Latest / Half the Picture / #2 - TRISTAN OLIVER

Transcript

#2 - TRISTAN OLIVER · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  So thanks for joining us, Tristan, to talk about ILO docs, your film with Wes Anderson,
• 0:04
  which you were the DPR, not your only movie-deeping with Wes Anderson.
• 0:10
  Yeah, we kind of want to start at the beginning with sort of with you and your career really,
• 0:14
  in terms of asking you about, we know that you started off as an actor and sort of as a crew member,
• 0:20
  you know, a clapperboard, loader and that kind of thing, and then you sort of moved into animation
• 0:26
  through work and environment and then you sort of shot many of their films up through to
• 0:30
  Kirsta, where are they? And we just kind of wanted to ask you a bit about what was that like in
• 0:34
  the early days of sort of, you know, getting on board with this company, we kind of went on to
• 0:39
  change the face of animation really. Yes, well, it was a long time ago. Yeah, as you say, I kind of
• 0:48
  had an early manifestation as an actor and I got a role in a movie and I'd never, I'd never
• 0:56
  been on a film set in my life, you know, I didn't have any idea about the process at all. And
• 1:02
  within the course of shooting that movie, I became very, very interested in the camera department
• 1:06
  and the guy who shot at Peter B.J. who won an Academy Award for Mississippi Burning a few years
• 1:13
  later. It was a terribly sweet guy. It was very nice to me, you know, because I first
• 1:18
  been movie and he was very kind to me. And I got on, we've been very well. And my educational
• 1:24
  background was sort of the perfect bonkers mix of A levels, you know, I'd done physics, biology,
• 1:30
  chemistry, English and theatre studies A level. So I had kind of science and art and I was doing
• 1:35
  a drama degree at the time. So it kind of changed my path really and that accompanied by the fact
• 1:43
  that acting is a ludicrously unstable profession to be in. I mean, you know, it doesn't even matter
• 1:52
  if you're good, you don't necessarily work, you know. So I was just something very attracted to it,
• 2:00
  you know, so it's these kind of bizarre sort of schizophrenic two years where I was acting a bit
• 2:05
  and I'm working as a camera system. And then I decided to go to film school. And at the time,
• 2:12
  the union was incredibly strong for film technicians and you couldn't really work without being
• 2:18
  a member of the union, but it was also terribly closed shop. So it tended to consist of the
• 2:24
  sounds and nephews and I'd use those genders advisedly of other crew members.
• 2:34
  But there were a couple of film school courses that you could be accredited for with the union.
• 2:40
  So one of those was the National London Club School, London International School and Bristol.
• 2:46
  So I went back to Bristol where I'd done my degree and I took the film school course.
• 2:51
  My graduation film, which I'd shot, did very well. I won a few cinematography prizes and then
• 2:59
  over the next 18 months, two years, I was, you know, doing the usual nonsense of shooting pop
• 3:06
  primers for friends and short dramas that never saw the light of day and all those things that
• 3:11
  we think are going to be significant but aren't. But our effects include a good practice.
• 3:15
  So, and then I ran Ardmond one day to borrow some lights for a pop promo, I was shooting.
• 3:25
  And Ardmond at that point was quite literally three guys in a garage.
• 3:32
  It was three guys and it was a garage and that's when they shot. I knew one of them and he said,
• 3:37
  oh, you're doing anything next week and I said, no, you said you want to come and finish off
• 3:40
  this commercial, you know, the way they were to say kind of laid back, they had no schedule.
• 3:45
  So they'd start shooting something with no idea when they were going to finish and the guy who
• 3:49
  was shooting it, I got another job. So I went in and there I was at the tender age of whatever I was,
• 3:57
  I don't know, 24 or something like that. Shooting a big TV commercial on 35 millimeter just
• 4:04
  by dint of the fact that they'd run out of career. And, you know, I never had any intention,
• 4:12
  I mean, who would of going into stock frame animation as a career choice because, you know,
• 4:18
  as a cinematographer, you know, God is rarified and rare and infrequent, you know, it's,
• 4:26
  it's not many people do it for a reason because there's not a huge amount of good work out there
• 4:32
  and at the time there was even less work. But I got into Armin at the right time, you know,
• 4:38
  and they liked me and I was enjoying it, you know, and I rather alarmingly had a child shortly
• 4:46
  after that. So all that kind of period of my life where I should have been clubbing and doing
• 4:51
  disgraceful things abroad never really happened because I actually had some responsibility I had to
• 4:56
  take care of. So I just stuck in, you know, whenever they asked me to do work, I just,
• 5:01
  I went and did work and I became a sort of regular crew there. But what was happening was, you know,
• 5:08
  Pete and Dave, who owned the company, they wanted to do something different with stock frame animation
• 5:12
  because all stock frame animation was, was kids TV, pingu, magic around about, it wasn't quite
• 5:20
  bought the building because you haven't been invented them, but you know, Trump turned the
• 5:22
  cowboy green and that kind of stuff. So it was very, very simply photographed, you know,
• 5:27
  locks up camera, big soft light over the top. It was really just about the animation and about
• 5:31
  the stories and there was no heart to the capturing of the image if you like to be a bit
• 5:35
  pontier about it. So, you know, what they were looking to do was to take it forwards, cinematically.
