Frame & Reference Podcast - Lens Month: Atlas Lens Co.

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

In this episodes, Kenny talks with Dan Kanes (CEO and co-founder) & Daniel Lewis (Atlas lens tech) of Atlas Lens Co. Throughout the episode, Kenny and the Dan’s talk about their journey into the industry, the influence of skate videos and the founding of Atlas. Enjoy the episode! If you haven't checked out Atlas hit this link! Check them out on social @atlaslensco  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. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we've got bonus Lens Month. You know, we actually recorded Lens Month a few months ago, and then as they came out, I was delighted to hear that the folks at Atlas Lensco wanted to talk to me. So we've got Dan Cains and Daniel Lewis, the CEO and production coordinator over at Atlas. And we had a fantastic, fun discussion talking about anamorphic lensing, you know, Dan, CEO Dan is a prolific cinematographer and camera department guy as well. So we got to talk about, his coming up in the industry.

He actually used to work with Eric Measure Schmidt. We talk about that. We talk about, you know, being skate guys and, you know, kind of starting in skate films and our influences there. You know, we're cut from the same cloth, which is really fun. And, you know, get to talk about the lenses that Atlas makes and sort of that entrepreneurial spirit. Dan actually also founded Paralinks if you have ever used those products.

So just a really awesome, in my head, bonus talk. Not that I wouldn't talk to them outside of Lens Month, but, you know, it all fit the program and all that. So without any ado's being furthered, here's my talk with Dan and Dan of Atlas Lensco. So the way I like to start is kind of asking everyone the same question, which is how did you get started? So Dan, I know you are a cinematographer. You worked in the industry for some time. Oh, we've got two Dan's. That's going to be weird. Okay. But tell me how you got your start. He goes by DJ. All right, cool. But yeah, how did you get started in the industry?

Yeah, thanks for asking. So my name is Dan Keynes. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Atlas Slenceco. And the way I got started in cinematography is the way a lot of people do as a production assistant. I knew that someday I wanted to become a cinematographer and I wasn't quite sure of what route I might be able to take to get there. So the way that many of us start is just being a gopher, doing whatever is needed on set, running around like a chicken with our heads cut off and charging walkie-talkie batteries and picking up expendables from expendables recycler if you're here in L.A. working on low budget jobs and quickly I realized that the production assistant life is not for me I wanted to learn from cinematographers and be closer to the camera action on set and uh I saw the way that the lighting crews would work I thought wow that's for me like lighting has always been an inspiration um it's why I decided to become a cinematographer just being inspired by the way light

falls in nature and um you know i think the earliest kind of things that told me i want to make movies were skateboard movies with my friends so we'd watch a lot of the girl films skate movies yeah right here by spike johns and and his team and um someone's uh you know gesturing us through the window here we're in a little fitful you're in the front of the office and i don't think they know you know, podcast. But yeah, so we'd make little skate movies with my friends and I inherited to hand me down Minota X-1000 camera from my parents. And, you know, this is in the days before digital photography took off. So I scrounge change to get roles of film and go photograph my friends and, you know, get them developed at Costco and stuff like that. And then we were fortunate

enough to have dark room photography class in my junior high school, which, I mean, what a treat. Yeah, I don't even do that in high school anymore. No, I mean, I really fell in love with the way that we could do things in the dark room to manipulate the image by dodging and burning. And it's just such a tactile experience. And I fell in love with the photographic medium there and knew that this is something that was going to be part of my life for the rest of my life. Yeah, when you that I had a nearly similar start with the skate films and like Spike Jones just Spike Jones simultaneously doing skate films, Jackass and Oscar nominees all at the same time for me was very like empowering, so to speak.

Yeah, and those early music videos from him like that first Weezer video like when Weezer was good. so many good videos. It's like the Beefy Boy Sabotage video, which is still to this day, like insane and just such a banger. I showed that to my kids. My daughter's four. And my son is 19 months old.

And like just to see their reaction to something like that was really cute and funny. That song too is like a legit adrenaline shot in in music. Like there's no way you can't be like, ah, you know. I actually just picked up the, uh, uh, Spike Jones, Michelle Gondry, uh, Chris Cunningham DVD box set. Ooh. Like that was or I picked that up maybe like two, three months ago. But I remember when I was getting into film school, some guys that were ahead of me were like, this was our Bible.

And I couldn't find it for years. And then I found some library had it and they sold it to me for like 40 bucks. This must be in the zeit guys right now because I was just reflecting about that trilogy of DVDs and some of the other. you know, I don't know if you've seen the Aifex Twin Window Licker video. Oh yeah. That was a huge back in the day. That's another piece of like early discovery of

animorphic cinematography for me and going like, why does this look like this? And it's just so bonkers. I love it. Yeah, that was, what was that? Window Licker was like 2006 maybe. Oh, way, way before that. I feel like it was... Is that 03? I feel like it was 2001. I could be wrong about that. It could be. I just remember.

I just found it later because of the internet, but I remember that video. I remember thinking like, why does this look? Same thing. Like, why does this look like a movie and why is it the most unsettling thing I've ever seen? What about you, DJ, you, you cinematographer at all? Are you more in the, like, science kind of realm? I'm more in the science. I actually kind of got started here as a sort of like complete random, like, event.

So I'm sort of like things just colliding, me looking for somewhere to work at a the same place they were hiring. And I didn't think it would be a good fit at first because I think when I started, I probably couldn't tell you the difference between a lens and a camera. And I have a good general understanding of math and science. So I was able to learn pretty quickly. And it's so weird to me now, kind of looking back, I'll look back at my old like Instagram photos that I edited and I'll just look at them with like such disdain because I'm learning all these lighting, contrast, facing all these different things where I realized

looking back, you know, it's sort of like an artist looking back at like their old, you know, drawings when they were three. It just looks so much different now. I mean, that's the move, isn't it? Baby. Say again?

I came in as a complete baby about three years ago. That's legit, though. But I will say you don't have to be too hard on yourself because I think all of us like, when you start, you edit the hell out of it to make up for the fact that you have terrible technique. And then at a certain point, you've got great technique and it doesn't really need any editing, you know. So you can see your own progress.

Perfect description. Yeah. Did, uh, coming up in the film industry, I saw what one of the probably, um, bigger gigs that seemed you work on, uh, Dan was, uh, the number 23, which I actually liked. I know it got panned, but I enjoyed it when it came out. Um, working on bigger sets and stuff like that. Did you have any sort of mentors or anyone helping you out as you came up as a cinematographer? Absolutely. I mean, I would say reflecting on that exact film and those times in my life, I was working as a set lighting technician as a third electrician for Eric Messerschmitt.

