The Watch - Why You Should Be Watching ‘Devs.’ Plus: ‘Better Call Saul’ S5E3 and ‘Briarpatch’ Episode 5. | The Watch

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Episode 3 of ‘Better Call Saul’ is the best Bob Odenkirk episode yet, as this season continues to get better (3:17). You should be watching ‘Devs,’ FX on Hulu’s flagship show from director Alex Garland (19:25). And a conversation with the ‘Briarpatch’ director of photography Zach Galler (26:11). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Zach Galler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, it's Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Recently, on the Winging It podcast, Vince Carter and Annie Finberg sat down with NBA All-Star Kyle Lowry and recording artist for Timmy. This week, 2017, first overall pick Markell Fultz joins the show to talk about living up to expectations and working his way back from injury in the NBA. Make sure to check out Winging It on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am editor at the wrigger.com and joining me in the studio. He just got done tossing beers off the balcony. It's Andy Greenwald! At what point in your life, culturally, socially and economically, what's the first point where you would have been comfortable taking a six-pack of your own purchase and throwing it into a parking lot? Still won't do it. Me either.

I caused me pain. I actually longingly, we're talking about Better Call Saul. Oh, yes, sure. Monday night's episode. It's Thursday. We're talking about Mondays, the third episode of the fifth season of Better Call Saul. I'm joined by Andy Greenwald. We're both wearing T-shirts.

Kaya is back from Hawaii. Weirdly not wearing a T-shirt. Hawaii, the land of T-shirts. But we have a lot of great energy going into this podcast. And the answer to your question is, I like beer. And I wouldn't just throw beer bottles away. Me too. It's exciting to have a six-pack.

Yeah. Maybe it's exciting to throw them, too. It's something I've never done. But what a scene. What a great scene and a great episode of a great television show. Later today, we'll be talking about a other show on Monday nights, one that you don't watch on Mondays, as you told your Twitter. Oh, Briar Patch, of course.

Did I say that? My guy with a, you know, because you're not really like a live tweeter. You know what I mean? Oh, don't get mad at me about that. I support your television show because I was like Better Call Saul is good on Monday night. No, you were just like in the middle, like Briar Patch premieres. I'm like, okay, let's get them live viewers. Let's get the numbers rolling in.

Let's keep building. Let's keep building, which we did, by the way. But let's keep building in the ratings. And then I'm like, I just got my team behind me. You know what I mean? I'm like the DNC lifting me over the finish line. I'm Tom Perez in Breyerfetch. And then, snake emoji.

I was like, Saul's great. At like 806 on the West, you just tweeted, saw. Not at 755. I got confused. Okay, I was watching a screener of Better Calls. Saul. I was not watching Better Call Saul against you. Must be nice. And I DVR Brier Patch, as do multiple members of my family.

Extended family. Okay. You're an only child, but okay. But my mother, and my wife's mother. That is my core demo. Yeah. And they don't watch wrestling. They come for Briar Patch. They're not spillover audience. That's great. Okay. The wrestling's a bonus for them. I'm sorry that I

split the vote, my guy. If you had dropped out of Saul earlier I would have won on Super Monday But don't worry I won't hold a grudge The revolution is coming Talk to me a little bit about Because we talked about the first episode of Saul

I think Together and we did not talk about the second one And the third one aired on Monday I am dialed in on this show I think that even in episode like three In which if I just described the plot To any bystander Would be like oh it doesn't

sound like a whole lot happened. There sound like there was a couple of clandestine meetings, a couple of conversations. A woman tried to buy a home in a desert and it didn't work. She was disappointed. She drank some beers. Well, she didn't try to buy a home. She tried to convince the gentleman to sell a home. I'm speaking in generalities. I feel like you were doing a, you were a little unclear in your recap. If you feel like, friend, it's a show about desert real estate. Well, it was for a couple of years there. It was. You wouldn't know that it is, I think, one of the, the true miracles of TV. So talk to me a little bit about this,

because I haven't gotten your thoughts in the last two episodes yet. Well, I agree. I think one of the things that's great about going week to week, having been watching, you know, we've said this multiple times, we sort of got away from it week to week,

we caught up binging it, and it's very well suited to that. One of the fun things about watching the season week to week with a little bit more confidence and understanding of what's going on and the way they tell their story, is that you still don't,

you may, you know, we may know certain pieces and where they're going. The one thing you don't know is when the steps that you are step by step walking down are going to fall away and you're just going to be in free fall. And all of a sudden, and it's so rich, only about this show, would you say this, all of a sudden, in the third episode of the fifth season, oh, he's a drug lawyer now. Oh, now there's one show.

There were two shows. Now there's one show. Again, the most outrageous luxury of all time to slow walk two different narratives. until they could finally join, but if you have the opportunity to take it. And also the ability to bring back multiple characters from a long-running television show that is very beloved. Who are thrilled to be back, clearly, and that was sort of infectious and great energy. But that's exciting. That was really exciting.

And I think that they're so ready to be where they are. I think that one of the hallmarks of interviews with Vince Gilligan and the other writers of Breaking Bad was that despite the cool methodical exterior that we like to rhapsodize over, they were flying by the seat of their pants. And, you know, each, thinking about those old cartoons, like people falling and then hitting each balcony on the way down, like wherever Walter White was at each step

may have felt premeditated, but it very often wasn't. Right. They do not... Or they would write a point where they were like, we don't know how we're going to get here. And that'll be the challenge slash fun.

Yes. And there's a clock on it, so we better figure it out. I'm not saying that they were necessarily more premeditated on this show. although they've certainly learned their lessons about how they like to tell stories. But there's just such a quiet confidence to it now that he is where he is with all the work that went into it to get him here and all the other, you know, the road that still stretches

out in front of him. It's pretty exciting. This is one of my favorite Odin-Kirk episodes and partially because I think you can see the transformation actually taking place rather than just being spoken, rather than him saying, the catchphrase rather than him changing his suit. You could see the way he was talking himself into and out of trouble with Lalo and be like

this guy's life is going to be until it falls completely apart. I think that Tony Dalton, Bobo and Kirk, Ray Sehorne, Michael Mando, like, to say nothing of John Carl Esposito and John Banks, but like this group of actors that they have going right now are so captivating.

