Frame & Reference Podcast - 99: "Mrs. Davis" DP Joe Anderson

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

On this episode, Kenny talks with cinematographer Joe Anderson about the series "Mrs. Davis." 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 today you're listening to Episode 99 with Joe Anderson, DP of Mrs. Davis. Enjoy. Have you, uh, have you been watching anything school recently? Um, I just last night watched the first two episodes of documentary now. Oh, really? Okay. From, from season four, um, where they do, um, Werner Herzog. But he's, um, he's like in the Tibetan mountains doing a pilot for, a comedy pilot for

CBS, a multi-camera pilot, and I have not laughed like that in a very long time. Like, it's just, they're so good with their inside jokes. They know what they're spoofing so well. The DP and co-director, Alex, started out, Alex Bono. He started off doing SNL digital shorts. And so he's kind of like, and this is like a really great kind of, like, like, step from doing those, which are all about parodies, to doing like really good production value.

They really mimic the format of the cameras they used in the different documentaries that are spoofing. It's really, really fun. And if no one outside of the movie business even gets the jokes, that's fine. I do. It's amazing. I think I've only seen one Werner-Herzegg documentary, which was the one about the volcanoes. like the people who lived under the volcanoes

and other than that I think I've seen him act in shit yeah he did a weird I remember seeing him acting does he act in I guess he just directed bad lieutenant too a very strange

I guess detour for him but you know everyone's got to pay the bills so good for him yeah that's a very that's an interesting uh i mean his career's nowhere near over but i was going to say that's a very interesting career trajectory for that man to be like super into docs and then just go off and do everything else like yeah and i was i was looking him up on i mdb and he's got tons of self credits he's and he appeared in things he's hundreds in in Germany in the 70s.

So he's been, you know, I didn't realize he's been a fixture for half a century now. Yeah. Interesting man. Yeah. Easy to satirize. A lot of material there.

Did you, I was normally I'll try to do extra looking up, but I was on a gig all day the past two days. So I didn't have as much time. But I didn't, I wasn't able to look up like where, how did you,

get involved in film to begin with, not necessarily like, oh, I was a kid and I liked film, but like what kind of broke you into the industry after you, or how did you make your way towards quote unquote proper filmmaking? You know, yes, I do have one of those origin stories. I think a lot of people do, did find movies as a kid. There's certain movies that kind of like got me excited. But I did have a good fortune, fast forwarding. I did have a good fortune of going to a nice film school, and I met at NYU.

I met a bunch of amazing filmmakers there, even though we were just 20-year-olds who didn't know how we were going to do it. But, you know, I've been really fortunate just to be in this kind of really cool circle of people like Sean Durkin, Antonio Campos, Janica Bravo. They're all directors who are doing big fancy stuff. There's also a good couple years for DPs when I was there. Adam Newport-Bara, Jody Lipes, were all from kind of my year or two. And I was kind of intimidated by film sets, to be honest. It's not necessarily an environment that is a warm, welcoming environment on every project. And the kind of couple little moments I'd had working on even kind of bigger budget student films that had hired some professionals. It was really, I was quite discouraged. So I said, okay, great, post-production

is the place for me. And I'm going to learn avid. I'm going to learn final cut. I'm going to do all this. And I did all those things. And I love editing. And I think it actually kind of, I have a little bit of a background in editing. I think that does give me some unique qualities as a cinematographer. I've said it 100 times that being an editor makes you a better DP, because you just know which shots to avoid or like what time you can actually, what time, where your time should be spent. Yeah, totally. If necessary. And we can go into that too. Like, for example, a lot of directors I've worked with nowadays don't want to spend a whole lot of time on the white shots. The white shots, Ors look great, they show off the production value, but they literally will pop back to those

for a moment and then back into, you know, coverage. And a lot of times now directors just want to shoot that at the very end. Use the, you know, the actor's energy is good right at the beginning. Let's do, you know, let's shoot their medium shots and close-ups. And then once we got it in the bag, pull back, shoot a take or two of the wide shot and kick on. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Well, I get, feel free to just steamroll me because I tend to just, you know, chase fireworks.

But what I was going to say was that the, nope, already lost it. All right, go ahead. Okay. So I'm in editing and it's fun, but it's kind of lonely. And though you have a lot of power and a lot of creativity, I just kept, there's just something about the game of rascals that are running around film sets that I just couldn't get away from. And I'd taken, I'd kind of dabbled in every kind of department in film school.

And I'd taken a cinematography class. And I was quite, I didn't feel like I knew everything that a DP is supposed. to know in order to be a D.P. There's lots of responsibility. You know, there were kids back then talking about, I like a thicker negative. I like to overexposed by a third of a stop or underexposed. And it's just like, I didn't know what that meant then. And it was just intimidating. And I took a cinematography class and the teacher was a bit cynical of lots of things. he he kind of said you know it's great that the school is focused on directors but there's 250 kids per class

you know not everyone's going to get a job as the director wouldn't it be interesting if you could learn another trade as part of the business as you work towards figuring out what you're best at what you love doing and he literally said how come no one there's not enough emphasis on learn how to blow to camera and these were back in the days right before the red one was even a thing and lots of student films were still being shot on 35 millimeter even 16 mail beer and I learned how to load up mags and so right outside of school I had a skill that I could kind of promote for myself

And I went on places like Mandy and Craigslist and Facebook and just looking for just experience. Though I didn't exactly, it wasn't making a living for a bit, it took about a year of kind of hustling and working on student films for sometimes, you know, $80 a day, anything that I could, you know, do. But it kind of made an impression on cinematographers. they would bring me on stuff that's maybe slightly more fancy than a student film eventually and I became a focus puller. So I came up quite formally

through camera department. And it gave me a nice kind of introduction to all the different aspects of the business in terms of I worked on music videos, commercials, movies, and you name it, everything except exercise videos and porn. I think I did a little bit. And I worked like that for a number of years.

I worked for primarily Jody Leip, so I'd gone to school with. I also got the nice opportunity to work a bit with Bradford Young. Oh, nice. Right before he kind of exploded. In fact, the last movie I ever worked on as a Focus Polar was Anthem Body Saints, which that just kind of came out in this year at Sundance where he exploded and became this famous guy and, you know, obviously he's, you know,

rock it into cinematography, superstardom. But that was kind of a nice way to kind of go out as a cinematographer or as a focus bowler. It was that that was my last movie. Yeah. There's, that brings me to a handful of questions. but the first one I thought of was did you experience a lot of luck with Mandy? I would not answer in the affirmative, but I, and granted, this was 18 years ago at this point,

so I imagine there's been some evolution potentially. No, no. I keep trying to cancel that thing and I forget. Right. It's been handing them money for no reason. I think it's just tough when you're starting out anything you can do

to kind of get your name out there I think is a good a good thing to do I think even if I do think I got a couple probably a couple of projects from Mandy back in the day but what it did also try to kind of force

me to do is I had to kind of come up with a bio or a resume and a photo and so it did a little bit kind of at least guide me in that regard to try to kind of create I know a name for myself in that way yeah when I was still you know as you said like just hustling for jobs I got I think one thing out of manate this is a few years ago and they were they were like it's for a true crime true crime show or something like all right and they're like we need you to just film it needs to look kind of crappy so just