So at that time, Eric was the gaffer. And so I worked with him on TV shows like everybody hates Chris. I worked with him on bones a little bit. you know I was sort of like kind of the baby of his crew and he wasn't that much older in years than me but the way that he carried himself I always knew this guy is going somewhere and I should be watching just his approach not only to lighting but his approach to politics and to set etiquette so you know that's a big thing coming from being a PA and then getting into set lighting you know as a PA you can kind of observe set etiquette and pick up a few things. And then once you get into more serious roles, even if it's just a third electrician where you're running cable and setting lights,

a sort of etiquette and procedure gets kind of burned in your brain just by necessity in order to make your day. And we were working crazy hours on those TV shows. Like everybody hates Chris, it's a comedy show. But we were working like 16 hour days. So it's kind of a pirate's life. And it was great because it really taught me determination and hoodspa, as they say, just to have guts. You know, you have to really fight for what you believe in if you know that it's right.

But there's also a kind of calmness you have to find in sitting in the pocket, watching, observing, listening, and then anticipating the needs. before, if you can anticipate needs on a film set or in film production in general, you'll go very far because it's just about kind of a zen art. You've kind of find your flow. You see and listen and observe, and that's one of the things that's been really inspirational to me. So going back to the mentors, I'd say, Eric Messerschmitt, when he was a gaffer, and then seeing his recent success as an outstanding world-class cinematographer has been very meaningful and Harfell for me.

Francis Kenney, ASC, he's a mentor to me. He's a hero. A lot of the ASC members, the older ASC members, and even the people who run the ASC like Alex and Patty, they're an inspiration to me because they, you know, they're not only there for the parties, but they're there for the buildup and the tear down of the parties that happen and, you know, making sure that the members know when the parties are

and making sure that things are set up. So I've been really fortunate to, you know, make friends with those people. I volunteered at the ASC as a digital imaging technician, oddly enough, for their masterclasses for a couple of years. So I've learned a lot there just listening and observing and talking with members. So that's been a really, you know, amazing treasure to me. People like Christopher Chowman, ASC, huge inspiration. A lot of really great people. David Darby.

Yeah. The earlier when you were talking about the politics, is there, um, did you ever figure out a way to kind of, uh, fight for an idea that you know is going to be received better, uh, without treading on too many toes versus acquiescing and letting, um, let's, let's just say it's a producer, but whoever client maybe, um, who's like, no, trust me, do this. and then you do it, and they're dissatisfied with the, and I'm asking this because it just happened to me, where I was like, I knew it. It's a great question. I mean, this has definitely been, that's a challenge I faced as a cinematographer many times.

In lighting and in cinematography, it's really all about showing people. So, you know, the biggest inspiration that's come to me as a manufacturer of lenses from being on set is in film, we're rapid prototypes. prototyping every day, every shot. So really at the end of the day, prototyping is just about showing people how you see reality

and it's filtering it, right? So if you let someone feel that the idea is theirs and it came from them, they will own that idea more than you ever could convince them. And so if you're able to subtly show someone an idea and let that kind of become part of their mindset and then let them tell you what they saw that you showed them, that is so rewarding for them.

And sometimes it's just about knowing that balance. Like, recently I did a shoot with Cardi B. So I still do filming from time to time when it doesn't interfere with my work here at Atlas. And I had a Cardi B and Facebook job. And everybody was predicting, OK, Cardi B is going to be late. And she's only going to want to give us five minutes of her time.

She was the utmost professional. So she gave us all the time we needed. The one thing that she did do is make me move the camera. And I'm not going to tell Cardi B. No, I have to be exactly three and a half feet from you because we're trying to simulate a cinematic Zoom phone call. And that's how the lens should be. If Cardi B tells me I need to be five feet back

to make her look good the way that she knows she looks good, I'll do that and I'll just put a longer lens on if that's what she wants. and we'll make it work. You're going to say, oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you've got to go with the flow,

but, you know, if you show someone something, so it wasn't about her telling me it has to be six feet back. It was just, you know, we just have to give her that comfort level and that confidence.

So that's, it's a give and take. It's all about giving people the confidence to be a participant and working with you in one way or another. And when we have to work quickly in rapid,

prototyping a shot or rapid prototyping a product, it's all about that collaborative effort and just listening, and even if you know something's better, it's sometimes you have to show someone. So the way you can most tangibly present that in a gentle way, I find often works the best for me. Yeah. Now that you're, I don't know how much contact you had with the ASC during the bulk of your shooting days, but now I know with the lenses, you're, you're definitely around them a lot more. What are you learning from those guys being in those rooms, both as a part of the sort of mechanical part of filmmaking, but also as an artist? I think the biggest thing I'm learning from ASC members is trying to approach things with grace,

right? So approaching things with graceful calm and confidence, but also knowing that whatever we're presenting may not be right, but it may be right in the moment. And to be able to be able to just listen to people and also share your ideas is just it gives me so much joy. And I think that's the key. And that's the thing I'm learning from the AAC members is at the end of the day, even if you're Roger Deacons, you're still the cinematographer. You're not the director.

So if the director wants something and the producers want something, how do you meet in a way that makes sense for them and for you, you know, to represent their vision? I mean, they're trusting you enough to represent their vision. And I think the higher level you get in your cinematography career, the more people will not even question you. So you kind of have some opportunities there as an artist rather than as a cog in a wheel, so to speak. you know we're all helping make sure that this machine turns over so we're all gears in a way but how do we be okay with that and then the higher you get eventually you're an artist so they're not even going to question choices that you make at some level but at the same point you're only as good as your last film so you still have to make the right choices in one way or the other

but and then you have to make the accents look like they're on purpose right at the end Like happy little trees, like Bob Ross says. Yeah, yeah. Happy little trees. It's funny you say that you're, I think you're like the fourth or fifth person who said you're only as good as your last shot. And I feel like, or your last film, last shot, whatever maybe. And I feel like that mantra has sort of been lost recently.

I don't know about, you know, it depends on the style of work you do. But I feel like a lot of people are like, you know, it seems like people are more comfortable phoning it in because the medium has been devalued. Maybe not in terms of film or television, but kind of the day-to-day commercial, industrial, whatever gigs. It does feel a lot more like you put one light here, you put one light here, you turn it on, everything's going to work out great. I know how to color it. Go ahead.

I'm starting to. Sometimes you need to, sometimes people want to go eat McDonald's and then sometimes they want to try a different restaurant. I don't think McDonald's is any worse for the fact that it's consistent. That's part of the vibe there. But I do have a funny quote for you. It's not funny. It's actually kind of touching. It's from Maya Angelou.

And she said, people will forget what you did. They'll forget what he said, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. And that's what I try to imbue in the products here at Atlas. That's what I try to imbue in my relationships with our team here. That's what I try to imbue in my cinematography is feeling. So that when you watch something I've filmed, even if it's something really prosaic and very cut and dry, that's still a little piece of me or a little slice of humor just slides in there

and catches your mind like a hook in a song and just gives you that little bit of satisfaction that you go, huh, that's a feeling. I got a vibe there, okay. Yeah, I'm actually super happy you said that because that's been part two of my thought there, which one thing I've learned about doing this podcast is I'll articulate something. And then in the edit, I'm like, oh, no, I knew what I meant. But part two of that is we seem to have forgotten feeling. Everything seems to be wrote now.