And I wish I had like a more detailed way of discussing it. It's not even I think the thing that I love so much is the way in which their performances fill out frames but they don't overpower them. So the thing that I loved about this episode was a couple of times. There's two scenes where Saul goes to talk to Lolo

once in the beginning when he finds out his gig is to go to Crazy 8 and jail and giving this list. This is when Lalo's rolled up his sleeves and he's working on his car. And then the second scene when Lalo is doing doing donuts in the desert. In some laps out of the dirt track. And in both of those

scenes. Nacho is kind of, he's there. And what I love about how these guys make TV and how everybody makes TV on the show is they don't cast him aside as a sort of like, well, you're a non-essential, you were essentially the chauffeur that brought Saul here. He is still an active listener and you're supposed to be noticing how he's standing, the way he's looking, the way he's reacting to what Lalo is saying and what Saul is saying. There's that amazing line, you know, when at the end.

of when Saul is like, you know, talking to him and he's just like, you're in it now, you know? But the thing that really hit for me is when Nacho goes and talks to Gus at the most terrifying electrical plant I've ever seen. Shout out to Albuquerque. You can see the difference in the way that he's listening in that scene. And it's like, oh, he's actually scared of Gus. You know what I mean? He knows that Gus, he works for Lalo or whatever, but Gus is what he has to be afraid of.

And you only get that if you add the first two together. Yeah, everything is additive. Everything builds to something else. What finally occurred to me last night, and I watched it last night, but with this week's episode, this may have been expressed, it may very likely has been expressed elsewhere and probably more eloquently, which I'm going to try to articulate it. But I was trying to think about what felt so different about the moral dissent of characters on the show.

Because this episode was very much about that. Kim's own equilibrium and the choices she makes and has made... A great Barry Corbyn's line, you will say anything to get what you want. Boy, he was great. Yeah. I mean, what a guest turn. Nacho's conversation with his father, which was also beautifully considered, written, staged shot, et cetera.

And the difference between this and Breaking Bad and why we still feel such intense connection and agony to these characters, even those whose fate is either already known, or very clearly easy to predict. And I think the main difference is, and this is maybe also why this is a better show for right now than Breaking Bad was, one of the things about Breaking Bad,

it's right there in the title, was the conceit of, let's take a quote-unquote normal person. And not saying this pejoratively, a normal person for a TV writer's room in 2006 when they were crafting the show is a middle-aged, marginally successful white men.

man who feels, you know, resentment over not being appreciated. And this is right before the Great Recession, and it was tapping into a lot of the feelings in the atmosphere then. But really what it was about was, what if you took a quote-unquote normal person and just moved the frame and how far would he tumble? And so I think there was a sense that there was a vicarious, like, quote-unquote, normal people watching this. Oh, I could do this. Like, that's the road not taken. Right. Right. And the really striking contrast in a very positive way, I think, with Better Call Saul, is that all of these people in different ways are already hopeless. Yeah, they're desperate. They come from marginalized backgrounds, or they come from poor backgrounds, or they are already trapped in a cycle.

Whether it's the cycle of the fridge guy who's taking the plea deal with a baby on the way, you know, to try to get the best version of what is a very bleak and limited future, or it's Kim who desperately wants normalcy, the kind of normalcy that Walter White reject. and was on a path to do it, but it's corroding her soul. Jimmy, the same thing with his family issues and his own relationship to money. And then certainly really powerfully, I think, I was appreciating in this episode, Notcho. And his relationship with his father and what he wants, the ways that he's gone about trying to impress his father, slash save his father, slash hide from his father. And when you think about these people as already being trapped, the pathos increases, so much.

Yeah. Even though we don't know they're dead or that this is going to, you know, we don't know about the end points. It's more just about like, it's inescapable. It's a very different kind of pathos

and it's a very different kind of empathy, I think, for characters. And I would say an even more insightful investigation of the American project than the first show was in some ways. Certainly more in line with the way that those of us who maybe are more Walter White than we are Ignacio,

are investigating ourselves and our circumstance and what our floors and ceilings are. Yeah, and especially if you kind of look at, if you kind of strip away the Jimmy Chuck stuff from the earlier seasons, and you just focus on Kim for the sake of this conversation, she herself has an amazing Breaking Bad arc, you know what I mean,

where it's like clearly, clearly just wants to do good in the world, has found that the working on Baysa Verde and working on these, corporate accounts where there's essentially, you know, really like the tip of the spear for American grift in some ways has just like completely emptied her out.

And she wants to, her idea of a great day is to have a full slate of pro bono cases. And case by case, judgment judge judgment, phone call by phone call, her resolve and her spirit and her will to kind of fight on

is stripped away until she thinks that she's coming back for the half-time speech to this guy to tell him, I'm not like everybody else, I'm here to help you. I'm good. Yeah, and I know, here's my biographical note to sort of solidify my case here, is that, like, I know what it's like to be moved out,

you know, at the middle of the night and stuff like that. And he's just like, fuck you. Fuck you for thinking that that's what's going to close this deal. And what is the goal? What is the game? Who's playing the game and who's getting played? one of the things that they've always done so brilliantly in the way they've shot these two shows

thinking of them as a piece is taking advantage of the fact that Albuquerque is a desert and they built a town on it and so there's just these boxes on top of a place that maybe you shouldn't be there but you are and you think about her life and now she, and this episode went to great pains to show that she's driving in Audi now

she has a fancier car so she's moving up but she still lives in a metal box that's in a development with other metal boxes and is the goal to move into a slightly bigger box? And then what? And then what? And then what? I feel like one of my favorite things about Breaking Bad was sometimes the smallest decisions,

which was to give Walt that Pontiac Aztec. Which is maybe charitably the ugliest American car in 40 years. Is Pontiac? still with us? And yet, I don't know, let's check. Is Paniac? Is Ned Beatty's still with us? I was wondering that today. He is, right? Is he a Pontiac sales? No, I was just trying to think of people that, you know, people and companies that I just don't know. Okay. I was thinking about Ned Beatty today. That's kind of Thursday I'm having. But what is the goal? And that was the same sort of like, I'm going to

step outside your normal rules that Walt did. And there are these little steps along the way, whether it's realizing the banality of the car you're driving, or whether it's the moment in episode three when Saul is like pulls a number out of his ass of how much this is going to cost and there's that pause and was brilliant performance by Odenkirk because as he's saying the number you see the calculation on his face where he's starting to he's gotten two numbers out and he realizes he could have gone bigger it's nothing yeah you know and so now you're in it you're in it how good is it all in a man you're in a different one I mean listen you're talking to someone who I don't know if you know this but I have a show on Monday nights too and there are a lot of

people with mustaches on my show. Yeah. Tony Dalton might be my favorite mustache on TV right now. And we're not even talking about the wrestlers. We're just talking scripted. Do they have mustaches on wrestling? They used to. Isn't it dangerous?

Iron cheek used to have a mustache? Oh, yeah. Is he clean-shaven? I don't know. Pontiac pitch band. Anyway, I just, I love his performance. I love everything about him. I love seeing him on screen.