use your cell phone it's fine and it just needs to be like you driving your like mounted to the dashboard. And I was like, okay, like looking outwards. Great. And then so they're like, all right, we'll use you. That sounds good. Also, you need to dress in all black with a ball clava, have a backpack on forward on your chest, and walk into this very specific bank. And I was like, I am not fucking doing that for $200. Yeah. I, I've not been quiet in that situation. but you really do when you're you know when you're just starting just kind of anything i would take anything i remember just not knowing where we were shooting i would just get in the van and oh we're in stanton island okay cool um yeah it's it's a fascinating world lots of creative people it is a lot

like a circus in that regard there's all this stuff going on um it's really fun what i've learned over the years it's there's kind of a place for everybody obviously we're all kind of trying to climb the ladder and you know do fancier stuff and have more people see what we do but um yeah that's something i think we all kind of have in common we're all in this like circus troupe yeah well and the thing nowadays i found and you can tell me if you agree is that like it it's perfect i think a lot of people when they're coming up um once they hit like a certain budget or certain style they're like all right i can never go back and i found that like a lot of times it's we were saying with the Warner Herzog, like you kind of moonlight doing other stuff to pay the

bills. And a lot of times on those smaller, dumber sets, let's say, you end up meeting people who are working way below their pay grade who can bring you higher up if you're, you know, handy and helpful. Yeah, that's a real kind of concern for myself, too. It's like I started in indie world movies, even doing, you know, I worked on tiny furniture, which was like a 30, thousand dollar film shot in the director's house uh i've had some of my favorite movie making experiences have been on small things in some crazy county where there's no cell reception and it's it's obviously very you know exciting to be able to work on bigger stuff and have a bigger audience and have more toys um but yeah i i i don't want to get i don't want to get myself into kind of a

and handcuffs situation where I can't do it if the crew isn't this big or I can't use these kind of lights and we'll see. I have lots of friends who are in the same predicament or production designers, costume designers. It's kind of a common thing. But you know,

ultimately it's a nice problem to have with all the problems. So you're saying like they, people won't call you because they're like, oh, he's too expensive now. I do that. Totally. A lot of I, you know, there's a writer's strike right now, so there's, you know, no kind of union writing projects are springing up at the moment. I used to, you know, make a living doing non-union commercials and things like that. And yeah, I think those calls are no longer coming my way. Yeah. Well, and also I'll say I live right next to a rental house over here that I'm good friends

with. And they said, well, when I talked to them like last month, that they haven't, they haven't really been getting orders in since November it just seems like at this moment which you know this podcast tends to be evergreen but maybe not this exact conversation but um yeah it just seems to be kind of dead overall since late last year yeah i think you know there's a bigger there's some big things happening and i think it's more than just the writer's strike i think we're still very much in the early days of these streaming platforms, kind of that business model. And up until recently, it was all about growing subscribers and throwing as much money and getting as many shows going. And though that was really nice, lots of people had jobs. There's lots of stuff being made. We're in a little

bit of a correction era now. And it's kind of like, okay, wait, how do we actually make a profit? So I think, I can't obviously speak. I don't know what's going on inside the student. But like there's some real kind of back to the whiteboard kind of conversations happening. I hope it's a positive thing. Yeah. I just saw like right before we started talking. I saw like a tweet that someone was like, well, the issue from their perspective seems to be that the studios went from selling films to selling subscriptions. Exactly.

So that changes their focus, you know, on not to say that things that are coming out aren't quality. fucking mrs davis excellent film uh television show but um it does it the priorities seem to be shifted you know yeah they're not selling subscriptions with the films they're just selling subscriptions right no and it's you know there used to be there was an era where if a movie studio had a big movie come out and fail that suddenly threw into disarray they're you know the next years movies. Maybe they took fewer chances because this movie failed. They need to kind of get some safe, safe bet movies out into theaters. Obviously, there's some bad parts of that kind of business model, too. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. The one that I have been screaming about for

years, which seems to be more coming to a head as the years progresses back in the films. I had a pretty vicious punk rock streak my whole life and so in college when they were like um when they taught us about the paramount accords i was like yeah fuck that system and then like as as i've gotten older i'm like wait wait it's happening again and then i think a few years ago the supreme court was like actually um those don't matter anymore vertical integration isn't the thing it's fine and it's infuriating yeah i i mean it's curious i've never heard anyone talk about that in terms of is that going to come back, the idea of you can't make something and put it out on your own platform. I don't think that I don't think that'll make it to the Supreme Court if that trial happens.

I think those days are behind us. But yeah, it's a new, new world. And, you know, I just hope we get to keep making the stuff that we love. I, you know, there's, there's been a handful of, I suppose, online conversations about it. But I, I am optimistic about, you know, even with people, well, now this is very topical, but like even people freaking out about AI and stuff like that. I'm like, it, it's like music, man, like a lot of really like engineered pop music, let's say. I love pop music just like anyone else, but it can be feel very sterile. And everyone always goes like, whether or not that's, you know, whoever, Taylor Swift is their favorite musician. they always go back to like, oh, this one album felt a lot better.

And it's when it was human, you know, like when you, what's something I used to think? Like, like, the idea of perfection is boring. Like, it doesn't excite the human soul when everything is absolutely laser perfect and level and everything. When there's a little bit of, you know, wabi-sabi to it, that's when people get excited. And I don't think you can code in that imperfection because it goes off feeling. and feeling is inherently human. You can't teach a computer or you can't engineer feeling, you know, at least that's my thought. Yeah, I mean, this is kind of one of the big topics of, you know, 2023, well, it's the TV show that I shot.

It is, yeah, it's, you know, the uncanny valley is not the same as, you know, the kind of, charming human imperfection that you're talking about. And I think, yeah, there's some aspects of this AI, large language model, generative imagery stuff that's happening

that is, it kind of makes you feel a little small sometimes and not know what, you know, where are my values in all of this and how will the world value what I do. But I'm ultimately

very kind of optimistic about it, kind of in the exact way, as you said, where maybe as more and more computer-generated stuff happens, there's going to be more value in kind of an excellently very insightful kind of human-made thing. And in my kind of most dearest projects that I've shot, that's a little bit been kind of a through line well before even this kind of really very recent technology has come out and has a name. You know, there's this idea, too, that when I think a lot of creatives are under pressure to kind of deliver something that does feel very perfect. As photographers, we see what's popular.