There are objective answers to choices, you know, oh, you should have used, I just did this whole diatribe about like the black promist. I interviewed Ellen Curris and she was like, I never used the promist once. It's too fuzzy. There's no sensibility to it. And I was like, that's fascinating because if you go on YouTube, everyone says the promist is the only way to get the film look, quote unquote. And I think it does have to come down to the two things that you said.

One feeling and two, trusting yourself. What do you call that when you believe in yourself? confidence. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Good Lord. It shows how much of that I have. I think those are crucial. And that feeling is like what makes things good. You know, what people, people, what had, I quoted this before, but John Mayer was talking about fonts. And he was like, don't give me a defaunt.com font on a mockup because your heart doesn't know. or your head doesn't know, but your heart will. It's like same thing with film, you know. And it's kind of the same thing, like kind of slick dovetail, Kenny, right into the lenses. That is kind of the vibe that you guys were going for with the Atlas lenses

was more feeling based and not like what I think more, not higher end, but the bigger budget lens, companies go is they're very clinical. They're coming at it from like, well, we check the charts and it looks great. Why don't you like it? That's a challenge that I think the biggest lens manufacturers in the world are facing is it's a philosophical battle, right? If the engineers and engineering says this lens is resolving the most mTF that we've ever resolved, the contrast is the highest it's ever been and yet

we feel nothing artists feel nothing or viewers feel nothing they say well that's a perfect replication of reality that's not necessarily what people want but that's the beauty of filters right yeah but I mean to a degree but certainly you know

the more and more especially after doing this whole Lens Month thing you know it's been interesting especially playing with my own lenses and being able to really, uh, not more objectively, but more, um, critically look at the various elements of the lenses that I do have and actually be able to educate with a sense of education, um, address issues. Like these Nycore primes, the fall off is really, really nice. Even though if they are to take a still photo, it looks all, you know, almost no different than this

Tamron zoom I've got. But then in, in, in, in the heat of the moment, I don't know what you want to call it. It is a much more. pleasing to my feeling, uh, look. Is that a Nike 4th, 35? 35. The 1.4 or the two? Two. Awesome. AI AIS lens? Yep. Yeah, those are great. Yeah, I've got a, I got a whole set because back in the day, um, I bought my uncle's, um, F2 and his lens kick because he was a photojournalist. Um, and he was retired. So I took all those off him. Awesome. And now I can use them on the, it didn't really quite make any sense on the,

on my C-100, but on the C-500, it's like, they're perfect. It has Nikon color. I'm feeling like the Nikon color is coming through. It's, well, and on this, on this camera, what I did was, this is going to get in the weeds a little bit, but I did, I took an Alexa and I shot color charts next to all of the Canon C-series cameras, because I had heard over and over that we, use Canon as a B cam all the time to Alexa because it's easy to match. And I was like, well, let's make it easier. So I just, in the color profiles in the cameras, I took a vector scope and I just matched them as easily as I could to the Alexa so that it was like a plug and play option.

So that's going on plus the Nikon lens. And I was to fuck with the tint a little bit. But, but so, but enough about my haphazard, not engineering. where did the idea for the atlas's start because I obviously we all love anamorphic like you were saying we kind of grew up on it you know the classic like Star Wars Indiana Jones type thing especially but what made you want to go into lensing specifically yeah I mean as you said it really comes down to feeling I first discovered animorphic cinematography in around 2002, 2003 watching the movie Punch drunk love and going, okay, there's something about this movie, and it reminds me of movies from my childhood like you were talking about. And the way that they're using the flare and stuff to kind of convey Adam Sandler's emotional state and the things that are going on in the film, wow, there's something about this. I got to understand this more. So I started doing research.

What kind of lenses did they use? Because everyone was shooting film back then. And I discovered, okay these are Panavision C series and okay anamorphic lenses like I want to make still images that look this good because at that time you know I didn't have access to a movie camera I had friends that had DVX 100 cameras and all I had was my I still had my Minota stills camera so I thought how can I make some cinematic looking portraits of my friends that remind me of this movie so I started doing some research and I found out, okay, anamorphic lenses, I wonder what's out there and I found on eBay, you know, projector lenses. And I started trying to hack those projector lenses on my Minota camera. And, you know, sure enough, you can get an image doing that. There's still people

doing DIY builds of anamorphic lenses that same way today. And I made a bunch of portraits of my friends and, you know, I'd bring them into Photoshop and then do the desquease and did like a little mini art show those portraits and kind of put it on the back burner. I was doing the set lighting with Eric Messerschmitt and Eric Forrand in the gang. And just left that in the back of my mind. I looked at like other anamorphic lenses. So that was a time when Lomo anamorphic lenses you could find on eBay or from someone like RAF camera in Ukraine or in different parts of Russia.

they had anamorphic primes for $500 and I looked at that how in the world am I ever going to afford $500 you know I was broke I thought 500 bucks I'll never be able to get enough money for one of these anamorphic lenses and then sure enough here we are 20 years later and it's like $12,000 for a broken down Lomo square front for parts only literally like crumbling to dust because that's all that's left is the ones that are like unless you get a really good bar and find they're all falling apart unless they've been in and restored but thankfully they made a lot of them on the quota system in the so there's you know a decent number of them floating around somewhere still um but yeah to your point you know so in my career trajectory i'd been a lighting technician and then i watched the way the digital imaging technician um who's another sort of minor celebrity in the cinematography world, Joshua Gawlish. So he was our DIT on Everybody Hates Chris. So I was working with Joshua Gawlish, who's Roger Deacon's DIT now, working with Eric Measures Schmidt. And then Mark Doring Powell, he was our DP on the show. So I'm watching these guys do their work. And

you know, it's a funny show. Chris Rock's in the show from time. He's the creator of the show. And it's just an incredible experience watching these master crafts people make this comedy TV show. And that's a time when, you know, Josh Gawlish was like a tape operator. So he's doing real DIT stuff, not just downloading and then color correcting the downloaded footage. He's like puttling knobs out of a Viper film stream camera with a big tethered, you know, umbilical cord tethered to his tent. I'm watching these guys. This guy, this guy is making a lot of money. He's making a lot more money than I am and I was getting paid pretty well. He doesn't know that much more more about technology than I do because I was a big computer nerd. I still am. I said, okay,

this guy's making a ton of cash and he's closer to the camera than I am. I'm just out here with these HMI's and, you know, lifting these 18Ks with my buddies onto these crank evader stands running, running a four-eye cable all over the place. This guy's just got this little umbilical cord and he's twirling knobs and it's making like in an air-condition tent, mind you. Yeah. this guy's got the right idea. So I watched that. I took the note mentally, okay, I'm going to,

when I have the chance, I'm going to figure out more about being a DIT. So I studied all this stuff I could about TIT stuff. And then I said, you know what, I'm going to try this. So I started doing DIT work on commercials. And this is around the time the red one was taking off.