It's a delight. Yeah. I can't wait to see where this season is going. I think somewhere good. Yeah, I think it's going to work out for everybody.

It seems like... People are on good trajectories. Oh, I have one more thing I wanted to say. One of the best choices in this episode was how the wide master shots of like that house in the desert.

Yeah. And it looks like, oh, look at this pile of wood and like blocking development and blocking forward progress and manifest destiny. And then when you get inside the fence, he's created like a little paradise for himself.

It's modest, but it's still like pretty, you know? and it's like it's his. And that was what it was supposed to, that was the deal is like you get this lease and you can have it for a hundred years, you know? And it's the same, very homesteadery, you know. But it's the same sentiment that's in Nacho's father's speech.

Yes. It's my garage. I will not be pushed off of this. Yeah. And that's, that is literally the hill I may die on in both these men's cases. And in both cases they have, the father and Kim, both have people in their lives that are like, let me show you how I see this world

and how it's going to destroy you if you don't let me help you. Let me also just say, on a personal note from Albuquerque, I've also worked with ants. Never directed them with the beauty and grace that they did. That was awesome. Was that CGII, you think? No, it was not. It was microcosm style. They've talked about this. And I was happy to see that similar ant ranglers, men and women of great ability and talent. And it, I, okay, I mean this quite sincerely. We had ants in the Briar Patch pilot. Yes. And you have to have the ASPCA, or Humane Society, not the ASBCAA, you have a Humane Society onset for even for ants. This is not a No, this is true. We had ants in the pilot, and you had the humane society has to be there, even if it's ants.

Do the ants have, like, names and, like, agents and stuff? We use local talent. You mean? But I'd like to think so, because they kept very demanding hours. Yeah. But I'll say is that they were, like, ants and they were doing their business. And then when in between takes, the ant rangler had, like, a dustbuster and was, like, just busting the ants. And I was like, that's humane?

And they're like, oh, it is actually. And I was like, okay. Do they like it? And they try to be like, oh, no, they love it. They love when their universe gets sucked into a black hole and they're inside of a blackenedegger. But then I was reading their sister. I think Vulture did a piece or another website about the ants on this episode,

the ice cream cone, thinking they were CGI. And they were like, no, no, it's very serious. There's an ant Wrangler. And they used this light dust-busting type tool. So it was legit. It actually was a huge relief. Because I thought they were like, no, this is humane. And just like, just mass murdering.

Yeah. Ants. They were like, these are the same ants. They were just resting in their trailer between takes. Who would know? Really? Honestly, who would know? But no, there is a system. Okay.

They're beautiful creatures and performers. Do you think that the ants in Better Call Saul are the same ants in Briar Patch? I can only hope. There has been some overlap. We are recording, this is for this week for Thursday, a gentleman who was in the drug dealer poker game on Better Call Saul last week before Crazy 8 got popped is in episode. said five of a prior patch.

So we do share some of the same rich talent pool, but in terms of the insects, I cannot speak to that. The buck does not stop here. Get back to me on that. I will. Okay. Should I just,

should we pause while I Google? I mean, I'd love to give people closure. I just want to know if those little guys are on IMDB. Yeah, well, you know, there's the... And how long they've been going. Like, it would be like this and it's like he was in Reds. Well, one of them was in hell or high water,

because that was a big production in town. The movie didn't know he was on it. Yeah. Because he was just snacking on Ben Foster's pretzels in between takes. I will tell you a little bit about Debs. I know you haven't had a chance to watch it yet. But before we go, I wanted to. Officially it premieres today, right?

It premiered at midnight last night. I actually still awake at midnight last night. Are you okay? And I looked at Hulu.com. Yeah. And there it was. So two episodes went up last night late. So we're not going to tell it to talk about.

I think that this has been a complicated show for people to write about and talk about because even though I wouldn't even say there's like huge twists in the first couple of episodes, I think that everybody kind of has come to recognize that a show like this is best just to be experienced. Okay. As kind of, you want to be overwhelmed by it, you want to supplement yourself to it, you want to hear it, you want to experience it. That being said, I think it's a really cool mixture of like almost 2001-ish mysticism, as was Annihilation and Ex-Machana. in some ways, with like a compelling whodotid story, like a compelling detective story.

So Alex Garland, the writer and director behind XMaganah, and he adapted Jeffrey van der Meerer's annihilation, as we talked about quite extensively last year, two years ago when that came out. Yeah. He directed and wrote all these episodes, and it's just a fascinating show. And I'm really interested to see,

to what extent it breaks out, to see how, like, if it was just on FX, if it was on linear, I think, and it was week to week, I think it would definitely build up a cult following, but this will be a really big test of FX on Hulu. I think it's the perfect time for this to come out, because as we had said in recent weeks,

if it had come out on regular FX linearly, it would be, I'm sure, as admired and loved by people as it is going to be, but the narrative would be quite different. And instead it can be a showcase for a new feature, a new service, and it can live in the cloud, basically, and it can exist, and it can continue to find viewers,

and it's separated from the scrum in a way that from everything you've said and from whatever, I'm trying to limit my pre-reading about it, but it seems not fragile, but a little bit special. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's, you're all in.

It's pretty unique. Yeah, but I don't want to make it sound like it's like watching Too Old to Die Young or Twin Peaks to Return. It's like, it'll be recognizable to fans of television. It's just got an extra layer of what the fuck is this. And it moves along, at a clip, no disrespect to Westworld, but it has, I think, some thematic similarities to Westworld

and is equally set in, like, how distant into the future is this? But I feel like moves at a pace that is much more satisfying to, like, an average viewer. From what era does it draw its sad core piano ballot interpretations of pop songs? That's a great question. Is it, you know, more 70s, like Seals and Croft? I will say, without spoiling anything, that the band Lowe figures into this show. Oh, that's so on brand for all of this. And it's fucking, I was like, good call. Nice needle drop, bro.

That is, that is peak CR. Yeah. Really loving, like, off-year low records is peak, peak C.R. You said it with love. That's important. When Lowe came in to Spin.com to do, like, to play on our couch, acoustic, or whatever. In 2000? You were front-center for that.

Fuck, yeah, they played a Beach Boys song. You had questions for Sparhawk. I did. I love Lowe. Great band. Great American band. I'm not. I know what I've noticed I've been doing recently. Saying American band or American actor as if I'm really, really like, not the greatest Italian band. In these waning days of our great democratic experiment, I think it's worth noting that we contributed more than just jazz and baseball. The band Lowe, the actor Matt Damon. Yeah. Jay Ferguson's beard. Griselda.

