days. And we started in November of, oh, God, I can't remember October, November of 2015. And we shot for like a month. And then we had Christmas break or something like that.

And so I went back home to L.A. from London. And I went to a movie with my wife, and the trailer for Batman versus Superman came on. And it's the one where Wonder Woman shows up in the trailer. And it was a packed house. I think it was one of the Star Wars was on, and we were. seen that and so it was like a kind of a raucous atmosphere but wonder woman shows up in the trailer and the crowd goes crazy and we were in a you know we were a month into shooting and i was just like oh my god we might be onto something right that like you can feel like and it was all

and it was a lot of women like they were just screaming like crazy and um it's like we might be we might be hitting the zeitgeist right now so there was a at that moment there was a real sense of excitement like when we got back from the new year i was like okay this is going to be great so uh and then we just had to deliver it but in regards to the look um yeah i mean look we you know there was a lot of technique that i think that we kind of borrowed or mirrored from Zach's work, a lot of slow motion that's in the movie

is very much in line with what Zach was doing. We tried to make it our own, but it was all in that kind of realm. And, you know, Zach's second unit director was, Damon, Carol, was

on our on our film so he was he was helping us with a lot of the action sequences and so I think it was kind of natural that there was some there was some crossover there and then um and you know at patty likes high contrast and so really rich blacks and you know that's kind of Zach's thing and so we felt like our natural proclivities were kind of taking us in that world anyway and that um you know and in regards to the kind of the the color grade particularly there was a story point to having the kind of icy blue exteriors that you saw in the european section of the of the film because we really wanted to contrast this kind of warm lush uh you know greens and uh and you know bronzy skin tones of themascera

with this modern, gray, industrialized, cold London, you know, the world of man. And that had to, we wanted to give a strong visual contrast. So that's what kind of led us in. And to those decisions. And then, you know, I think, and, you know, we used a lot of, you know, we knew as Steppen Sonnenfeld colored the movie, who is, you know, pioneered. One of the best. The look of 300, basically, with Zach and Larry Fong.

You know, Stefan had an instrumental, you know, sort of influence on that. And he's, he's an amazing colorist. And so, you know, I just think we were all kind of in the same line. So I think you see more of a departure in Wonder Woman 84. Yeah, totally. So, you know, the franchise was more patties at that point. So we did some things differently. Yeah.

I got to briefly meet her at the Kodak Awards, which was pretty cool. Oh, yeah. That was a fun event. Everyone going up and just like it did get me stoked for film again. Like I have a fridge full of film. I still shoot film photography. And I was like, yeah, fuck everyone else. We're doing this forever.

Absolutely. Oh, you know, Janice Kaminsky. We're just standing around and someone looks over. Is that fucking Janus Kamiske? And I was like, uh, yep, yep, that's him. He goes, you know, got to meet the guitarist from Queens of the Stunach. A lot of people there that were fun. Wow, what a random event.

Yeah, I know. It was, uh, it was, uh, Troy Van Lewin for anyone who, but I go out to him like, hey, man, uh, just wanted to say I'm, you know, big fan, but I'll leave you alone. And he goes, well, I'm a big fan of you. And I was like, oh, okay. And he goes, how was that? And I was like, that's fine, man. I get it.

I'm sorry. I'm leaving. He was, I could tell he was kidding. but in the back of my head I'm like fuck he probably gets approached because he's a very distinct looking man so it's like he just gets it every every five seconds can't get away from it but uh kind of pivoting over to uh extrapolation is is there an s on the end extrapolation yeah because it's an anthology kind of thing um have you have you ever seen or heard of the game Detroit become human no I highly

recommend I don't know if you're video game person you have to buy a PlayStation for this or maybe watch some videos or something because your episode of extrapolations very closely not mimic it has the same vibe as that video game because that video game's it's I would be very hard to explain succinctly because in that game you play um an android uh like and androids are kind like they've looked very human they even have the little thing in their temple except it's a circle not a bar um and it's even like the look of it it's it's very i highly recommend you look it up but uh but extrapolations weirdly enough didn't see any ads for it or anything but it's a fantastic it's got every movie star in the world in it it seems yeah uh and amazing