We see what gets accolades and we kind of feel like we have to kind of do the same thing. But at the same time, you are a little bit sacrificing your own kind of, creative spirit in copying something else. So though it's, you know, it's awesome to be influenced and learn from what other people are doing, I think, you know, you can't, you know, I wouldn't want to hire a plumber who this was, they didn't know anything about plumbing. I want to work with people that know the craft. but I think it's it is those kind of human kind of DNA that you can kind of put into stuff

that isn't computer made I can go into lots of more details on this too but I really do value not shooting in a way that feels sterile I even kind of only try to use remote heads only when necessary because I think there is a little bit in addition to a a little bit of a, just a little delayed reaction. There's also just this, like, judarized thing to it where I like a little bit of breathing and, you know, you can feel the camera, you can feel the filmmakers,

you know what's happening in front of the camera. It is a magic trick. There's all these, like, things coming together to make it all work, but it did happen. It is something that was recorded in front of the camera. And I do think, I think the audience subconsciously, feels that as well yeah yeah no it's it's the i mean the my directing teacher back in college was like

uh you know filmmaking is making the audience feel the way you want them to feel when you want them to feel it and that engineered perfection doesn't make you feel anything beyond like you know it's it's the empty calories of it all um the other thing i was thinking of was like it in terms of like the value of human creation. I feel like, you know, you can make a wooden, a machine, a lathe, whatever, can make in a perfect bench. And you go, that's good. That's IKEA. You know, it serves its purpose. It's great. And if everyone's buying that perfect bench, awesome. Service, you know, utilitarian, great. But then one person's going to handmake a bench that maybe even looks the same. But if you know it's handmade, people will pay a billion dollars for it. Because they've, I think,

generally at least people who can afford it value that the fact that a human made it you know it means more inherently yeah i live um upstate new york and we're kind of close to some old like shaker um properties and there's lots of kind of this this the the values they had kind of kind of imbued the rest of this area with this idea of stuff that's handmade and it's really carefully made. They're not just throwing stuff together. It's made to be specific dimensions and what it not. But it is, it's the human element. The fact that like you said, someone made this and it's very like, it's very functional and it's really precisely does what it's supposed to do. makes it still valuable hundreds of years later as opposed to just something to like drop up your butt for you know a couple couple years yeah well and also i feel like we as a as a human society value artifacts you know and i don't think a calax shelf is an artifact but you know that aforementioned handmade bench is oh my grandfather made this and it was been in our family the whole time versus

my grandfather bought this and it we didn't throw it away yeah i mean that's a great word i'm gonna i'm totally going to use that um artifact because you know it's a funny thing in the 21st in the 20th century each decade kind of had its own iconic things you know even within cinematography you think about like the 70s had zoom lenses and lighter camera the 80s the 80s is just using, yeah, I don't know, like diffusion filters a lot. HIs? Yes. Keynoes in the early 90s, like changed the game.

And music and fashion and art all kind of did this thing. And we've kind of, arguably, we're in this era where we're worried about the future of kind of AI, but we've already been about two decades in terms of algorithms, kind of suggesting things to us and businesses. are making decisions based on algorithms, and they don't necessarily come up with new ideas. These are kind of designed to be correct, to try to help what they think you want. And arguably, that means we kind of a little bit have less of a definition of what our time is. And I think you're right.

I think artifacts in some of these special things that we make hopefully do kind of, that's the flag that we get to set. point in time. Yeah, no, that's actually an excellent point that because I, that's something I think I've had in the back of my head is, is not to get too deep on a cinematography podcast, but I think the general part of the general unrest we all seem to be feeling has to do with a lack of identity within a culture because right now we are exploded in time. We can have everything, you know, the sounds from the 20s are, uh, can be perfectly replicated. like remastered you know so that so those artifacts aren't stuck in their ways they can all be modernized and now you can have anything or in cinema in filmmaking especially with you know how

excellent vFX are now you can make anything there's no um the now is ephemeral there's just kind of it's all now now you know time is is a flat circle as they say so yeah that's an interesting want to think about uh well that's it all right no uh did you actually i did want to ask uh because you worked for him was there anything that you uh kind of learned working on uh bradford young sets that that uh you've carried on with you um through your sonatography um though i'd be very shy to compare myself to him um i do think just his is kind of spirit i think more than anything um obviously he's kind of well known for really kind of pushing the boundaries in terms of darkness. But he, I think is, and that's not necessarily like what I'm known for, but I think just his

approach to the work, his spirit, he really does kind of approach it like an artist. And, you know, when I worked as a focus polar, I worked with cinematographers that are very technical, some are not technical, and of course he knows the technical side, like the back of his hand, and it always, like, impress you because he kind of so much as the artist that it's like, oh, he actually really, he actually really knows the engineering of what we were working with. But he was just super creative. I remember there was one day on that movie where we were shooting inside a bar and um his gaffer christian epps who's been working forever and has an amazing um resume um christian said let's as diffusion let's use a paper bag and they went and got a paper

bag and cut it out so it made a flat brown paper bag and that was like the quality and i'm sure he'd use that at some point before but it like you know that was in the the tool bag waiting to be pulled out again. And, you know, there's just stuff like that. The way they use practicals, there'd be times where we would have, you know, two lights lighting up an entire practical lamps that art department had provided. But that doesn't mean he just turned the light on and start shooting. Like, you know, those things were sculpted and because they're not movie lights, there's kind of, you have to add stuff and flags and fusion and all this stuff to make them work for what you need them to do. But they still have a unique quality. And just that, he, a lot of times when we make

stuff, when DEPs shoot things, we kind of, we have all these references. We come up with lookbooks. Maybe that's how we got the job in the first place, a way to communicate with different department heads. But oftentimes you start shooting and you kind of, that stuff kind of gets, you know, put behind you and you're just worried about what's in front of you. And sometimes you can kind of forget about some of your early references. He just made boards, printed out the boards, of books of still photos, frames from movies, and just would have that on set. Sometimes he'd play music on set.

He just created a really nice environment that, you know, yes, we're, you know, we're craft people and we've got to, like, make this thing and we have budgets and schedules. But it's also, he kind of made the experience as nice as possible, too, which is great. And it's something that I try to bring, being that I worked as a crew member for so many years, I like to think that I'm aware when I'm asking for something that's a little bit of a technical challenge or something, if I need to, like, change a light or something that's, I'm aware that it's difficult. And maybe I can kind of help the, keep the mood good when we have to do something pretty hard. Yeah.

Yeah, that is. what uh by comparison what are some things that you've seen on a set maybe where uh the department heads were not helping you out you know things that that taught you to things that you immediately went i'm going to avoid that when i'm in charge i'll put this in the nicest possible way um sure when shooting on a bigger project a lot of times i'm not operating which is a little bit of a funny thing i love operating. I think the movies I've done where I'm in there on set. Best job on set is, yeah, it is. And it's also the hardest job on set in many ways. The responsibility of doing that and planning the lighting set up for tomorrow or talk,

you know, we lost a location for next week. So here's some options. You know, there's lots of stuff that you need to be doing to kind of stay ahead and not operating. is, you know, on a project like Mississa Davis, in that scale, it's really not an option to operate yourself. And I think some, I think it can be difficult when you're doing all those other things, your heads in tomorrow and next week and next month and in post. And you have to kind of, you have to make sure you're still a presence on set. It's very tempting to just go live the DIT booth. You're tired. It's hot. You've been talking. Your voice is a little raspy. It's kind of nice. It's easy to just sit down there. A lot of times it's air conditioned in those