And nobody. Your nightmare began. For a lot of people, I mean, for a lot of people as a career builder, you know, I mean, like the old joke website said

I'm a DP because my mommy bought me a red I mean I'm glad that they did because that opened a whole Pandora's box for me to make a boatload of cash because to me that camera was easy I'm a computer nerd so the thing's just a computer that's crashing from time to time but mainly it didn't crash it was mainly because they had

that stupid Sony V mount sorry all V amount users I'm an Anton Bauer gold mount user because those things The pins on the V-mount always come loose and the camera shuts off. And they go, the camera overheated. Those cameras barely overheated, but they all had faulty pins on the V-mount, on the Sony V-mount batteries. That's good to know because I always thought it was an overheating thing.

But I wasn't, I was still in college when the Red One came out. So they gave us DVXs and I owned it, XL2. It just, that's a great camera. I love the X-L-E. Still have it. Awesome camera. The form factor is like beautiful. It's the best.

Steven Soderberg likes that camera. I still remember that there's like a magazine ad that had him and like the GL2 and the XL2 on the back of it with director's chair. This is Steven Soderberg. That's cool. But yeah, it looks like a film mag the way they've got the whole tape drive on the back.

You'll appreciate this. I just recently as a test, I was able to use the S-video into an HDMI converter into my Odyssey. So I was able to go tapeless with the XL2. And it was like, it wasn't upscaling, but it was up resing it to 1080. So with, I was like doing a lot of lighting test with that. And I was like, you know what? It's not as bad as you would think. No, I remember the dynamic range of those cameras being pretty good. All the analog cameras have great dynamic range, actually compared to the early digital stuff. Yeah. So it's crazy. So yeah,

like that that allowed me to get closer to cinematographers in a technical sense instead of being lighting which was invaluable i mean that still resonates to me today i mean i lit this little setup it's not much but uh we both look okay for you know he looks like he's 79 years old if we didn't have his lighting so that's sadly accurate yeah it is fun i will say i've had fun lighting this little If you saw the setup, you'd laugh at me, but it's a little overkill. But you're on anamorphic, so same, same. So what went into the sort of, I'm going to jump around the timeline with this reference.

Yeah, I was the one that jumped around. I went way off topic there. Oh, no. I mean, if you've heard this podcast, you know, I'm the king of off fucking topic. But you just, when did you announce the silver edition lenses? So we announced those May 4th. Star Wars Day May the fourth

So I'm pretty sure I recorded the episode with Jay before that Nice Or it was right after I'd have to check It might have been right after But otherwise I would have

If that was recent The conceit about lens month Was it was recorded Like three, four months ago And then I got a rip of interviews Right after that that I had to get out But So I learned

We've learned a little bit more about those lenses but the original lens is what was kind of the design ethos and then how did you and sort of the inspirations for those lenses and then also how did you end up building them because that's been the fascinating thing for me is like I don't know how the fuck to design a lens but smart people do absolutely absolutely so that's I did have a very roundabout way of getting to that point which was so lighting DIT started shooting I started shooting on DSLR cameras before that was a popular thing to do. So I shot the first feature on a 5D Mark 2,

the first feature film on a 70, and these are like terrible indie movies. And then I've always been a futurist. So I was going like, okay, we're making these little commercials and these short films in New York because I lived in New York at the time. And we're always out on the street.

I'm shooting for a cosmetics brand called MakeUp Forever. We're always doing these all in the street things. And the director always wants to see what I'm filming. And like, this is when the small HD monitor was brand new. So I've got a small HD monitor, which is cutting edge at the time, like the first one. And they're always over my shoulder operating me like I'm a camera. And I'm holding the camera in there, grabbing my shoulders and panning me. And I'm like, there's got to be a better way.

There has to be a way to do remote monitoring so that I could give the director a monitor and they could see what we're doing in HD. And I'm untethered. I can wander around and be free from their hands. handsiness. And it turns out that other than analog links, there wasn't any good HD video transmitter. So I started thinking like, there's got to be an HD video transmitter to go with a small HD monitor. And I did some more research because that's research is the cornerstone of everything that I do in my life, whether it's, you know, taking care of my children, um, starting a

business or doing cinematography research just pours into it because the world is vast and the more research you do, the more little tricks you can pick up and try to apply to whatever you're doing. So I'm researching and there's no affordable but professional grade HD video transmitter system. Everything's well over $5,000, which was more than my camera cost. So I saw a thing that would let you send a PlayStation HTML to a TV on the other side of the room. I thought, this is 150 bucks. This is it. this is the thing so i'm like okay i'm going to buy this and then take it apart and then make it my own product right so i buy it i make ptap cables and uh velcro it onto the camera body and it works

and i'm like yeah this is great a lot of people are going to like this so i go to the company that makes it and i say hey i have a business idea why don't we make this for my industry because there's a lot of people that'll want this we all need an hd link and some israeli guys you're like kid I don't know you know we don't really care about the film industry I said no trust me we need this in the film industry this is what I need as a user so I know other people need the same thing how many do you think you could sell a year kid I go listen this is going to blow you away I could sell 2,000 of these a year and they laughed in my face of a kid we are trying to make this something that goes in every TV we're going to sell 2.5 million of these next month. Like, well, yeah, but for 150 bucks, I go, we could sell these for at least a thousand bucks each. That's a deal for what we need them to do. I don't know.

Listen, I'm persistent. So I kept bothering these Israeli guys. Their company name was Amimont. They've since been acquired by the Vitech Group. Of course. Vitech owns everything now. As was my company acquired by Vitech Group. That's part of the story too.

So I go, okay, you guys, you don't want to deal with me. I'm going to figure out another way to get this product made. So I look at who's making the boards that are in the thing. And I found out, okay, there's some guys in China making these boards. I've never been to China. I don't know how to do international business, but I'm a great writer. I'm very persistent and I'm someone who will follow through. You can count on me.

I won't give up. So I contact these guys in China. I say, I want to make an HD video transmitter just like these ones, but for my industry. Okay, how many do you want? I could afford 100 to start. Okay, we'll start next month. Send us the money here.

We'll start doing it. I say, okay, you're my people. That's how I roll. You know, we're going to start. You say we're going to do it. I'm going to do it. We're going to do it. So made a great business deal with some people in China,

fly over there. Basically kickstart the product. We showed at Sini Gear 2012. right here on the Paramount Backlot and people went bananas for the product. It was called Paralinks Arrow. And I was working with my friend Greg Smokler at the time. So Greg and I put together this, you know,

tiny business from our garage and managed to turn it into a success. And this is before Teradec was really successful. They had their Q product. And the promise of Cube was brilliant. Like who doesn't want to be able to connect a box to their camera and then there's this little monitor called an iPad that we can all get. But the biggest problem was at the time, processing power on an iPad was not capable of handling a real-time video signal. It was an iPod with a big screen.