you know everything's great how did you get that gig you know where is it just like oh yeah you shot a bunch of dope shit let's get you in here was there kind of a one of those, you know, someone who knows someone and you're in? No, I mean, and, you know, for the record, I only shot the first two episodes of extrapolation. So, oh, you didn't shoot, wait. Did IMDB lie to me? I don't know. I shot the pilot and episode two.

Okay, well, I watched the wrong episode. Oh, I watched the one. Or a lot of other DPs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, I know, but I thought maybe I was just supposed to. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Bad research. But in any case, pilot in the second episode.

Yeah. Well, I didn't know anybody there. And it all came to my age and, you know, and I had been interested in. um just uh doing something that was um you know let had less action was not you know kind of the genre uh stuff that i had been doing so um and i was really excited to work with scott burns and i you know contagion is one of my favorites and um uh uh uh And certainly, like, you know, we became obsessed with it during the pandemic. So, yeah, and the scripts were fantastic.

And so I was really interested in doing it. And the great thing is that I worked with, you know, not only Scott Burns, but Philip Messina and Gregory Jacobs, all of who, you know, you know, kind of worked with Steven Soderberg for, you know, over a decade. And they all had worked together. And, you know, so I kind of latched on to their collective knowledge of, you know, how to make something like this. And it got a lot of stories about how Stephen works. And so that was all fascinating. And I loved Stephen's work. So I, um, I, yeah it was it was it was just kind of one of those things that was sort of a no-brainer for me because um it was two episodes of you know really high-end television with really accomplished

people um so and and the subject matter is devastating and i thought it was important to be a part of yeah it's uh i've mentioned before i i looked it up it's uh eagle burled that i or it's How do you pronounce this? Hegel. I go. I go. I was supposed to interview him first before you. So I watched his episode first, and then I saw extrapolations again and went, yep, saw that.

And so that's where the confusion was. But I need to tell him to play Detroit. Yeah. But in either way, like I've mentioned a bunch of times, you know, I've been a snowboarder my whole life. And so the environment has been at the forefront of my head basically forever. and seeing a realistic but non-pandery anthology series.

Like it's not preachy. It's like this, yeah, these are all things that can and will happen if we don't flip this around. I thought was a, and also making it kind of cool and sci-fi and like interesting.

I thought it was a great, great idea and then everyone did an amazing job. Well, thank you. It has not been missing. All of these shows are good. Yeah, that's good to hear. That's good to hear. Yeah, look, it was a great experience.

It's a hard, it's really a hard thing to pull off in that kind of sci-fi in that format. You know, where you're realistically trying to say what's kind of. going to happen, you know, sort of science back. You know, we had a lot of discussions with, you know, futurists who are saying where technology is going and, and also scientists about, you know, where the climate is going. And that was, that was the artist thing was for us as a sort of design collective was coming up with how the technology was going to advance. and you know what what we thought was possible and even even the smartest minds that we had access to there's there's still a lot of guessing so you know and I think ultimately that's kind of the message of the show is that these are possible futures you know this is this is what could happen it doesn't mean that this will happen um

So, yeah, and it was interesting to be immersed in all of that. Sure. With it being an anthology type thing, still interconnected to a degree, but kind of individual stories. Did you guys have to kind of sync up what the show was supposed to look like? Were there references for that? Or was everyone kind of given their own thing? Yeah, and that was another reason why it was so appealing, is that the, look did not have to continue from episode to episode.

It was each director, DP team could do their own thing, essentially. We were working with the same equipment. I kind of chose, you know, the lenses and the gear and, you know, from the beginning and then, you know, different teams sort of took over and the crew stayed consistent while the, while the DPs and the directors and the ADs changed. So what'd you choose? The Alexa LF, Pan of Speeds as our glass. And yeah, I think that was the camera package.