little tents. And I think that's bad. I think it's good to have your kind of will and your spirit, your energy on set. I think the actors like it. I think just a continuity like that is really good. So that's, you know, that's one thing that I certainly try to do is make sure people can see my face a lot of times i'll too i'll just i'll try to be on set even if i'm not operating i'll be there kind of like i remember seeing like tarentino the way he directs is like he stands next to the camera and looks at the onboard monitor there's i kind of enjoy doing that as a dp there's other times where i have to have a bigger monitor and i need to be a little bit farther away but that's that's some advice that i think is a good a good move yeah do you are you a naturally um

sort of organized person like does that sort of having your brain in tomorrow next week come naturally or did you have to kind of learn those skills that is it's a little of both um when i was a focus polar jody lipes the dp that i worked with most often i think i definitely know he was annoyed that i didn't take enough kind of like notes on the distance you're supposed to measure everything and write down and everything and keep it all um that was not necessarily in strength the I think as like a cinematographer though I do find it kind of it's easy to like start thinking about that stuff just because you you kind of get an idea of the repercussions if you're not prepared you're not going to have a light the right place or the thing's going to be

too dark or there's going to be problems that ultimately no one else is going to like reprimand you for, but you're going to feel like your work is not as good as it could have been. And I think that's really, as I've grown, that's the biggest thing that I've learned in the last couple of years is like, not that many people are going to call you out on B minus lighting, for example, but you know it's bad and you feel like you could have made the scene just feel just a little bit more connected to this emotion or to this thing that piece of you know, information needs to be told in the story. So you're just hurting yourself in that regard.

And it's, you know, at the end of the day, it's kind of your work. And so it's just like, that's not to say it's all about me and it's all about the cinematography. I really think the movie is the most important part. The TV is, the TV show is the most important part. It's not all on one department head. It's not all on one, you know, department. it's kind of this amazing collective that is movie making but yeah i think think that's something a nice

little lesson i've learned is like it's i got to do it for myself to make sure it's like good for me and if my values are kind of coordinated coordinated correctly with the project um that'll be what the best best way to do yeah well and i'll even go one step further and add that uh something that i've learned is not only will you not get called out for B minus lighting or whatever, but even if you do worse, unless it's catastrophic, most people won't call you out on set. They just won't call you back. Right.

They just silently will not call you again. You will have no idea why. And that's, you know, that's another issue kind of with movie making in general, too. It's like, you want there to be a meritocracy. You want to like, okay, I did a good job on this project. I'm going to be rewarded with a bigger project or a bigger opportunity. I'm Rob Richardson forever. Yeah.

And when you, I think if a project doesn't work out, it's just, it's a, nowadays, it's just kind of a, it's quiet, it's lonely. You don't, you don't kind of get the kind of boost that you were hoping for, not the many people connect with it. And then that's, you know, kind of a very, that's a newer type of, in some ways that's harder than just people kind of throwing tomatoes at you and giving, you who comes down. I mean, I've always been the type of person who prefers the tomatoes because at least that's feedback. Exactly. Yeah. I love a director who can like have opinions and tell me and push me and you know, it's it's hard when it's the opposite because then it's then just you. It's just my ideas and really my best work is when I do something the director that has an idea and we make some work to perform a third idea that's even better as opposed to just me making stuff

look, you know, look nice. Yeah. I don't care about nice. I want interesting. Yeah. The other thing that's my problem is I tend to have a pretty, I've been told a pretty strong personality. And so I, but I think if I had to psychoanalyze myself, it's because I want that aggressive

kind of feedback, not that I'm aggressive necessarily. but I will, you know, be blunt a lot of times. And I think it's because I want people to be blunt with me. You know, you put out into the world what you want to see back or at least what you think you deserve and stuff. And I think a lot of people get thrown off by that. So that, that has been something I've had to learn is like, couch everything, you know, quietly think about it before, before saying something.

And as a department had, you know, you have power and you have, you know, particularly as a cinematographer, you're one of the people on set talking the most. And I find that I get a little, I'm a little more careful with the words I use nowadays. Totally. With all that kind of springing us into the second half of the conversation, how did, how did Mrs. Davis come across your table? I think Ms. Davis came into my life come in an amazing, I think it's one shot that I did in a movie is that got me at least got the door open for me.

So you do your best. Yeah, every shot. Every time. Yeah. I was shooting a movie a couple years ago called The Old Man in the Gun. It's a very special movie, Robert Redford's last movie in the camera. And I'd grown up in Utah and Sundance had kind of always been going on every January. and kind of always looked up to Sundance.

I always kind of felt like all the cool kids come to town for two weeks, and then I leave. I wanted to be, you know, maybe not a cool kid, but I wanted to be up there in the middle of it all. So cut to X amount of years later, I'm shooting Robert Redford's final movie. It was pretty cool. And we did a shot one day where we were driving in a car,

and Redford's behind the wheel. David Lowry is in the passenger seat, and I'm in the back with Airy 416, shot on 16mm for that. And that was all we had. And it was just, you know, again, I have a camera department background. I know how to kind of work a camera on my own. So we didn't need a whole crew of people stuffed in there. And we just went for a ride and got some wide shots, got some profile shots. And at one point, the director David asked me to zoom in.

on Robert's earpiece because in the story key has an earpiece that's the police radio so he's one step ahead of the police and David liked that moment where I zoomed in grabbed focus zoomed out a little bit which is kind of a common way to kind of when you're shooting off the aisle to grab focus and David loved that kind of little imperfections to that shot and that shot's in a movie it's in the trailer and so cut to 2022 um the director of mrs davis owen harris he is it just arrived in hollywood he's from england and he kind of was looking for a dp that didn't have tons of kind of tv experience he wanted someone that had a little bit of movies a little bit of tv and because this project is truly all over the place he wanted one with uh you know had done a lot

stuff, a lot of different things. And he reached out to me through my agents, my agents, you know, said, hey, this really interesting project with some interesting names behind the script, I want to talk to you. And we sent me the script. And I'm usually kind of, because working on a long movie or a TV series is a huge time commitment, I'm usually a little cool. I got to like keep it at the distance. I'm not sure. I don't want to fall in love too quickly. But I put the script down and I was just like, what is this? This is maybe in my opinion the best pilot I've ever read, the best, you know, this could be incredible. So I prepared a lot. I wrote down all these questions. The first episode is just full of so many things, so many strands. I had like a

page worth of questions and notes. And I had an interview with the director over Zoom. This was still slightly COVID pandemic times. And we just kind of hit it off. And it was just, you know, we exchanged kind of ideas. And I think a lot of times when a department had cinematographers being interviewed, directors and the producers are just trying to find, is this person, do they like the project? are they interested in doing it?

Do they, are they reliable? Are they going to kind of go off the handle? Are they going to, you know, be really expensive? Do they basically have the values? Do they understand what show this is? And I think Owen and I just really kind of like hit it off. And the interview process was pretty easy. I talked to him a couple times.