Exactly, exactly. So they were like me, futurists. They were ahead of their time. And the device, the world wasn't ready for a device of that nature. But sure enough, this zero-delay, zero latency, amimon-based problem. product was exactly what we needed because for focus pullers or operators or directors, we need something that is synchronized to sound in less than two milliseconds delay. And I took a business with Greg Smokler and Tim Mululay.

We put this business together and within three years of starting it in our garage made a company that was outselling Teradek for a while. the people of iTech group and taradek took notice and said you know we can't have these ice cream eating kids take our market share and show us up because they're industry insiders and we're from general electric and you know the film industry doesn't take kindly to in you know stuffy quote unquote corporate engineers not my words the words of others and they said these guys are scrappy but damn it the industry likes these guys and our product was kicking ass you know we had the arrow which was the affordable one and then we came out with a higher end one

called a tomahawk and i love i love that right of the tomahawk you know tomahawk we're going to come in it's like a missile we just totally took the home market chair and um it felt great because we were making something that people needed and that just made me feel incredible like being to serve the needs that people like myself with a product that everyone in our industry needs and watch people's face light up like that's exactly what i've been waiting for and so i got the bug of entrepreneurship from starting this company and running it and um sold the company to bi tech group in like the end of 2014 basically and uh after selling the company i was like wow you know this is a big moment in my life like what do i

want to do. And I thought, like, some people have a midlife crisis at this point and they go and buy a Porsche or they buy a Ferrari. And I was like, I know exactly what I want. Anamorphic lenses. So I go, look, okay, I got some money now. What's out there? And then I look at the products that are in the market for lenses. And I'm like, wow, these are so dissatisfactory. Like, yeah, I could spend like 250 grand and get a set of cook anamorphics that don't do at all what I want them to do. No offense, cook users. Or I could get these destroyed Lomo animorphics that are like awesome. The image quality is awesome.

But then I'm going to spend another 100 grand like renovating them. You know, if you're lucky, you can get a set for 60 grand that are beat and then you need to rejuvenate them. And then who knows how long that lasts. So wow. I wonder if I could, you know, I remember it back, back what I was doing. doing in the early 2000s, DIYing stuff. And I thought, wow, what if I could build a lens?

I mean, I just built a company from the garage, knowing nothing about what I'm doing. And I figured it out really quick. Wow, it'd be really cool to do something similar but like a new lens brand. Because then it's not just carrying the image. It's like ingrained in the image. It's part of the image.

So it's a little slice of immortality, if you will. Like it's like feeling you were talking about like if we could leave a little bit of feeling in every frame or in every work that we do. Okay, I need to put together a team of people. And so I started looking online, doing again, research. And that's when I met my co-founder, Forrest. So he was doing DIY stuff much in the way I had been 12, 13, 14, 15 years earlier. And I saw the little demo films he was putting out with lenses. that he would make in his garage by grafting different projector lenses together.

And he even started, you know, he's a fabricator. So he's a brilliant artist and combining that with an engineering background too. He's a sculptor. So he figured out how to sculpt resin. So he's like 3D printing these molds and then pouring resin into it, optical resin. And then he's polishing the resin to make the right radii in thickness for the glass on his front porch. And I'm like, wow, this guy may not be able to do it right away, but the spirit of what he's doing and the feel and the go-to get-it attitude is exactly who I want on my team. I want to be working with someone like that who's not afraid to do something crazy and risky and, you know, a little bit messy, get dirty, get messy and a little bit dangerous even.

This guy's cut from the same cloth. We could start a company and make lenses. So I reached out to him and we started working together to put together, like the product definition for what the Orion series would be. And first we were talking about like, well, what if we made an adapter that, you know, everybody could have this adapter sort of like an escarama and it could be for everyone. Well, the problem is like it's going to be a customer service nightmare because we'll make this thing. And then as soon as someone doesn't know how to use it, they're going to be emailing us or calling us going, well, I put it on the way I thought I was supposed to. And now I can't get a picture. And this is like a trauma that was still being carried from Pear Links, like tech support. So not only was I the CTO and founder of Perlinks, I was also tech support. So I would be getting, I'd still be getting, I'd still get calls today. Like text messages earlier this week, like, hey, my. Tomahawk's not working. Or can I, how can I repair like these two transmitters?

Like, oh, like, you know, but you know, I still gladly help because to me, that's like the spirit of what we're doing. It's like carrying that on and continuing it. And I'm glad to see that six, what is it, six years on after I left the company, the product is still working. Maybe they're pairing two together, but it still works. And that's, that's what I want to do is make things that last for people and make their jobs and lives better.

So it was really cool. And so, yeah, like Forrest and I put together the product definition and said, let's make a product that embodies the classic nature of things like Panavision C series or Lomo animorphics, but are relatively affordable and will work on any professional film set, bar none, no questions asked. And they have to be easy to fix. Like, through my research, one of the things I discovered about, right? product design is that they would design things that you wouldn't even necessarily need

tools to fix if you ran into a problem. And that's like one of the big spiritual guides for me is like, yeah, if I'm on set and like I don't have 75 tools on my belt, I still want to be able to adjust the camera or adjust the part really quickly. And so to me, toolless design for onset ergonomics is absolutely essential. And that was something that guided us in making the Orion series lenses from a mechanical standpoint. These things need to be bulletproof. They should be easy to work on. So if something goes wrong, if you're not a lens technician, you could learn how to become a lens technician with these lenses if you have the guts. And that's like, you know, just like Daniel was saying, like Daniel started here without prior lens training and prior lens

experience, but he's bar none one of our best technicians now. And he's nothing less than a master lens technician at this point. So to me, it's like a journey. It's a spiritual journey of always becoming something. It's like Atlas will never be done. It's always about transition and growing and changing and learning. And that's something that is really important to me for the people here in the company as well, is that it's not just a place that we work and like, oh, yeah, like I work there, it's whatever. We come here, we do great work, but we also have fun, and we also learn. So my goal is for anyone that works here, even if you're only going to work here a year or six

months, my hope is that anyone who does work here, years later, they go and they think, like, I can't believe I got to work there. That was an incredible Willy Wonka's chocolate factory experience. It's a little bit of insanity, but like magic is happening, you know, right before our eyes. So, you know, to your point about like what went into the way the lenses feel, we wanted something that would be paying homage to the classic animorphic lenses like Panavision C series. And in a spiritual succession way, even borrow from the idea of Bosch and Lone. Baltar Cinemascope lenses, which are something that I have a pretty decent-sized collection of now. So I preserve some of the Cinemascope Bosch and Lome lenses that were used to make films like Rebel Without a Cause and Carousel, the King and I, many other 1950s films.