Listen, I think we deserve another 10 years just off that. lineup alone. Yeah. We're going to transition to Breyer Patch Thursdays, right? I love it. I love it. I love talking about this show this way because we get to meet. All caps, Saul first.

Yes. And now switch to my Twitter feed. We get to talk to Zach Geller, who is the director of photography for Breyer Patch. She shot all but the pilot. Yes. Really cool guy. Really interesting to talk to. I love talking to all these different people who worked in different parts of the show like

this because you just get such an interesting perspective, not only on what it's like to work with Greenwald, which I already know that, but I'm really fascinated by telling a story and creating a world over the course of 10 episodes and the challenges and also the creative moments that come along with that. Yeah, and I think we're going to be talking about episode four, which aired after wrestling on Monday, and it was designed to be sort of a unique episode. I know I've been getting some guff because I referred to it on Monday, and I will again in our conference. with Zach, refer to it as a bottle episode. As a former TV critic, I know it is not a bottle episode.

It does not take place in one set only. What we were trying to do, and I used that phrase, and I jokingly was calling it a tequila bottle episode, is that we wanted to, it was bottled in Allegra's subjective POV of her experience of one thing, the funeral. That's what I meant. So it technically, not at all relevant to use that work, but I wanted to be clearer.

I did see that. And usually it got in the way of them dragging you in a way that I like to look at. So I had to respond directly. But anyway, just to say that this was always kind of an outlier episode for us, and it took a lot of special love and care in the writing and the crafting and in the directing. And what's been interesting and kind of affirming and exciting is for people who experienced it, it was part of the show.

It didn't feel like an outlier, you know, except maybe hopefully in an emotional way. But that's because of the work of people like Zach, who were, even as we changed the focus, quite literally, he maintained the consistency along with our guests for next week's prior patch Thursday's Richard Bloom, our production designer. There were steady hands on the rudder to make it of a piece

and the challenges that went along with that. So we talked to Zach about that. But you're the captain. You were Ahab. Yeah, you know, I don't mention Avenue 5 a lot, but I did relate to Hugh Laurie's character early where he was just like, I am actually a charming English fellow

who is wearing this suit while the other people are keeping us floating in space. Yes. So as a charming English fellow who looks, you know, great, great in epaulettes and shoulder pads. Let's get into our interview with Zach. That's more my vibe. All right, thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.

We'll do finale of Outsider. Oh, my God. Let's get into this cave. We may or may not have an appearance from Kaii McMullen, who may or may not have been in a cave recently. She is wearing a Pith helmet right now. Just keep it on all weekend. And we'll also hit Devs on Monday. So we'll talk to you guys soon.

All right. Now we are continuing a long and wonderful tradition on the watch podcast where we talk about Briar Patch. Briar Patch Thursday. It's a tradition like no other. We're talking about episode four. We have a very special guest today. Do you prefer director of photography or cinematographer, Zach? Could be whatever you're feeling. Briar Patch Director of Photography. Zach Galler, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. Zach, you do incredible work on this show. Thank you. I'm consistently, sometimes I just mute it. That's enough Andy for this one. And I just watch the story get told in pictures. You are not alone. My wife, I think would agree with that.

Much how the set was run. I would imagine that I'm sitting with the two people with the two hardest jobs on Briar Patch in a lot of ways. Because Andy obviously has a lot of them to wear a lot of hats into a lot of stuff. I thought you meant Zach as director of photography and Zach as cinematat. That's right. But Zach, you have to know what you're doing in any given moment on set, obviously. But you're also chiefly responsible for the overall. overall look of a show that you then have to sort of constantly be thinking both in weeks or months

in the future while you're on this very long shoot in Albuquerque, but also thinking about where the story is going. So you're thinking about things in a very technical. This is why I love talking to people who do what you do is because it's this incredible mixture of you have to have all this technical wherewithal, but you also have to have this real sensitivity to the direction of a story. So I guess let's start there. And can you tell me a little bit about what was exciting for you about the story of Briar Patch that you thought you could bring your sensibility to? Well, I think a lot of the

tone and look gets set in the pilot. And there was definitely a world that was created by Todd and Anna Lily. This is Todd Campbell. Todd Campbell. He's watched the Sam Esmail on many other projects. I've heard of Sam Esmelo. Yeah. He's a popular guest on the rewatchable spot guest. Big picture. Oh, right.

So yeah, you're taking it all into consideration. you're thinking about what kind of that pilot episode set up. And then I wonder if for people who don't know, because I think it's a pretty unique challenge to shoot nine episodes of television. This is what I wanted to, where you're going with this is where I wanted to start really with Zach, which is Chris is being very nice to say that my job was as hard as yours. I don't think that's true.

I mean, one of the joys of the show is watching people who can do things I could never do. But your job was that twofold because I don't know the things you know. and I think we should definitely discuss at some point while you're here when you taught me about electricity, which was fascinating. It was very rudimentary. He took a kite and a key and we went out in a storm. We were in the desert. I'm like, where this Ben Franklin outfit? Essential to learning about electricity.

That was once we got to know each other better. But also, just in terms of it's just hard. It was just crushing. So let's take it all the way back because I do think, you know, there are people who are listening who say cinematography, is good, or they talk about camera work, but they truly don't understand what the job is. So could you explain what your job is in general? And then we could talk specifically how hard that job and specific that job is to nine episodes of episodic television over the course of four months in the desert.

One thing that's great about is there are a lot of different ways that you can interact with being a director of photography or cinematographer. Let's pick director of photography for this conversation. DP. DP. They're interchangeable. Yeah, the director of photography gets the script usually and then talks with the director about how you're going to implement. How do the words that are in the script actually go through that bottleneck of the camera?

What's that going to be like? What's it going to feel like in whatever set you're in? How do you want the camera to move? How do you want the feel of the show to be when you're said and done? But there are also directors who have experience. as DPs themselves or have a lot of camera technical experience and say, I want to use this lens and I want to do X, Y, and Z thing. And the other directors who will say, you know, I want it to feel a certain way.

And you have to intuit both directions. It's kind of the fun of it is that every time it's different because you're interpreting a script, you're interpreting the director's wishes, and some directors are very technical. And he'll say, like, we're going to shoot this particular lens, but I want a dolly move to be about this long. And other directors, exactly like you said, are just like, I want this to feel organic. or, you know, it's some, it's about sort of taking a lot of different interpretations and making the technical reality of that happen.