I talked to producers. I'm sure they did background checks. and all this stuff on me and offered me the job and flew to L.A. as soon as I could, and that's that's that. Yeah, that's a fun. I love it. I love the idea. It would be funny if it was literally just the earpiece photo. Like, we got earpiece in our TV show. He shot an earpiece once. Exactly. I think it, I mean, it might be as simple as that. Mrs. Davis does have some very complex connections in the in the show itself it also has some really dumb connections and i think that movie was just that was the thing that kind of got my my foot in the door uh and the rest is

history yeah it is it is a very uh i think i think peacock needs to put out some different marketing materials because everyone i've talked spoken to about the film there or the show they're like the nun one and I'm like it's like a sci-fi comedy and they're like wait there's a nun I'm like yeah yeah she's the main character it's fine like I think yeah because it is it is a wild I think it actually I should be a little more kind to them it is a hard show to market I assume because it's it is very all over the place in an amazing way it is and the funny thing is and this is something I've learned it's kind of getting getting you know my getting more experience in the business is everyone is pitching the project.

When Rector has it, they have to pitch it to prospective crew members. I had to do that when I'm interviewing gaffers and key grips. I'm having to kind of pitch the project. And I can tell you, yes, it's very, very hard. I think one of the struggles Peacock has in marketing it, too, is it's such a cool, complete package that you don't want to get. give away. I think they're quite hesitant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first trailer really is picked from a couple things that don't really give anything away, which is kind of limiting

because the whole series is a big, big complicated web, and then it comes together and lines up like really nicely. But maybe now that it's been out for a while, maybe some more marketing can come out. It's a little less risk adverse to spoilers. Yeah. I will say for anyone listening this pod, well, I guess we don't really have to get into spoiler territory to talk about certain scenes. But yeah, it is. That's the other thing, too, is like Netflix falls into this problem where they'll like have a show that's interesting and then they can't market it because it is interesting like that. And then they cancel it because no one wash it. It's like just let them finish it and then let people find it. That's why DVDs worked. You know, like shows like, I don't know why this came to mind first, but like, like, I don't know why this came to mind first. But like, like, I don't know why this came to mine first, but like, like, like mall rats or even fight club like didn't hit until it was on DVD and then it found its audience and then you know it's one of the most popular films of all time now like you can't keep just taking down stuff that doesn't work immediately like how how expensive is hard drive space even famously Seinfeld didn't the first season was kind of hit or miss and it's not

they had NBC really had to kind of believe in the project and kind of you know give it a little more time not just one season to kind of blossom and and obviously they were i think happy they did yeah uh the the show let's not avoid spoilers i think you know maybe we can give some heads up if we're going to spoil something but let's not avoid it let's let's get it out there i think for more the more the merrier sure sure uh i did kind of starting generally uh a lot of the show is outdoors. And I was wondering how you were approaching

a lot of these outdoors scenes because there's some scenes that take place in the past, there's some scenes that take place in the present, you know, a lot of different, you know, desert,

England, so to speak. I don't know, was that actually, it doesn't matter. So how are you, how is your, what's your general approach to outside lighting?

Because I find it can be more difficult than indoors. One of the most exciting parts of the show is that it is a road movie. It is like a road and there's really one, there's only one set that we keep going back to in every

episode. And it evolves as the story changes. But it was largely yeah, on the move. And that is, that's tricky. It's tricky when you have, you know,

I think some days we had maybe as many as 250, 300 crew members, doing stuff with cast. We certainly had some scenes with, you know, 500 extras. It makes it hard when you're not just kind of doing that in a simple controlled environment. One of the kind of aspects, particularly the first episode, is this kind of Looney Tune-style chase. And you think about Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote, there's like in these deserts with roads and long vistas.

And, you know, we kind of had to find that based. somewhat near, you know, where we were based out of in Warner Brothers stages. And we, so we did, we found these amazing spots, but they're, you know, two hours away. They're out in the desert. It's very expensive to kind of travel there. Crew had to be put up. And so you can't, you can't just sit around and wait for like magic hour, just shoot the perfect light. Obviously, we did that with certain scenes. We focused on, you know, getting the right time of day when we want to get this shot, but lighting and kind of working around and with the sun and against the sun was fortunately a big value that Owen, the director had. And he was a big help in terms of

not only kind of supporting me, but also kind of driving that, like let's not shoot in the middle of the day, for example, any exteriors. That we would even went to the lengths of we built a set, there's a little set where the chapel, where the nuns pray, it's kind of a triangle-shaped room. And we had that built, not on stage, but kind of two hours out of the city in a place at this, where hay is stored at a working farm. And that allowed us to avoid having to be shooting dialogue scenes in the middle of the day. Obviously, you can always just float overhead diffusion to kind of make the sun less awful, but it still kind of looks artificial.

I usually try to avoid trying to softening the sun too much because it looks a little unreal. What's that stuff? Highlight? That's usually pretty good. Highlights one. Yeah, I try to use it as light as possible if I ever have to. but we really really focused the schedule on the sun so if we had a scene that was several pages and say we had six hours to do it we would start facing east so the sun's up everyone's back

lit maybe when we middle of the day that's when you do the wide shots pull back you're not having to like really make sure anyone's too you know perfectly lit so try to see the environment mostly maybe in the middle of the day and then when you're looking on the other side of the line, do that stuff later in the day when the sun is going down in the west. So that was one of the big

things. One of the big pieces of ice I have from learning from this show is just do whatever you can and get, if there's anything you can shoot in the middle of the day, doesn't have to be right there? Can you rework something? Can you put something in a different setting so you can just pop over and shoot something not at

noon? That makes it big difference. And being in the East Coast DP, certainly the sun was a learning experience for me. We're used to build things that work is like amazing, like flags and solids and stuff for flowers sometimes. Negative fill, positive fill. This time it was, you know, you're just out there in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, aside from some sunscreen, you know, try to try to get indoors or do anything you can to put something. underneath or maybe stage the scenes undercover or something if you need to to shoot all day long outdoors yeah it does that I was wondering the show does have a pretty unified look to it

especially for being you know like I said just time travel there's all kinds of shit but I was wondering if there was kind of a general lookbook that you guys had or if there was like a reference that you guys were pulling from or if you kind of were just going going off of the way you like to light things and shoot things, so speak. The tone of Mrs. Davis was like so tricky because his, there is this kind of like comedy, goofy element to it. Betty Gilpin deadpans very well. Betty Gilpin is our generation's Buster Keaton.

She's amazing. She can be both her physical comedy. is incredible. Also to her deadpan where the audience kind of just we intuit onto her what we think she's thinking. She's really incredible. And I would certainly have to work many, many more times with her. Sure. But. Sorry, lookbook. Yeah, lookbook. One of the cool things about being like the DP that kind of shoots the pilot, I shot for the episodes. So I did, you know, I did get to create the look for the, for the project. And because it's got these comedy things, but it's also a drama, and it's also about

these kind of amazing, timely, prescient ideas, it kind of had, it was a little bit of a tightrope walk to kind of get everything in there and have it all balance. So we, you know, and we did that by creating reference images and lookbooks and putting them together and talking and showing Tara, showing Damon, showing the director. It's really easy these days compared to when I was just starting out. We have things like shot deck.