Do you have the zero optic versions or just the originals? So I have Alex doing a set of the spherical ones, but the anamorphic ones, I did talk to him about rehousing, the anamorphic ones and he's like he's like yeah i don't know about that it's really about preservation with those anyway yeah so some of them i did manage to put uh pl mounts on and so um if you i don't if you've heard about media division but um he's this brilliant guy in germany nicholas moldenauer and insane production value for youtube videos good lord it's massive and so um his recent scope chat Chapter 2 features those very same Bosch and Loam, Cinemascope Baltars in comparison to modern Atlas lenses

side by side, shot by great cinematographer and friend John Peres. So he shot a lot of content for Alice and he did a side-by-side comparison between those 1950s lenses and Orion's. And some of the aspects are, and attributes are similar, like the color, the color rendition is really similar.

So it was something we wanted to kind of embody and view as the way that colors feel, it should feel like film. But all the things that we don't like about those vintage anamorphic lenses like mumps are gone. So it's sort of a way of carrying a connection between the past and the origins of animorphic cinematography and being a bridge to the future. And that's really a spiritual guidance here. Did um oh go ahead i was going to say i think that's what a lot of the larger companies kind of get wrong too is they're trying to think they think quality in terms of like marketing like how can we what's a metric we can say that our our lenses are better than yours in this metric in this metric and you know if you look at like in japan they like a lot of the best japanese companies they don't even market their quality because they know quality is not something people look for in the marketing that's the something that when they actually open the product and use it, that's when they actually

see the quality. That's how they make that judgment. So instead of trying to make the lens that, you know, hits the best, like the most line pairs or something, we're just trying to make the lens that we know once it's in your hand, that's, it's going to give you a certain feeling that maybe the other lens that hits this metric, this metric, this metric is not going to give you. Yeah. Actually, that's a nice kind of little segue there. I wanted to ask you specifically, what were some of the things, preconceptions that you had going into being a lens technician and maybe some of the things that surprised you? Honestly, I would say I had no idea what to expect.

It was a very wide-eyed experience of just being thrown at me. There are terms now that are so minor to me that the first time I heard of it, it was like, terrifying. So it's like, am I supposed to know what that is? I might be able to know what that is? I didn't know what okay was. when I first came in and now it's just something

I don't even like to think about. I think I have like a probably a better understanding than a lot of the people I hear talking about it. I think one thing that held me is just the fact that I didn't come in like having a bunch of like preconceived sort of like philosophies about lenses I was able to come in and sort of like

think about the lenses in a sort of objective way. I think a lot of other people who will work on our lenses will think of it more subject without thinking in terms of, like, what do I like in a lens? Whereas I was able to kind of come in and just, it's hard to explain it. It's just sort of like this whole new world that I was able to come into

with no preconceived notions, ideas, or anything. It's like a tabula rasa, like a clean slate. like no idea right that's that's beautiful and there's so many like a lot of our my co-workers who are technicians who came in with a lot of experience just and you know a lot of knowledge about this world beforehand we'll all have all these pin like strong opinions about everything that they want in the lens and i have like no strong opinions i kind of i think it allows me to appreciate all the differences like if a lens has a lot of follow-up or the I don't have a lot of like well well I hate that I hate when it does this I appreciate if

something you know has a lot of vignetting that has no vignetting if it falls off really early if the fall off is you know way at the very edges I appreciate it all which I think is something I probably would have had if I came in sort of already having formed those opinions yeah it's definitely like the it's the mind of an artist versus the mind of a scientist right a scientist is willing to be told you're wrong yeah and I think artists are like, nope, I will listen to, I got a buddy of mine who's a fantastic painter. And he refuses to, uh, like read an interview or watch an interview or look at anything. Any other artist who's ever done anything, he actively covers his ears because he wants, he wants it all

to come from him. Whereas I feel like a scientist is like, you know, come from him, quote unquote, but, uh, everyone's inspired by everything. But, um, yeah, that, that mind of a scientist, I think is something that, uh, I think a lot of the younger generation seems to, be into when it comes to cinema talk you got your gerald undonez and your whatnot that a lot of people enjoy that maybe aren't even cinematographers or filmmakers but also um i think is a better way to go about it there's a you know eric measure smit is i think another person who's very seems to be very um tries to be objective i wouldn't know specifically i had to do a lot of research for an interview that never happened but it kind of ties into what you guys were talking about before too

where a lot of the stuff you see now, it's a lot of like plug and play, like a light there, light there, let's just get it done. I think those are probably a lot of people that are really, you know, maybe it's that they lack the, they're more scientific than, you know, artists. They're thinking, okay, well, we need, you know, this amount of light. It's all very, like, metric based, very objective, whereas the, the artist, I think, what makes it so beautiful is very subjective. It's very, I just feel, this is what I feel is it's supposed to be.

It's like the difference being like a doer and like a teacher. Teacher just sort of learns the rules and then they can recite them. Or as a doer, maybe they don't even know the rules, but they just sort of kind of have that instinct of what to do. Like there's some great singers that probably can't tell you all these different things about like pitch and, you know, what a certain note sounds like. They just, you know, in their head, they can, they know a great song and they're able to get it out. whereas there are some people who know every little detail about music that they can't write a great song or at least the song that people you know people resonate with well it goes back to that feeling versus uh you know objective truth thing because i've i've been really um fascinated by this spectrum

so to your point uh dave girl can't read music yeah never never learned how he just kind of figured that out and uh my buddy who's the painter he used to be a professional motocross rider and so he he's always described even art as you can only think about the next turn. The man has a drive like I've never seen, but he's a painter. And sometimes I see friends of mine who are artists who I'm like, man, I really wish you had that pro. I used to work for Red Bull, you know, so I was just around all these pro athletes. And I was like, I learned a lot from them because they're still goofy as hell. But like when it's go time, they're just this focus and inability to let things that don't matter get in the way. I think a lot of artists could take on or make a part of their own

psyche. Did you see that interview what Grohl did with Farrell recently? We were just talking. Yes, I did. That's so funny. The gat bang stealing. All those very famous ribs, he just stole them. But I mean, he's very like good nature and honest about it. But yeah. Well, I think I'm a, so I've been a drummer my whole life and Grohl obviously is one of the big ones. But, uh, he got me in not him personally but like being a fan of his through queens of the stone age got me to be a fan of lead zepplin because he was saying for the longest time like oh yeah i just built my drum kit like bottom and then just learned to hit the shit out of him you know but i think that's kind of important like everyone the great dovetail again me um everyone has everyone has you know things that you kind of steal until you know what you're doing and then you modify for yourself no one no one truly comes out of a vacuum knowing how to, for instance, make a lens. So my next question was going to be, where did you look at the, where did you get those, because this is kind of fascinating me, where did like the actual optical groupings

kind of come from? Like, where do you start? Is there like a book that says start with these three and move from there? Or were you actually looking at like the Bosch lenses and kind of like borrowing from here and borrowing from there and stuff? Or how'd that come about? Yeah. So for Forrest, you know, I was looking to Forrest.

originally to be our optical designer. And I, at the beginning of this, I thought, man, I'm about to have kids. I don't even know if I want to be in this business full time, but I'm a great advisor. You know, I built a decent amount of wisdom from the previous business. And if I get the right team of people together, I can just sort of sit from afar and make sure that this runs itself. And he is really self-taught when it comes to optics for us. So he had started with an app on his iPhone that you could put optical groupings together in ray trace before ZMAX copy. So he was doing, you know, before I even met him, he was designing relay lenses like you'd use for a depth of field adapter. He was doing all kinds of things.