Yeah, and then, I mean, if you don't mind me asking, I'm curious about, you know, you guys worked with multiple directors on this season. And then you've got Andy on the set, who's acting as a showrunner. What's the specific relationship between director showrunner and director of photography on the set? You know, it's different with every show, just as it would be with a director. And on episodic TV, I feel like all the lines are kind of blurring. I started an indie film, and that's sort of a medium where, although there are financiers and producers, the director, there's like one voice.

And they're in charge on TV, because directors cycle out, and this ebbs and flows with every show, just like anything else, the director has more or less, say, sort of in the look. and I think the showrunner DP relationship maybe sets that tone early and is one of the more consistent things because we're the ones who are there for every episode and you guys are, I mean when I was visiting set one of you was there for almost everything that happened on set It was Zach.

Yeah, it was always Zach. We don't do many shots if that's not there. Well, you have a second unit, you can go. That's true, we could do a splinter unit. That's true. A whole other conversation. Okay. But yeah, I mean, so the job, going back to the question, the job is really sort of interpreting whoever's in charge and what the material is, fitting that aesthetically through the filter of the budget, the time, the desired outcome, and just sort of implementing that.

And in the way that, you know, for a show with a writer's room and with scripts credit to different writers, ultimately does have to feel like one voice, even though each writer brought something very unique and very specific to each episode that he or she worked on, within a show with multiple directors, they still have to kind of feel like the same show. And that has to filter through Zach's sensibility and through his lighting choices and through the way the camera moves, the decisions we make about how cameras move on our show. All of that has to be made at the top. And these are conversations that we had and the Zack had with our producing directors, Stephen Paiet and Eric Crary as well. Sure. And I'll say, I mean, so much of it, you know, on a TV show, you're sort of setting up a system through which everything has to run.

Yeah. Because just because of the volume, I guess. It runs very different from how a movie does. But the production design is also such a huge part of keeping things consistent. Like when the DP and the production designer will work hand in hand about how the are going to feel the size of the sets, the technical requirements of the sets. I imagine even like the colors of the color, furniture. It's always a conversation that we're having and it's developing that is kind of,

it works the best when you can create a world and you've had enough time to think about the world so that the decisions are, they're almost made for you in a way. It's like here's this place we're existing in, how do we get there consistently? and then it just sort of becomes a second nature by the time you're going into it. And one of the beauties of our production, beautiful things about our production, was that Zach and Richard Bloom often did work hand in hand,

holding hands. Because they got along so wonderfully, and we're going to talk to Richard later in the season to talk about his half of it. But... It's the secret of great cinematography is production design. I just think it's so important, and we got so lucky to Richard Bloom. There's a moment that was probably overlooked,

and we can find specific moments in episode four as well, but in episode two, there's a small moment when Allegra goes into the police station and is sitting in the coroner's office, basically, the pathologist. And we built that set on the fly out of a room behind the police station set. We never used it again.

It's a small moment. It's just brown file cabinets. And I think it's so beautiful. And I love that moment. And that's whenever I think about how the two work together and elevated it. It could have just been a throwaway moment. It's a very brief scene

and it's really more about the content. You could get by with never seeing that set again. We never see the actor replace. a pathologist again. But because Zach and Richard were in sync to the degree that they were, it feels rich. It feels evocative. It feels like a place that has existed and may continue to exist. And it's not thrown away. There are no wasted moments. And I think that also sort of speaks back a little bit to back to your question about what does a director of photography do. Which I'm also asking because I don't know. It's a question that I ask myself all the time.

It's definitely an evolving thing. But, you know, thinking about that scene, it's two people sitting at a desk in a brightly, and it's supposed to feel hot and sunny and San Bonifacio. So how do you, you know, I think something that a lot of people or viewers maybe don't think about sometimes is there's a million ways you could show that scene. You know, it could be just a shot of someone's eyes and do all an audio or it could be just a wide shot or it can be, I think we do some close-ups that are really frontal like on the eyeline sort of Cohen Brothers feeling close-ups. that's where sort of the art comes in on the other side of the craft, making those aesthetic decisions and sort of your instinct for how that goes. And that's where kind of the relationship between director and director of photography gets blurred. Sometimes a director will have no, not no opinion about it, but will be, they'll say, we want this to feel like this. And then a director of photography will interpret that to mean one thing.

And you end up with that specific shot. or the director might be like, I want this exact shot, that lens right there. So it's nebulous. So this is a two-part question, but the first part's very easy, which is I think it would be helpful for listeners just to hear a little bit about your background because you mentioned you worked in indie films. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got... Zach also has an indie rock in New York City backstory.

Oh, which also... That's not this. I wasn't going to talk about your personal band history. I just mean that you worked with bands. Yeah. If you'd like to talk about your history in baseball. bands. He's shaking his head.

We'll revisit in the Splinter Unit podcast. We're going to be dropping in two weeks. We've got to see Splinter's sale. This week on Splinter Unit. Yeah, I started in the film business. I dropped out of film school to play in a band and ended up getting into the film business, starting as a truck driver, working in a lighting rental house and driving lights to sets in New York City.

I'm working on small non-union commercials and little... industrials and sort of just small things. And then I started shooting. I had always taken pictures my entire life and was always kind of knew that there was something there for me. And then I sort of lied my way onto a couple of Columbia grad student films, short films. And they're like, can we see a real? And I was like, yeah, it's just not edited yet.

And, you know, you kind of got to get your foot in the door somehow. So did a couple of those and that sort of progressed. I shot one million little music videos for free and shorts for free. And just as I was gaffing and doing lighting to make money on the weekends would go shoot stuff with friends and stuff like that. And I just got really lucky and really New York has such interesting people working at it. Yeah. Sort of a director that I really shot a bunch of music videos with and some shorts. She was, she's Norwegian.

and got funding from Norwegian government to do a feature film. And so that first feature film we did together, got into Sundance. What was it called? The Sleepwalker. Okay. It was in competition in 2014, I think. But yeah, and like, we just got so lucky. Yeah.

And that sort of led to more indie movies, and I shot probably seven or eight indie movies. And then I got a meeting for a TV show with a showrunner director named Greg Yattain. Who... Did Banshee and Borey. And I did a show called Manhunt Unabomber with him. And I feel like he really gave me a break and kind of plucked me out of obscurity. And when you... Although your TanLines videos, I'm a fan of.