A lot of a shot deck. Frame grab. You know, when my stuff gets up on those platforms, it's a proud day. Sure. And those really make it easy to kind of like very quickly. You have an idea.

Find that image. Let's find another image. Let's find maybe. maybe something I hadn't thought of. You know, you can kind of go down a wormhole and find something different than where you had initially started. And we basically just found a bunch of reference stuff.

You know, Wild at Heart was certainly one. We did like Fear and Loading in Las Vegas kind of has a big on this. Sound of Music. The first episode has this incredible two-minute montage where we're just seeing the nuns at the convent, which I just don't know that you see on TV very often. And, yeah, Sound of Music made a big impact on that.

Peewee's Big Adventure, you know, helped us out a bit. And I think a big one in terms of kind of the Lut was Bazelormann's Romeo and Juliet. That's incredibly made, that's like an anamorphic movie that has both like really kind of formal compositions and also like tons of personality, the cameras whizzing all over the place. I think

you know, nowadays Baz is shooting digitally and kind of doing stuff dialed up to 11. I think that movie was dialed up to 10 and I think it's like the right the right spots for me in terms of like really dynamic cinematography that

really tells the story but also makes all these things like larger than life. And that kind of felt like a decent fit for this show we were doing. So I had to put lookbooks together. I had to kind of make a pitch book to convince Tara and Damon to shoot widescreen. And once they were signed off on widescreen, then we moved that up to Peacock and Warner Brothers and they gave that a thumbs up. So that a lot of times does become the responsibility of the DP doing the pilot. And it's, it's actually, responsibility but you also really get to note the project inside and now to define things and if

you do a good job on that you're you then get to share all that with the other dPs in the series so whenever someone would come on i know you had Xavier on your show who's become a great friend you know you show them your dailies if there's an edit available they get to see the edit show them all the lookbooks, and then you just kind of talk about some of the challenges. And again, I keep using the word values, just like what is important to this project. And with this show, it was really important, kind of what we were talking about earlier, just not trying to engineer perfection, you know, let, let, you know, have some personal expression in there, let it feel kind of as unexpected as the writing is.

And that's really what the show needs. Yeah. What were some of the things, you know, in those discussions, I think it's probably easier to say, like, here's what we're not doing. You know, this is what the show isn't? What were some of those things that you were like? We're not, you know, a lot of times it's easy. Like, we're not going steady cam. But like, for you guys, what was it?

I try not to go too much into what we're not doing. You know, maybe someone who's very powerful, who can take a punch. David Fincher like his stuff is exquisite and it's you know incredibly immaculately made but we were like

let's not do that let our dolly have a little bit of like personality in there like it's okay lighting wise and lot wise I definitely try to kind of

you know with the Lut try to have it feel a little bit like film I think a lot of the movies I referenced are kind of even 90s

era movies and I think that's It's just the way film stocks were back then and the way the video transfers were. I just think that's kind of baked into me. Did you, did you have a, I noticed the skin tones in the show are more what I like. And I was like, but they're not, they're not like super saturated. And they kind of have a very, I mean, I'm sure everyone just had like nice makeup and shit. But there was like a smooth look to every, did you, was that engineered in a specific way?

Or was that just a result of the kind of overall let that you were building? I think as a result, nothing that we kind of explicitly wrote down that we wanted to create. I think a lot of times, you know, nowadays shooting digitally, you kind of are, it's, you're kind of rewarded for shooting dark. And it's very much a good format for shooting dark, low contrast. So you can have, particularly in drama, which is very forgiving. You know, you can have a dark room and have just a little bit of light hitting the actor and it looks really great. But this kind of project, it wasn't, it is, it's got so much mystery in it that it didn't feel like the right approach was then to like have visual mystery in every shot and hide things. Like we want to see the creativity that has gone into the writing and the production design and the costumes and the VFX and the special effects.

And it just felt like having stuff, I kept using this word, which is maybe a little unfair, but I think it's kind of generous to have things just a little more visible. And I just think the audience kind of enjoys the adventure of kind of getting to like see this, you know, the amazing stuff that was happening in front of the camera. So, you know, I think that just kind of lent itself to a certain kind of. kind of level of lighting and I think it just helped make things exciting we weren't trying to kind of be mysterious and navel-gazy where you know the show is a wild mystery and we're kind of just we're kind of just hanging on ourselves as the filmmakers yeah yeah it's not I would never

say it's an overexposed show but it is a it is a there's a lot of lift to it and the highlights are managed but still like very present you know upper upper range of the spectroscope, I guess, or waveform. We also have this funny, we're in this funny moment where we're making things for HDR and SDR and every, every network kind of has its own workflow and I've had some work better than others. I'm personally, I like the SDR version of Mrs. Davis a lot better. If anyone is not sure which to watch, that's my recommendation.

But, but yeah, we had a great fun. and we wanted the show to look fun, and I think that was our approach. Yeah. You had mentioned the widescreenness of it. What? Because it is a very anamorphic show, sometimes more obviously than others,

but certainly gives the image a lot of character. What lenses were you shooting on, and how did you come to that decision? We shot with lenses that are a little bit less well-known. I think they're going to take off because they're incredible. but it's lenders we used were called Caldwell Chameleons and it's it's a fascinating interview with those people really oh well no gecko gecko my bad never mind there's a lot of different people kind of entering the anamorphic space so it's a good time i think um nice that was yeah exactly

when we looked at atlas lenses as well i basically i didn't come to it thinking i has to be do this i'm usually not that kind of DP. I like every project we need to kind of like get in there and see what's floating around in the ether and let's just start testing things and see what feels right. Obviously there's technical requirements like how fast the lenses are, how sharp they are, how not sharp they are. But I kind of came on to these chameleons after just testing several things. And it turns out the director, Owen, had, he's a friend with a friend with,

one of the guys that helped develop them. Nick Selle is a guy who himself is a DP. He worked with chemical wedding to make the Artemis, directors of the Newfinder app. Oh, sure. Yep, yep, yep. And he also, I mean, guys, amazing. He also helped engineer these lenses. And they do something really special.

I'm not trying to be an advertisement for them. But there was a quality of just the kind of old C-series, Panavision anamorphic lenses that are kind of hailed as the greatest lenses ever made for movies. And what these lenses are kind of nice as they don't have a two times squeeze that most animorphic lenses do. It's a 1.79 squeeze. And so shooting digitally, you're actually getting to record more pixels. And though it might sound like, well, aren't you losing something by not having this two-time squeeze, but in reality, you're getting the same shape. The ovals of the out-of-focus background are always dependent on just how out-of-focus an image is. So I could not tell

that these were not the classic two-time squeeze. But I think what was special about them is the quality of the blur in the background, funky stuff on the top and bottom that really just really just kind of like had the right look for the show. I can't describe it any better. It's just it makes the story a little bit larger than life. It's not kind of photo realism. There's, you know, lens distortion, which just kind of goes in line with this idea of not wanting, you know, the work to be perfectly engineered and seem like it's made by a machine. But we did kind of an interesting thing with them. Those lenses are made for they're made for super 35 and you can have a conversion to a little bit of a diopter inside to make

them give a larger image circle to work with larger format which all the streamers kind of have 4K requirements now and at that time airy only had the lf that had a 4k sensor but i kind of did the opposite with them i used the super 35 version called the s see standard coverage i use that on the large format alexa yeah and we're still able to just fall in line because of the 1.79 um squeeze we just hit that 4k requirement um but it meant we got a little bit extra of that like funky stuff on the top and bottom which i just think kind of helped you're just always a little bit subconsciously aware that you're looking at an image you're not 100% lost in the show you're not 100% dreaming yet but you're just 1% you're aware that you're

watching something that was crafted and in a show this a little bit about kind of voyeurism and never being able to get away from technology that idea just kind of kind of made sense to me and so we happily went with those lenses and they were they were great and they're fast and And there's lots of different focal lengths. So that's good. And they could give us two sets, which is also important when you're shooting a big show and you got to do all this stuff. And so we worked with Keslo there in L.A. And yeah, that was our camera package.