He was, you know, polishing resin like I was saying and trying to make optics on his front porch. and it's amazing to see how far he's come now from when I first met him. I mean, he's truly a master optician at this point. But I thought, you know, it's really important that we not only have like that DIY spirit that I'd embodied so early on, but we want someone also to be sort of a Yoda to our Luke Skywalker, right? And so I had built some connections with a team of people making heads-up display glasses. That was one of my other fascinations is FPV goggles for drone flight. So I was heavily, heavily into the drone thing.

And I met these guys that were making what they call a virtual retinal display. So this thing would use DLP lasers to paint an image on the back of your retina through optics. like the Google Glass or like what they use in fighter pilots like fighter pilot helmets this definitely comes from defense and it's it's not even like a heads-up display like it's in front of your eyes it's literally using the DLP chip to paint the image on the back of your retina and it's scary when you think of it so I mean the contact of these guys and they definitely come from Department of Defense projects before starting this startup called Avagon. And these, none of the guys at Avagon had ever flown drones before. And I was a heavy

drone pilot. And I thought like, you know, drones are the next sort of evolution of what I was doing with Perlinks. So I flew up to San Francisco and I met with the Avagon people. And I gave them their first drone experience through their own goggles. So I went to their company barbecue that they were having in a park up there in the Bay Area. And I brought my drone and I brought a pair links. and we hooked it up to their goggles and I blew their minds because none of them had ever tried it with a drone yet and so this was an HD

this is in a time when you know we look at drones now and it's like oh yeah it's an HD link to my phone no big deal but this is in 2013 and there was no such HD video wirelessly from drones at that time so we were pioneering that stuff for context for people listening this is like GoPro Hero 3 era

yes good point I'm like Phantom 1 right yeah yeah maybe even hero two yeah here it was definitely hero two times maybe just right when hero three was about to come out um so yeah that i built a really lifelong friendship with um dr allen evans there and ed tang who is his co-founder and so you know we kept really friendly and i knew that they had opticians who were designing the dLP systems for their heads up displays. I said, hey, you know, I'm putting together this lens company to make cinema lenses. Do you happen to know anyone who has any idea about how to make cinema lenses? And they connected us to Scott DeWald, who is our chief optical engineer here at Atlas.

And he is someone who is an anamorphic lens specialist as happens to happen. This is my life happens, by the way. It's like fortune just falls on me all the time. And I'm always just trying to do the best that i can to just give back and give kindness to everyone and then just things shower on me like luck and um you know meeting scott de wald is one of those lucky moments because this guy was trained by the masters at isco he was the technical VP at schneider for years um he's an anamorphic lens genius and you couldn't find a better match for what we were doing because he loved doing that stuff before he left Schneider and Isko, and no one wanted anamorphic lenses. So this is an old hat for him from 1996, 1997. And so he'd been at Texas

instruments, and then he'd been absorbed into the DLP group at Texas Instruments. And they were using anamorphic lenses because the chips were four by three to do digital cinema. So they would use the Isco company, which Schneider had acquired, to make anamorphic projector lenses. So honestly, we couldn't have been more fortunate to come in contact with a true optical master trained by some of the German masters and some of the Japanese optical masters. And anyone who knows Scott, he is beyond an interesting character. He's super cantankerous. He loves the barbecue. And I remember the first time that it was like about to be Labor Day and Forrest and I called, you know, Forrest lived in Salt Lake City.

at the time when I was down here in LA and force had come down to hang out with me and you know plan the business and work on stuff and I'm like okay I got this wild guy this is a great opportunity that's fallen in our laps let's make a call then so we call him together on the phone giddy about how exciting we are how excited we are about this opportunity and he goes hello and we're like oh is this a good time to call he's on barbecuing like maybe this wasn't a a good time to call him, but love the man, he's just a character and a half. And the stories he has below my mind, his techniques, you know, he's very much a scientist, but nothing short of an artist himself. And his life is art. I mean, he's a fascinating, fascinating person. So between he and

Forrest, we managed to design the first three Orion series lenses. And we started by prototyping one, the 65 millimeter lens. And we built the business off the prototypes. So it goes back to the story I was saying earlier about show people, don't tell them, don't ask them. Show people and then let them tell you what they want after that. So we built this great plan. We built these 365 millimeter prototypes. And we went to NAB 2017 by the good graces of the people here at Tiffin.

And so we're subletting the building we're in now from the Tiffin Company here in Burbank. And they have been nothing but gracious hosts and great collaborators, great friends. And they allowed us to be in their booth at NAB 2017 free of charge, you know, because we're a startup. We don't have money for our own booth. All I had money was for those three prototypes. So we build these prototypes, you know, we haven't had a lick of sleep. we go to the show and we're in the booth and we've been operating in stealth completely and we've dropped the prototypes at the show and we're getting them in every booth we can so one day we've

got them in the DJI booth because I've got friends of DJI another day we've got them in the free fly booth another day we have them over at red so we're just taking the lenses around thanks to my friend Nara Livoni who used to be my bomb squad rep at red when I was a red customer he joined our team to help with the trade show and Andrew Dugan his good friend from college. So we got out there like a street team. And, you know, again, barring from that whole skateboard mentality of just get it done, whatever it takes, DIY.

You know, I grew up a punk rock kid and a skater. And we just would make DIY flyers for shows. We do whatever it takes to make the show happen. And that's exactly how we approach this NAB show. And people went bananas because what we were doing really resonated with the feeling of what people wanted for an anamorphic cinematography lens for a price that's comparable to a great spherical lens. So it was, it was, ever since that moment, it's been nonstop gangbusters. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was definitely like, I think you also kind of kicked off something,

which was affordable animorphic was like we were saying, like hodgepodging projector lenses together stuff like that which harkens back we've talked about this a couple times on this podcast but the the old days of the um the 35 millimeter adapter being put on the front of a dvx or whatever and just adding two extra feet of nonsense to the front of your lens and losing about four stops of exposure um and then you guys come out and make an affordable lens and now you've got these other companies you know vazen i get or who are the cirrui and all these companies that are starting to make these micro four-thirds mount anamorphics that are expensive. And I would say that probably you guys had a kickoff moment for a lot of people

going like, because it seems silly. But yes, of course, we want affordable animorphics. And now there's a, I guess you have to be the first person to prove that people want it for all the bigger companies to go, oh, I guess we should invest. It's the second order consequence that you know, what you're talking about is something that we had predicted would be something that would happen eventually and it was just a matter of time. So not to give too much away about what we have up our sleeve, but we always want to be one step ahead. That's good to hear. We're kind of coming up on time, but I real quickly just kind of wanted since it just did sort of happen. Talk to me about the silver series of lenses and kind of what,