I would have referenced those first. So the reason I wanted to get a background in the indie stuff and get a sense of where you came from is because one of the things that Andy brought up whenever I would talk with him about the show over the course of being down there is this idea that you guys are essentially making a very long indie film because you are shooting it as if it's a movie. It's not, here's an exterior of the place where Roger Sterling is going into his office and then here is his set where we always shoot

and it's a medium and it's... Well, in the sense that we were on location so much. Yeah, but also even I think that, like, you can see it in episode four, which is a very talky, very cerebral, emotional episode. In a very hot graveyard. Yes, and it is very sunbleached and everything else, but like each scene has its own distinctive cinematic quality.

to it. And I don't think that you could watch Briar Patch and be like, yep, just like any old show on a, on like, you know. Say it, coward. Trash the show. No, I mean like any old, like you can't watch that show and be like, yeah, this looks like TV from 2004. Right. It's part of that kind of increasing blending of like cinematic sensibility with a television sort of scope. And I wonder whether or not your indie, you're training and you're come up through that, that world kind of prepared you for having to be like a high volume. but still very artistically minded person. Absolutely. And I think, you know, the thing that feels similar is schedule. On an indie movie typically, a smaller indie movie that's probably budgeted between like 200 grand

and a million and a half bucks, you probably have 18 days. Your crew size that you have working for you, that's like grips and electrics and camera assistance. You're likely to have one camera. You'll probably have about five or six lighting guys helping you, like on a day-to-day basis. So you have to plan ahead of time what your setups are going to be, what your lighting setups are going to be, what the sort of, this is the thing that takes the most time as lights and moving lights around and things like that. So you really have to plan, and I think indie film is a great place to learn this, you have to plan a sort of strategy, like a almost like a zone defense about what you're, where the big pieces are going to go. So you're not spending hours every time you turn the camera around moving that stuff again.

And that, I think, is a great training ground for TV because the pieces might get bigger, but it's essentially the same idea, which is you just have to go as fast as you can all the time. And you have a lot more resources in TV, so you're able to, I think, accomplish a lot more aesthetically and even script page count wise. But it's pretty similar. I've been kind of fascinated over the last couple years. It's just like people moving from indie film rather than graduating to, and personally, I'm happy. is happening. But rather than graduating to blockbusters or superhero movies, it's like Amy Simets and Jeremy Solnier and people like that, making more TV. You know, sometimes not MasterPie shows,

but like you can see that their backgrounds and like running gun and knowing how to like get stuff done efficiently works well in television. I do think that just to speak to that a little bit, I agree with you. And I love that people who are real artists are taking TV seriously. and it's becoming a much more interesting medium. It does seem like the market, I guess I would say, or just film in general, like that sort of $20 to $50 million film that would have been like something in the 90s or 2000s,

all transitioned over to TV. They're spending the same amount of money and getting five times more content. But I would also say that something that we talk about a lot and certainly was at the forefront of my mind is this sort of strange moment we're at with television where expectations are aesthetically higher than they've ever been. Absolutely.

But the industry and the business and the budgets are often still from the previous era. And the sort of inflection point where those two not getting along realities meet is in Zach's job, often, I found. Because Zach, there's a whole element that we're not even talking about, which is the budgeting and how you're going to use the tools that you have. while, you know, we used to have that analogy about show running before I had done it about, you know, building the track while also operating the train on it. And that's what Zach was doing on the fly day after day after day, episode after episode as, you know, budgetary expectations changed or shot lists changed or ambition changed with the arrival of a new director. Those two things crashing on you at all times is something that I really respect and do not envy. It was. It's fun to figure out.

It's just, you know, it's always a different challenge. You want to talk a little bit about episode four in regards to some of that stuff? Because Breadknife weather is the episode four. Before we do, I just also want to say for people who just bring in all the way back that both you were talking about at the beginning, when we opened the show up to series and Todd went back to Bork on Mr. Robot and we needed to bring in a new director of photography, you know, as an opportunity to talk about what we wanted to do differently. and one of the things that we were talking about, this is me and Andy Campania from SML Corp and everyone else involved in the decision making

was we wanted to take the opportunity to open up the palette because the color palette and also just the way the show looked and felt because what Lily gave us was so brilliant and so cerebral and kind of claustrophobic on Rosario and on her experience and now we had to do nine more. And over nine more episodes, we couldn't be as tight in on her. We had to just break POV and also expand the town. And so all this was part of the conversation with the people we were interviewing.

And obviously when we Skyped, Zach was in New York with a baby crying in the other room, which made me immediately want to hire him. But the second thing was, because he could relate. Honestly. But the other thing about it was, Zach, you spoke really beautifully about what you thought we could do and what we could accomplish with the world and the tone. But also, and I think people listening to this can get a hint of this, Zach has a very calming voice and a very calm demeanor. And you were wearing like a lumberjackie shirt. And I was like, well, I think we have to hide. hire him because even if he's not good at being a DP, which he is, I've seen the evidence,

but even if he wasn't, he'll be soothing. Maybe he would have a catch with me after shoot every day or teaching me how to use woodworking tools. Are there really jacked? Which, by the way, I kept making that joke to him. And he's like, sorry, I'm busy redoing my porch on the home that I own. Are there really amped up DPs out there? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. There's all different kinds. Guys who were really wired. I can see that, I guess. It would be a lot. I mean, it would be intense. There's a right fit for every set, you know? Say you have, I don't know, someone who really wants to take a back seat creatively.

Right. It might be really good for you to hire someone that's super outspoken and is going to just... You're not inspoken. What's the opposite of outspoken? Soft-spoken? Interverted? It's all spoken, yeah. I don't know.

I feel like there are, and again, it's one of the things I love about this is there are just, there are no kind of rules for how things work. There's no set. true but your experience having done this before you know you were very clear to me about you know helping me check myself with my emotional highs and lows like feeling like two weeks into it being like we got this and you were like oh oh sweet boy oh no no no this is easy man uh and warning me what came true which was that by week well i don't month four so he's like day day 37 that's when it starts to kick in yeah well the time we were at episode nine zach emerged blinking from his tent that he lived in. Not the tent, by the way, where the equipment was. He just brought a tent with him.

And said, what were you at this point? You were just mostly dust, tin cans and dust. Tens and dust. All about it. So let's talk a little bit about four. Very interesting episode because I feel like this is, for me, at least, watching was like the San Badafasio episode. It was like the episode that felt the most in the town and where you got to see all these different, I don't know, organisms that made the big organism some extent and also different people's relationships to the idea of their hometown. This was always designed to be a little bit, not strange, like a kind of a bottle episode. I think I was calling it a tequila bottle episode when I was pitching it. And basically, we wanted to do the funeral. We wanted to do all the things that needed to be done for

Felicity and then use it as an opportunity, not just to tell the type of story that you're describing where we could focus more on characters' interactions in their emotional lives as opposed to the larger machinations of the plot, but also one where we could sort of just step aside for a second and really focus in on stuff that we might not get to do once things really started rolling further down the line. So in keeping with it being a little bit non-traditional, it was written beautifully by Wayne Nguyen Yu, who is our staff writer. It was her first staffing opportunity, but she's a beautiful and brilliant writer and was definitely the right choice for it from the beginning. She came to the episode. She came to our show with a really

like laser focus on the emotional part of the characters. And so she was a no-brainer to do this episode. And then also that we could take a swing and bring in a director from maybe outside of the of what, of the list of TV directors that you're normally handed. And so we had Desire Acovan who had done her own work on TV in the bisexual and had done a film called The Miseducation of Cameron Post. And, you know, we could do something a little bit different with it.