Yeah, it's actually funny you mention all that because I did the spec commercial last year. And I'm friends of the Atlas guys, hence the T-shirt. But they gave me their silver series. And I had that C-500 I was talking about, but I forgot to ask for the large format expander. So I was just chucking the lenses on there to see if they would cover. And they all, except for like one of them, even like the 21 millimeter basically covered, which was wild.

That thing is real, very animorphic. But, yeah, it's like you can, sometimes it's fun to go a little off label like that. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things, you know, going back to Bradford Young and Jody, these other cinematographers that I worked with, they were always kind of looking for ways to break the rules. The first job I ever did with Jody, it was Super 16, but he was shooting reversal film

and then cross-processing that and shooting anamorphic. So it's just like every kind of, you know, anything you can do to kind of like throw a challenge at yourself, he did on that project. Bradford, when we were doing Ain't That Body Same, I think we were under-exposing, for our day exterior's, three stops. So, not pushing in the processing of the film. So super-thin-negative that had to be brought up in the grade and the image kind of, like,

it almost falls apart, but you're like, it's incredible the look that he was able to get with, you know, I guess it was 250D stock, under-exposed two-stop or three stops. So I think it's always good to just, it can be nice to give yourself just a little bit of a technical hurdle, which does really give each project a real kind of signature. That's a nice kind of nice shorthand of creating some memorable stuff, I think. Yeah. Well, and also limitations always make you make creative decisions. You know, if you're given the world, you end up making something not horrifically interesting. Totally. One of the most favorite things I've shot in the last five years, it was just me and I think a C-300. And me and the director just were doing a doc-style commercial, very low budget. And I had, I think, a Canon 70 to 200 lens. And, you know, I'm moving in myself, doing everything myself. But it's like I was just able to kind of, because I had that limitation that was just me doing it, it was really something that was quite special to me in terms of how.

kind of off the wall like there was no rules so I could kind of do what I wanted but I had some severe limitations at the same time so yeah I think I think that's great yeah yeah I guess you know for the first like five years of my freelancing career I had one camera and basically one zoom so I I unintentionally developed a look you know so it would be easier to hire so I think when you draw those lines around your technical uh limitations you're allowed to do a anything creatively because you know if the gear won't break on you basically do whatever you want um i did want to ask before we kind of let you go was there was there anything in the show that you were particularly uh proud of in turn obviously the show's a whole but like any any

particular scene or or um set up that maybe was challenging that you were able to overcome or you just think you know maybe simply just looked very pretty and you're very very happy with it or or anything like that. I mean, I could probably talk for two hours on the stuff that I'm most proud of. There was a funny situation we had where in the end of episode two, there was kind of written this scene that kind of has a bit of a visual kind of a real kind of exclamation point, which is also really great to get to work on a project where so many of these amazing ideas are visual.

The scene kind of dovetails several different kind of elements the show's dealing with where Simone, the main character, has kind of

come across this old man who's looking for a piano that his wife used to play. It's got a little nostalgia and he's trying to find it. And she says, I'll pray for it. You know, effectively saying,

you know, I'll use my face to try to help find this piano. She, gets about it. And instead, this algorithm who's trying to kind of, I guess, kind of push Simone into doing what she wants, goes over, you know, goes over behind her back and gets all the pianos in the world effectively. And great shot. Yep. And for this man. And so we knew we had to like bring it. We had to like really kind of execute this shot at the right time, the right time

a day. And of course we've scouted it. It's lots of great tools for finding when the sun's going to be like perfectly right there. And we're feeling good about it. And about five days before we're set to shoot that scene, the location manager comes to us. And he's usually kind of a easy going guy and he's got a very serious look on its face. It's like, we think we lost that location. Christopher Nolan is going to blow that location up for his movie for Oppenheimer Oppenheimer they're gonna nuke your set

so unfortunately we can't shoot there so we said you know annoying what are you know but what are we going to do I think he's going to win out this he's going to win this fight he's got to do he's got he's going to yes exactly

and we're pacifists and he so we had to go rescout and we love that location but what it kind of forced us to do was we went back, we walked around. The obvious place was no longer available for us. So now we had this kind of limitation. We, scars going around, we kind of, you know, there's probably six of us. We all went in our different directions. And oh, in the director, he just happened to

walk up a hill. He said, Joe, come take a look at this. We walked up the hill and suddenly now you had an elevation and you had a perspective that you didn't have had you just kind of gone to kind of the most comfortable place, the most convenient place. And the scene just has this amazing thing where this car pulls up, Simone gets out, and the camera just pans over, and you just unveiled is, you know, hundreds of pianos. And I'll say, too, to, you know, to credit Emma Farrely, the production designer and her team, I think they got about 40 actual pianos out there. That was going to be my next question. because it, I saw that scene and I was like, all right, I am, I was immediately, this is how stupid I am. I saw the first like 10 up front and I was trying to see the line where VFX started and it must have been way further back because I was, I assumed it was like eight pianos that were real.

No, exactly. And there was so, they did such a good job. I almost was saying, do we need VFX? Like, we have 40. That's like amazing. It's a lot of nails. And the other problem of it had to get the pianos set there. without trampling all this, this tall grasses. So they were, they were amazing on that. That was, you know, just a incredible kind of challenge. Yeah, I think what else was there? I assume trying to coordinate all the stunt work must have been a challenge. Yeah, I mean, that's, when I read the script, I was just kind of like, it's always, it's scary,

but it's good to kind of go into a project where you don't 100% know how you're going to pull it off. And I think luckily everyone was kind of in the same boat on this. And the first episode has, I think what was described as, I think it was called the bat-shit crazy chase. And that's what we called it on all the storyboards. And I think the donut chase. Call sheet, yes, exactly. And that project, I mean, the chase had to take place at all these specific plot point. but it also we had to find locations that would permit us to actually like do these crazy things on their roads

including so you know we weren't allowed to shoot um the places we loved we couldn't shoot on the weekday so we had to come in on a weekend we shot that i think was our first full day of the shoot so everyone's very nervous um we had three cameras the first day the first day we did a little many day with simone in her um in her cell um i call it the uh reverse striptease she's like getting dressed into her her nuns habit um that was just kind of a nice kind of like warm up day we all had and then saturday we're like going in at guns blazing um and the scene kind of culminates in this amazing idea that wasn't even in the screenplay i think it was owen the director's idea was that they at one point jump through an enormous donut