And then, you know, and of course different lighting styles and the crew sort of brought in. It was a lot of LED-based lighting, which makes sense, though. Um, um, yeah. What were the, uh, what were the sort of references and, and inspirations for your episodes? because I imagine everyone else was kind of looking at what you were doing, especially if you're shooting the pilot, you know, they're going to lean a little bit. Yeah, I don't know if anybody did, but yeah, it's funny. Well, certainly for the second episode, which was Whalefall,

and it's Sienna Miller, plays a scientist, and she has the technology to speak to the last remaining whale. And then touched on in Lola. Yes, exactly. right because her son is then carries on in that episode um uh the the the biggest influence was the movie or rival um diny villeneuve's uh movie and um once we got into it a little further i realized how much how they really are kind of cousins um and uh dealing with loss and grief and a woman dealing in this kind of proscenium with this otherworldly creature,

and they have this, you know, exchange of kind of what makes people human and how do you deal with greed, basically. And I'm not, you know, the look is not really similar. Yeah. I love Bradford's work. I just don't. He's really an amazing cinematographer. I just don't. I'm not as bold as Bradford in the choices that I make. So yeah, certainly that was a big influence. And then for the pilot, I actually think Contagion was probably had. was kind of looming large over the, multiple overlapping storylines and kind of different sort of environmental situations where, you know, kind of dictated the look of every city. So we spent a lot of time talking about, well, there are fires in Tel Avivian. And what would the fires look like here as opposed to in New York where they also have fires, but it's farther away?

So there were some subtle color differences, but we definitely wanted to feel the sort of patina of the haze. And then we just come out of the wildfires in L.A. and so we had a lot of... And now you're living in Boston or wherever. Yeah, I know, exactly. I don't have a dash on my car. Well, I think that the real life events influenced the look. You know, I...

So we had all this photo reference and even my own photo reference on my iPhone of taking pictures of my car in the morning, like under the orange sun, with the with the particulate you know ash on on my car on my black car you know like really standing out so um so we were we were biasing all the sort of urban environments in a particular way and then we had some arctic environments that we you know treated differently so um and you know because of the multiple storylines it sort of ended up doing that kind

of traffic thing where each storyline was kind of color coded um so um and and that was very much scott's idea of how to you know kind of link all these stories together so yeah um that was fun yeah on on any tv show but i imagine this one was no different uh obviously you're moving quickly especially we got a crap ton of different locations and stuff um in well ways were you able to maximize, like, your efficiency and speed on set, which, I mean, it feels like a very high budget thing, but any television is usually relatively low, but given, you know, whatever constraints you had. Yeah. I, yeah, it was, you know, we had a lot, the vision was sort of much, and this happens a lot to everything, but the vision is much grander than what we could

actually achieve. So there were a lot of cheats and visual effects help. And there was a lot of discussion about what visual effects could and couldn't do. And in terms of maximizing efficiency, I think a lot of it was Scott and I just being on the same page as to what we were going to shoot and what day and when. And we went to location several times and took photos and blocked out the scenes. And, you know, I had my Artemis app and we, you know, we made a little collection of photos. and said, you know, these are our setups. And particularly, we were shooting in Queens at a museum and that we were treating as a convention center.