And so, so, I don't, I mean, I guess we we should turn to these acts. Like when you saw it, the script and you knew it was a little bit different, and location-wise was going to be a little bit different. And actually- And a lot, right? A lot of- It feels like you guys are moving around a lot.

Well, we were three days in that boiling hot cemetery and two days in that church. And was the school nearby, or was that a set? That was inside the church. Oh, okay. And everything was outside of it. That was actually a great location find by the team, and you guys treated it beautifully. But- It was a church, so not treating it beautifully would be probably a problem for our eternal souls.

Unless you were in a Norwegian black metal band. But I guess, so this is something I don't even know if we ever even had time to talk about because Zach was either working or running off to scout something or working again. But this obviously felt different than the other episodes, and it was going to be in places we were never going to return to. So how do you prepare and approach something like that? Well, I think it goes back to what we said a little bit before about sort of a establishing a world and getting your idea of what the rules of this place are, because that'll then inform all the decisions you have to make.

So it's like, okay, we have all these different locations. We know what San Bonifacio is like and what serves the story as far as it's hot. It should be dusty and feel warm. Albuquerque really delivered for us. Albuquerque was perfect. It was brutal. You didn't have to go day for night on that one. It was brutal at that cemetery.

My shoes melted at the cemetery. They really. Zach was wearing like full hurt locker, like military garb. I learned early from the locals, like they all would go out in the desert with like full like jackets and completely covered. And I was like, how can you do that? It's so hot. And then I quickly. Because it's like realized.

It keeps the sun off. It's the best way. Yeah. You'll just get cooked. Yeah. Be done. But yeah. So sort of attacking the idea of how are we going to do this from perspective of we know it's going to be hot.

and dusty and feel warm, like the temperature of the image will be warm. And then when you go into a location, you find a way to implement those things if you can and hope that you can. And so, for instance, in the church, we found, Richard, I think, found this beautiful kind of mid-century modern church

that had all this color. We added color. There's side windows, and we had, Richard and I decided that we would put this plastic that welders used to sort of, partition off where they're welding so the sparks don't get everywhere, but it came in all these cool different colors, and it's not so much in the episode. You can feel it in the room now a little

bit, but we don't. I think the shots that we had that featured it weren't. I think you can see it in the Cindy Singe scene. Probably. Which is one of my favorites. We tried to bring color, and we try to bring hot sunlight in anywhere that we could as far as the aesthetic feel of it. And then just by virtue of using a similar lens for a close-up every time or a similar lens for a wide every time it starts to feel of a piece. And so we would, I guess for this episode, you know, sort of the one X factor that I feel like isn't similar to the other stuff is the back of the limo. We have like a long scene in the back of a limo, which was an interesting lighting and technical challenge.

That's the best limo we could get. Navakirky attached to a rig driving in circles around where the church was for a good bit of time. Long time. No air conditioning. Yeah. You can have the air conditioning on because it messes up the sound.

I don't have a specific example of this, but I do feel like the look of the episode changes the more beers deep Allegra gets in the episode. This is obviously her coping episode that she eventually finally totally has her breakdown over over her sister's death. And, you know, she is hung up. over already. She washes down

some accedron or whatever with a beer in the morning, which must have tasted disgusting. And then I'm not until you try it. Pretty much from the second she gets out of her hotel till the end of the episode is crushing beers or taking shots or whatever.

And then you guys are kind of mirroring that decline with the camera work with the, I think the feel of the episode changes over the course of the 45 minutes or whatever it is. And then so that was Desiree really wanted it to feel subjective. And I think this episode we said from prep from the get-go was a much more subjective episode,

just because it really stays in Allegra's perspective. Yeah, we really, and I know I just said what I was saying about how Lily's cameras focused on her and her experience. This was the one in Arndt Back Nine, basically, that we wanted to be really zeroed in on her perspective, her subjectivity, her experience of it. And so there was opportunity at every step along the way, obviously, in terms of performance, and Rosario was really dialed in. I mean, she never wasn't, but I think she really was really focused on this episode

because of the emotional breakdown and tracking where she was in order to get there. I think Zach and Desiree and Richard with all the choices he made was focused on it as well. And then during the long post time we had with this episode, for me it was really crucial to design. Well, also, I should mention our editor, Sagan guy, who was also very much in line

with what we needed to do in terms of how we were going to cut it and where the camera was going to, and where our shots were going to stay. and how long we were going to stay there. But then for me, it was also sound design. It was really, really important. And so there's a sequence at the end that I'm really proud of where we basically condense some stuff with sound

where she throws the beer can and it's the rifle shot and then it's the camera. And for me, that was really eye-opening and really creative and fun to realize what we can do in post to enhance things even further. That wasn't as written. No. I mean, she is overwhelmed in that moment

and steals the photo. That was as written. Right. But specifically, there was connective tissue between the scenes that we just zipped away with sound design because we'd already made the point that we needed to make. And there are things that are from the book, the waking up hungover, Sergeant Mock. Sergeant Mock's whole first thing, Sergeant Mock played by a great guy and my friend Matt Oberg. That's all from the book about like sad things, funerals and keeping the beers and the cooler.

But then once we knew that's the kind of world we're in, we definitely kept adding and kept adding. Kept adding beers. Kept adding beers and kept adding shots. The one, my only regret, and I mention this because Zach is here about the episode. One thing about Zach, you guys need to know, is Zach loves inserts. Zach loves an opportunity to, instead of moving on to another scene or other cameras set up. Have somebody open a beer really close. Just calm down everybody.

Let's move the camera in and just showcase something like, I don't know, like an item of food, for example, as we may see in next week's episode or whatever. It's just what DPs love most. Don't spoil that one. Pump the brakes. Yeah. They love to pump the brakes. Tell me where to point it, Fincher. I got it.

So I was very proud that in the Sunday school room, we did get the montage that I wanted of horrific children's illustrations of Bible stories. Yeah. But what people won't get to see, and I am sad about this, is the Dixie Cups that Jake pulls to pour the shots into. We had the art department design an image, a very loving cartoon image of Noah on the ark with three animals pointing and laughing at all the animals, other animals drowning.