anyone seen it, Jay Holbin and, uh, Katie Williams did a, um, uh, sort of a short with them. And they kind of, they do have a more, uh, not old school, because that's the wrong term, but like, I know you, in, in the second, classic. Yeah, classic. Yeah. Because like, I remember in the thing, it says like, oh, this is supposed to harken back to sort of the 50s, but it did remind me of maybe it was just because they shot a sci-fi thing, but it does have that sort of Terminator kind of, um, I just watched demolition man like that kind of look that it's a little more modern than the sort of vintage if that makes any sense i'm using heavy air quotes for people listening definitely with um katy and jays piece

where they're on the spaceship you know so much of it depends on the art direction and totally front of the screen and the lighting but um it's sort of a way of being just what you need it to be right it'll it'll the lenses will will transform and be adaptive to what you put in front of them. So to that point, you know, we're actually looking at ourselves through an Orion series Silver Edition lens now. And so the mission, you know, the mission with the original Orion series was make anamorphic lenses that people can afford that harken to the 1970s and 1980s

films that we grew up on, whether it's Poltergeist or Indiana Jones or any of the Star Wars films or whether it's Punch Drunk Love from 2002 and they're very expressive the flares with the Silver Edition. So the concept of the Silver Edition lenses is to take the nuances of the Orion series and then invert them and make them more like silver screen era film making tools. So if you look at the flares that come from the Bosch and Lone

Cinemascope lenses, the the anamorphic elements are uncoated because they just didn't have quite the coding technology that they do now. And so those uncoded surfaces would give you a really neutral flare characteristic because it's just white light bouncing around. You know, whatever color light source you're putting into it will bounce off the internal surfaces and create those reflections. And so we wanted to embody that. We also optimize the air spacing between the elements to give you a richer focus fall off. So it's not to make it shallower depth of field,

but actually carry focus through the point of focus, 75% behind the point of focus and 25% before the point of focus. And the regular Orion series or the OGs, as we like to call them, they have a 50-50 split on your through focus. And through focus is not something that a lot of people talk about because it's one of those technical considerations, but artists often talk about the way

like a lens is have a 3D pop or 3D. characteristic and really the technical attribute that they're referencing is the concept of through focus which is quality of focus in a three-dimensional space not just in a x-y plane in terms of field like here to here or sorry you know here but through focus is your z dimension and so there's different attributes that make that up field curvature which is sort of a dish shape or a parabolic shape to the focus field. And then the way that the focus actually falls off in space in a given point is through focus.

So that was a long-winded way of talking about that through-focus thing. Well, I appreciate it because, A, didn't know that existed, but B, oh, see, that's nice. You're going to have to, anyone listening, you're going to have to watch the video to see what he's doing. But yeah, that's a very nice, neutral, long flare off of a cell phone light. Yeah, so these silver additional lenses aren't uncoded. We developed our own what we call silver coating, and the silver coating exacerbates flare in some parts of the spectrum and transmits more light in other parts of the spectrum. So it's a specially notched coding design that we put on the cylinder optics themselves.

And that's that we're with that neutral flare characteristic that changes. So if we had a red, I wish I brought a red flashlight. But if I did, you'd be able to see it at home. Sure. Kind of a balanced scenario here. And, you know, I have this 6,500 Kelvin flashlight, as you were referring to earlier there. Yeah. And these are like much more flamethrase.

than the, the OGs. The OGs are a little more pastel-y, I get. I don't know how you describe it, like kind of softer. It's a cyan, you know, cyan blue flare. And some people love that. Some people hate that. I mean, I just revisited Punch Drunk Love. If you go on the Criterion Collection, Instagram, you can see some frame grabs from Punch Drunk Love and rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman. The flare. One of the best actors. Like in that film is not that different from the Orion series. So we really embrace that classic C-series vibe in terms of the coding and flare characteristics of those lenses. And the Silver Edition harkened more to that Bosch and Loma era, but they have a vibe all their own.

You know, they can become very science fiction if you want them to. They're really expressive. So they're meant to kind of sing in the hands of the artist. Yeah. But I did want to go back and say thank you for. explaining the through focus thing because I had no idea that you could tune. I guess I just assumed that all depth of field was middle. I didn't, I guess it didn't occur to me that you could tune how much forward or backward the given point could be in focus or falling off. That is fucking

fascinating. It's wild. And, you know, I was recently talking with Michael Braven at Canon and he was talking with Dave Stump, ASC, about their sumi ray lenses, which, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of lenses. I'm not just Atlas guy. I'm lens guy. I'm obsessed with lenses. It's my fascination, my passion, my mania. So he, you know, he and Dave Stump had been talking about the way the sumi rays fall off because they have their own unique through focus characteristic. And apparently those are really great for working with virtual production with LED backdrop because they'll really make those pixels dissolve and become completely imperceptible in the out of focus area. And I would say that, you know, Orion's is anamorphic lens in general tend to have more of that characteristic

naturally, but even more so with a silver addition. Yeah. On the, I don't know if you know this, but on just to pick an example that everyone knows, the, the Mandalorian, are they shooting Panavision lenses? Are they shooting Ari? They're shooting Panavision. Yeah. Beautiful show. I mean, if you can get Greg Frazier, ASC, or the other

photographer, that would be awesome. That'd be the dream. I trust me, like, well, kind of not to pick on it, but I remember when Mank was nominated for the Oscar, Netflix was like, would you like to talk to him? And I was like, low key, when I started this podcast, I said

if I could get someone like Eric Measershmet on the show that I would have peaked. So I'm expecting that phone call like three years down the line. And it came like four months down the line. And it just never happened because the second he was on, um, whatever the war movie he was on. And then he immediately went and started a new movie. So he just never had the time to do it.

So, but Greg would be amazing. I was surprised I got, uh, uh, pro, or, um, not probes, uh, um, Holbin. J. Holbin. Yeah. I've been really blessed. with guests. I'm not going to lie. He's an incredible writer. He's such a great wordsmith. And the fact

that he's not only a great wordsmith, but knowledgeable about our craft visually. And Katie's tremendous cinema target fair. Yeah. Just great. You should get Chris Brooks on here. I should get probes. I should get Katie. There's a lot of, if anyone's listening,

please come on my show so I can talk to it. So all I want to do is talk to people about this kind of stuff. But yeah, we are, I mean, I don't, I say this to pretty much everyone. I could talk to you guys for like two hours, but I know you have jobs, and I just said this with the last podcast.

I would do a three-hour podcast, but I think people would get sick of me at some point. So I will leave it. If they want it. Yeah, exactly. If you would like that, that'd be perfect. Thanks, you guys, so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Such a pleasure, Kenny. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate it. Yeah, take care, guys. Cheers. is an Owlbot production.

It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F-At-R-Mapbox logo, was designed by Nate Truax of Truaxe branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to

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