And it was a big space. And so we had to know exactly where we were looking when in order for me to, and I had some, you know, pretty expensive lighting rigs and things. And so in order to even, get through our day, I just, we just had to know exactly what we were doing. So, um, and, you know, actually that kind of prep is my favorite thing about making a movie is, or TV show or whatever is, is that time spent in prep with the director, um, at the location,

working the blocking out, um, making a shot list. To me, that's where the, the creating, the really heavy creative work is done. You're considering all your, your options there and winnowing it down into what's achievable. And then the crunch of the day focuses it even more. So, oh, you don't need that shot. So Adam Savage calls it hacking decisions or hacking limbs off your decision tree. The crunch does. Make things. That's very accurate. It does. It does. And it's funny how it happens. Like somehow, until you, you get into that pressure situation you know you've got like two or three options and you're like oh i could use that shot and then you get into it and it starts to unfold and you know then it's

it's only that pressure that creates that that like i don't need that i don't need that that ripping out of the the shot list so um which somehow you can never get to in the prep face. Do you find that it was, did it take a while for you to kind of build the knowledge of when you're ripping those pages out, how to not do that because it's easy and how to know that you don't need the shot? Does that make sense? That's not a, I might not have formulated that question correctly, but yeah. No, I, I, I sort of get what you're going at. I think that's a debate I always have. I always have. And there is so much time pressure. But there is always that you just got to move on. You just got to move on. And sometimes it's not about moving on. Sometimes it's about digging in and saying we need one more take and we need one more shot. We're going to do it in a fast manner. But In order for the sequence to really work, we need to drill down and we need to say.

And then on the other end of it, you have to, you know, you have to know, you have to know when to cut your losses. And I think that's just something that comes with experience and seeing how the scene unfolds in front of you. and you can do all the prep in the world but when it comes to life it generally is something a little different and you have to think on your feet you have to be responsive and very present in order to decide then what's what's essential um so yeah uh and i i'm still baffled by it i'm still it's still like agonizing at times to make those calls well and and also i subscribe to the slow as smooth smooth as fast thing and uh i was interview i don't know what episode's gonna be i've done like a hundred interviews at the past couple weeks um but uh he was saying that you know the the era of the shoddy

dp and director trying to whip everyone in the shape is kind of over yeah and i think that's Obviously, it's for the best, but I imagine that stress levels were higher because of that making people go slower. Whereas if you can calmly say, all right, we need this next shot. Yes, we're going to go over time a little bit. But like, it's going to be fine. We're all fine. Let's just do it. And like that will actually end up going quicker.

Yes. Because people aren't making mistakes or whatever. You know, they're collected and focused, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. yeah it's um yeah i have not been on a lot of shouty sets in a long time i think you know it's it's it's been a while um and i've never found that i never found that those were conducive to to good work um uh so yeah i i and not not to say that things don't get

stressful or I don't snap every once in a while at an AD for telling me to hurry up, you know, so it's a different conversation. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But no, I look, I think it's about, you know, something that I've, that I've realized is a huge part of my job and where there's a lot of growth is in the leadership aspect of it. And, you know, now that I'm kind of an older person on set. I'm no longer. It's weird. I, you know, I was one of the younger DPs for many years and then all of a sudden I turned around and now I'm older than a lot of people that are on set. I don't know how that happened. But, you know, I see there are, you know, kids in their 20s, you know, coming up through the camera department and, you know, the electricians

in the grip department and, you know, when I was doing some of those jobs, when I came up, I just remember being tense and up, you know, on edge all day, not only because I didn't want to screw up, but because somebody was always about ready to lecture me or bite my head off, you know? And I just did a very small movie last year in Los Angeles, and we had a lot of, crew members who were had just gotten into the union or, you know, and not very experienced. And, you know, both my Gaffer and my key group

and I all wanted them to have a pleasant experience. You know, it was an opportunity for them to learn. And we tried to take on the role of being teachers. And sometimes we didn't get results that we wanted, but it was it was about a learning process. And I think that that's important. And I wish I had had that kind of, I was very well trained, but it was always kind of a, you know, as sort of an uptight affair. And I think that created a certain amount of

defensiveness. As I got older, you know, I was quick to say, well, I didn't do that, you know. Right. And not practicing extreme ownership. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And now I think I'm much more comfortable, and the environments are much more comfortable to, you know, even for me to say, look, I'm sorry, I didn't judge that correctly.