I didn't see that. But because we didn't get the insert. I don't even remember seeing that on the day. It was like, that's the level of detail that we spent time on, wasted time on. Yeah, that Andy requires. Zach loves that stuff. This episode has my favorite Jake Spivey moment, even though, even considering the dancing, I think his post-eulogy critique, or just sort of like his praise of Gene's eulogy is so fucking funny when he's just like, Hey, man, that was great.

That may have been the funniest scene to shoot. He really went for it. I mean, Jay Ferguson doesn't hold back, I feel. Did you rehearse that? We actually had to take it back. Like, there was an amazing, I think he said, like, okay, I see how you do it. And he taps him on the shoulders and in the script.

And as we shot it, he says, oh, I see how you work in a two tickets to the gun show over here. Yeah, I missed that in the car. And it's so, so funny. but ultimately these are the painful decisions you have to make because that felt like we were tipping and he was just being an asshole but Jay was very sad about that

because his delivery of it was so amazing and also this is an insight into who Jay is he delivered it in a way that was so funny I went over in between takes and I was like that's the funniest thing you've ever done and he got so mad at me because once it was in his head he could never do it again and now it's lost

yeah it was good forever real sly real sly any particular favorite moments from this episode for you Zach or are they all all tied up and like, oh, that worked out well or better than I thought it would. That's cool.

It's not like... It's hard for me to separate. Yeah, because I wonder whether it's like with actors sometimes, they're like, oh, I'm spooked by seeing myself. I can't see it. Like, for you, do you like, do a lot of, like, self-reflection when you're watching something, or are you just like, I can't see this again? Like, I'll do stuff where I look at it and I can appreciate lighting.

But it's so hard for me to not see, like, the edge of the set. Kind of. It's always, like, I always knew that there's stuff just off the edge of frame there. So you can't suspend disbelief? Yeah, it's really tough. It's definitely like in the moment when we're shooting it,

something I'm always so aware of. And so I have these images and it's really hard for me to separate it out. But I do, you know, there are times where I go back and really like appreciate in sort of a bigger picture way where we ended with how the light feels. Right. And that's satisfying to me. Okay. I mean, I think it's really important to note, especially with Zach here to say that

I just think that every shot is beautiful. I mean, the actors look incredible. The light is beautiful and knowing how hard some of these circumstances were, whether it was an unforgiving location or whether it was the weather that day or how much time we had. You know, I love the opening of this episode, for example, with Floyd in the football stadium. And I know one of Zach had a lot of great,

he loved a lot of the things that I brought to him. Like, whenever I walked over to the tent, like, he was excited. Yeah. It was going to be some good stuff. And, you know, this was this moment where we wanted it to be like, Boyhood or Friday Night Lights and, you know, the green, green grass and the bright sunny day. All the best sports movies.

We wanted to feel like nostalgia and we wanted to feel sort of fake. And of course, as soon as we get there, the cloud cover rolls in. So it's like, a big like Independence Day clouds coming. I was like, Zach, yeah, this scene's supposed to be sunny. Can you, uh, what can we do about that? He's like, it'll be fine. That's why he's lying on a hash mark where they go overhead. It'll be fine.

And it is fine. And also I think the thing people might not realize about your job is that so much of it isn't prep, obviously, and what you're going to need. So much of it is being fluid on the day in terms of what nature is giving you. But then it's not over it because Zach's been really gracious enough to come back. He's here in L.A. now to do color correcting on episodes 9 and 10. So you get more time. Can you just talk about that process a little bit too? And actually that scene that you just talked about is an interesting segue to it because a lot of people would be like, what the heck is that even for?

So that was a cloudy, you know, there are maybe three or four shots in that sequence. There's a wide from the side where we're seeing like the whole bleachers and everything behind him. And I think we did that first while it was still sunny. And then by the time we've gotten, I remember actually on this day, we had a crane there to do a big top shot. But there was lightning close enough that we could not put up any large metal objects into the air. There's that electricity you talked about again. Well, you didn't have your Ben Franklin costume. I had the costume.

I was advised. Anyway. So, you know, it's like we're there for an hour and a half. And the first shot in the scene, which in the scene takes place within a minute, 30 seconds. It's confusing, I think, for someone watching to see, if you don't see the change in camera, it can be really jarring for the viewer and really take them out of the scene. So in color correct, we'll try and do hopefully subtle things to match stuff. that looks different when you have no control over it.

Or it's ColorCrec's kind of like Photoshop. It's a pretty powerful tool. It's a lot like Photoshop for moving image. And a lot of times we'll shoot things on set that we don't know we're going to go right next to each other or things will be repurposed or things will be just impossible to control. A lot of day exterior stuff, you just at this budget level without getting construction cranes, with 60 by 60 silks and things like that, you just can't, you can't hope to control it. You can't change the sun. Yeah, you can't change the sun.

And there are, you know, there are ways to help yourself out and set the deck of cards in your favor. But most times you're really at the mercy of whatever is happening. So it's another color correct where you can, you look at one side of a conversation and it's bright and sunny. And then the other side is cloudy and dark. And you can at least sort of get them closer. Right. Well, I mean, this has been a fascinating conversation. I actually, like, I love talking about cinematography. It's just, it's always so interesting. I wish that this was, we were on YouTube because then we could do more of the camera fingers gesture. Oh, yeah. Like that. Like that. And then it's just, too. A lot of. Oh, it's good stuff.

Filmmakers corner, man. Zach, thanks so much for coming by. Zach did beautiful work on the show. He did. It's incredible. He did. It's an amazing DP. Zach also liked Albuquerque. Like living there, despite moving there, despite moving. five or six times during the course of the summer. It's a big, big church, man. Sometimes people may not like Albuquerque, but there are those who love it.

Oh, I love it. I like that so much. You did not like it. I liked it when Zach's family was there and you would invite people over and it felt like it felt home here. And he came to my kid's birthday party. Oh, that's sweet.

A Jurassic Park party. This is why he got hired. Did you play Sam Neal? Wait, does Sam Neal, who's the one who actually puts his hand deep into the... That's Laura Dern. I played Laura Dern. Yeah.

Or I could see you doing gold blue. Actually, Zach's wife was dressed as Laura Dern. She was. And you were dressed as Sam Neal. That's true. That's really fun. I came more as Chris Pratt because I'm a little hipper, you know. I'm a little hipper, a little younger.

You kept saying, welcome to Jurassic Park. Zach, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you guys. Thank you for being here.