which of course they do of course that's what they should do that makes sense um for they and the safety involved was very important doing a motorcycle jump with two people on motorcycles is a whole different ballgame for one person so we just did lots of testing lots of training we rolled five cameras on it we had enormous camera crew that day and then a little bit of help from VFX to kind of really make it perfect and yeah there you got beautiful hopefully kind of iconic shot yeah honestly the shot that i think is pretty iconic and i think you shared it on your instagram is uh during the fight where the nun stabs a guy through the head with a knife that's in her stomach that's i think one of the testaments to this project and just

to kind of a good project in general is tara and damon made this incredible kind of engine it just worked and you could feed stuff into this engine and like you could come up with great ideas and they had scripted it I think it literally says kill bill fight like the fight scene takes place but they didn't have in the scripts level they didn't have every little thing you know figured out and I think it was our Spanish stunt coordinator or fight choreographer who came up with that idea, where the American stunt coordinator had kind of designed this fight. And then we took out to Spain and had a Spanish fight coordinator. And it was, I think it was his idea to do that. And it's just incredible that, like, on a project that's so big, so many moving parts, that still

people that are, you know, just in for one special thing, still kind of have the opportunity to add to the project. And that's one of the favorite. details in the entire show and I've seen so many people's reactions in social media of just going like realizing when that happens that they're in for a treat with this yeah it reminds me did you ever watch the raid I didn't know so the raid it's by oh he he's done well for himself now but at the time it was his first film not gareth edwards is it care anyway it's a it's an Indonesian film shot on an AF 100 of all things, which made me go, oh, I guess I need an AF 100, so I bought that when it came out.

But there's a scene where there's like, there's a hallway fight and it's, uh, this guy grabs another guy and jumps backwards through a broken door and basically chops his head off with like the bottom of the doorframe that's all spiky. And that's like the same thing where it's like, oh my God. And you go, this is going to be the best movie ever. No, it's, it's lovely. when you kind of have these little like these little moments that get you um and yeah those can be so hard to find that's one of the other you know issues that happens when you make when you try to

over engineer a project you lose out on the happy accidents you lose out on someone having a fairly spontaneous idea um and yeah that that's a great a great great yeah um i want to be you know uh mindful of your time because it's probably later for you than it is for me but uh i do end probably you're in new york um that's how you know i'm not if you've noticed the light levels dropped i've been dialing down the light in between questions to try to balance out the levels it's raining here too for like the past two weeks it's been gross um but uh and i just let it i let my light get shitty and i i feel like my camera's starting to die on you know anyway it doesn't matter. Oh, I didn't record well. I guess I don't have a camera angle for me. It's just

going to be you in the video. That's fine. I was going to warn you about that. I, because I remember that happened in Xavier's episode. Yeah. Make sure you're recording. That's fucking hilarious. That it's going to be both, both Ms. Davis is where I don't have, uh, oh, well, that doesn't matter. That's a little little tip for everyone. Backups are important. because the nice thing is zoom records everything um i pinned you so it only keeps you but uh all the audio like stems are kept separate everything is like so we didn't lose anything except my face but um no one's here for my face anyway yeah um that is funny though that it's the two of you anyway uh the the way that we tend to end the the podcast with the same two questions which you may

have heard. First one, you kind of answered one of them earlier, but first one, if you were to put Mrs. Davis in a double feature, which I know is hard for television, but imagine it's one film, what would the other film be? Oh, that's amazing. No, I was, hmm, hopefully I answered the other one. What would I do with this? You know, it's, I think I would choose, just because this was kind of a reference for us, but not a literal one. Is Mulholland Drive? There's another podcast called Blank Check, which is kind of about, they kind of go deep dives on directors who have gotten very famous and done big projects, and they go through

all their little projects as they grow, and someday they get their blank check project where they can kind of do whatever they want. That's cool. And one of the, one of the podcasters kind of has this nice saying where he said, all interesting movies are puzzles or dreams. And I think that's amazing, but I don't necessarily think it's an either or. I think there's kind of like a spectrum. And I just think about that quite a bit where, you know, what makes me as a day of a special is not the fact that it's kind of a mystery and a puzzle you're trying to get together. It's also not just a complete, surreal, visual kind of experience.

It kind of is balancing both of these things very well. And I think kind of the best example of that ever is Moholling Drive, which now that I've worked in movies, I've kind of learned, I understand a little bit how that movie ended up being the way it is because they shot it as a TV show. and then basically, when the pilot wasn't picked up, they shot 30 more minutes that kind of tells, it just kind of destroys everything that happened in the hour ahead of it. And that's just been to me kind of one of those kind of touchstones of great art that is both a dream and a puzzle at the same time. So I would say maybe consider watching those two as a double-hatter.

That's a good one. because I guess blue velvet would be a little too gross. Not a good. Oh, it's a great film, but it would be a hard pivot from, maybe that would be a good contrast to Ms. Davis. Second question, which you kind of already answered, and I feel like this maybe doesn't fit your personality as I've gotten to know you, but a lot of people ask, oh, it's the best piece of advice you ever got.

But I feel like it's always like, oh, stick with it, you know. so what's the worst piece of advice you ever got oh boy what's the worst piece of advice um it's not entirely movie related that's fine i was told before i moved to new york um never go out anywhere after dark um don't ever carry more than 20 dollars on you because you're you're gonna get mugged and it's going to be terrible and that was terrible advice i think it's great to go in the world um and then one day i was actually mugged in new york when i was in film school and i had i had dailies in my pocket as a matter of from a student film that i had shot and the muggers took the dailies fortunately the director had a backup copy as well these were you know

this was talking many dv days right but also backups um so i think though it actually might have helped in one case, I think the worst advice I got was never go outside at night in New York City. Yeah. Well, and I think to expand on that, like, especially these days with the Internet, this will be an interesting wrap-up, it's a lot easier to be fearful because, you know, if one person gets mugged in New York back in the day, you'd see one news article about it in New York. now you'll see a thousand articles about it everywhere so in your head a thousand people have been mugged and it could be near you because your local station picked it up or whatever but statistically it is the safest time to exist that it's ever been yeah and i think that's you know segue bring it full circle i think that's one of um i think that's true i think we need to

kind of not need to keep the images that we see in media we have have to kind of be skeptical of them and we have to hold on to what our humanity is our kind of random bumping into people on the street we have to kind of keep doing that stuff and um being a part of a project like mrs davis certainly kind of you know has those values that adventure that sense of kind of let's get out there and and see see what we can do yeah totally well uh i feel like we probably could talk for another two hours, so open invitation to come back whenever you'd like whether or not you have a new project. But yeah, thanks for, thanks for hanging out, man. Yeah, I'll absolutely take you up on that. My pleasure.

Frame and Reference is an Albaugh 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 slash frame and ref pod we really appreciate your support and as always thanks for listening