I made a mistake, but, you know, we still need to do this, though, you know, let's all calmly have a conversation and get this next shot. and because it'll take us longer to talk about it than it will be to do it, you know. So, um, um, uh, yeah, I don't know if I really answered. And I sort of went off on my own tangent there, but, um, the tangent man, man, uh, you know, speaking of learning, um, on, on, uh, extrapolations, you know, obviously every project you learn

something. Is there anything you learn shooting those two films that you've, uh, carried out to, too, too short, whatever you want to call them episodes? that you've carried on into this next film you're working on? Well, yeah. I mean, every job's a learning experience. And, yeah, let's see. Well, first and foremost, like, I'm using this movie I'm doing in Massachusetts. I'm using some of the crew that I met in New York.

So on one very basic level, I've formulated some new relationships. and you know and it's nice to be working with them again and so and there's an easy communication so that that's always great I do love going to new cities and many new crew people and you know now because you shoot you don't just shoot what movies in Los Angeles you shoot them all over the world and all over the United States and you're not always I'm not always able to bring my my longtime crew with me so I have to pick up new people and and I like that process so I feel in that in that way it's also learning how to become a better communicator to new people so um uh in terms of um I just in terms of crap I think um I'm I'm

I've become obsessed with blocking. And although that is primarily a director's job, I've realized that it is also my responsibility, especially when I'm working with directors who are former writers or come from editing and don't have the on-set experience helping them use the camera to not only tell the story but then to move their actors and how they can change positions

and your shot side changes with their motion and and that's it's a delicate thing you got to work out with both the actors and the directors because some actors don't like to be told from the DP right you know where to go And so you have to kind of talk to the director and say, hey, maybe this. And you're going to do it in the right manner. It's all very subtle kind of politics in a way.

Then other actors love the camera people saying, hey, could you stand over there because you look better over here and, you know. Or if you stand here, I don't have to do another shot of you. And we can get out of here sooner. And there are those actors that go. Great. Great. I'll stand it.

I'll put me anywhere. If we don't have to do another shot, I'm really happy. So, you know, and I think not only is the blocking a real art form in it, and, but it's also this, it helps with efficiency. Totally. And, and then it all ties back into crack. So, yeah. And I, and particularly with extrapolations, I had a really collaborative relationship with Scott Burns, you know, in doing a lot of that. And I've, I've learned with somebody like Scott, who is brilliant and does a lot of research and, but he wants a lot of input from his creative team.

And my job was not to say it should be this, but to give him a multitude of options. And if he had an idea, then I would just run with it and present my, you know, do some research, do a test, present findings, show him, hey, it could be this. Do you like this? So whether it was from a lens or a look or, you know, something in the color or, you know, an angle on a building or, you know, that kind of thing. so totally you know the the blocking thing reminds me uh there's you know masterclass the like series i hate that they called it that because now you can say oh someone did a master class and you have to be like like on the asc or like the master club the capital l yeah but uh the ron howard one he does like it's like a four hour section where he blocks a whole scene out from one of his

films with like new actors and everything and they like do the lighting they you know make a pocket it for sound. The whole thing, it's very fascinating, very educational. Yeah, I'd like to see that. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Please. They keep email me about these guest pass. I'm like, I don't know what the hell wants to you. Oh, good. I'll take it. Awesome. Well, we've got a little bit over time, so I'll let you go because I know you probably got stuff to do. And actually, normally the last two questions I ask, you've pretty much already answered. So we can just Oh, wow. Leave it there. But, yeah, thanks so much for sticking with me.

And that was a fantastic conversation. I'd love to have you back talk about whatever you're shooting now or just if you want to shoot the shit. Sounds great. Yeah, thanks for having me, Kenny. I appreciate it. Frame and reference is an Albot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan,

and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. As this is an independently funded podcast, we rely on support from listeners like you. So if you'd like to help, you can go to buy me a coffee.com, Flashframe and ref pod. We really appreciate your support. And as always, thanks for listening.