• 5:43
  And I was there at that point and you know, we, as we got bigger, you know, we actively were moving
• 5:50
  towards a new look for stuff. And that was primarily in commercials at that time.
• 5:57
  And the odd short film, so creature comforts, for instance, happened during that time and
• 6:01
  various other short films. And Arbon started to get profile. They won an academy award for
• 6:06
  creature comforts and they won a bunch of actors for other stuff. So, you know, it's all about
• 6:11
  time and place and it being a very intensively creative place to be because everyone was
• 6:19
  just trying to hunt for a way to make what we did a proper thing. And then, you know, the
• 6:27
  combination of that really was wrong trousers, which was the opportunity to produce, you know,
• 6:32
  some longish form stock frame that actually looked like a proper film, you know, and had that
• 6:38
  aesthetic to it that wasn't all about kids drama but was actually about making a beautiful image.
• 6:44
  That stood up to being projected not just on your tally on Christmas day, but actually, you know,
• 6:50
  something bigger. That's a very long answer to a very short question.
• 6:54
  No, thank you. That's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, just on the, just on the, on the
• 6:58
  side of those early arm and films and the wallerson growing films, I think in particular, I think
• 7:02
  we, you could probably say the same as me about this is that, you know, those movies obviously,
• 7:05
  you know, they're a national institution as you were saying earlier to kids, to people, you know,
• 7:09
  a lot of those kids now adults in Britain, you know, the fact that we're actually chatting to you,
• 7:14
  you know, the guy who shot the train chase among trousers and, you know, all the stuff in close
• 7:18
  shave and chicken run. And obviously, and where are they? You know, all those, you know, it's
• 7:22
  pretty amazing. You know, the stuff that you guys, as you say, you know, right there at the beginning
• 7:26
  of all that, the work that you guys did together is, is incredible. And, you know, it's really,
• 7:31
  really fun to be able to talk to you about it and listen to you, sort of tell us about it.
• 7:36
  So yeah, touching on sort of the thing that you said earlier of, you went into Ardman,
• 7:41
  just sort of almost doing them a favour, essentially. In your time when you were there,
• 7:46
  is that when you started picking up a genuine love for stop motion animation? Because I mean,
• 7:54
  you could have gone and tried to break into the live action scene. Or was it solely down to the
• 8:02
  responsibility that you said of having a young child? Yeah, it's a difficult question, you know,
• 8:09
  I have a long handkerchief to do something different. And I have done other things differently.
• 8:15
  I mean, the result thing is, I guess in the last 10 to 15 years, I've shot more live action stuff
• 8:20
  than I have at any other time in my life, you know, and I now have quite kind of my mix, you know,
• 8:25
  I did a couple of live action feature films just before lockdown. And, you know,
• 8:32
  I've kind of arrived at a happy place and I do a lot of sort of mixed media commercials as well,
• 8:37
  where you know, I shoot the animation and I shoot the live action because I know how that stuff
• 8:40
  fits together. But I do genuinely enjoy the animation now. I think you have to not be too precious
• 8:48
  about this stuff because it's a bit like an actor who's very good at comedy saying, I want to play
• 8:53
  Hamlet, you know, that's not going to happen because you're very good at what you do. And I recognize
• 9:00
  that. I am very good at what I do, you know, not many people do what I do, but even so,
• 9:08
  I'm pretty up there, you know, and I'm not boasting about it, it's just, you know, I do big movies
• 9:13
  and I do big movies that everyone sees. So, you know, I'm obviously doing something right,
• 9:18
  and it would be foolish of me to put myself up against the, I don't know, 5 or 600 excellent
• 9:25
  live action DPs just in the UK as a, as a contender at my age and this point in my career, you know,
• 9:34
  I mean, there are many, many exceptionally talented colleagues who are much better at that stuff
• 9:41
  than when I will ever be, but I do enjoy a bit of live action now again. And also, you know, I'm now,
• 9:47
  if you do this stuff for long enough, you, you know, you just become an expert at being a live
• 9:53
  action DPs, you actually become an expert in the whole process of animation, you know, so I am,
• 9:57
  you know, when I do feature film, I'm across the storyboarding, the design, you know, I spend
• 10:04
  every day in the art department, talking to the production designer and the art director and
• 10:08
  the set guys and the set dresses, the pocket makers and the costume makers, you know, because
• 10:13
  everything appears in front of my camera. So I inform what they're doing because I know well
• 10:18
  that stuff's going to look like. So if I think something is textured wrong or the scale of something
• 10:23
  is reading wrong or the design of a prop is too cruege to be projected 20 feet high, that's part
• 10:29
  of my process, you know, it's not just about shining lights and taking pictures, it's about
• 10:34
  making the entire image. So it's kind of all encompassing process. I think maybe a bit more than
• 10:40
  the live action is where the crew is a hold, just tends to turn up on day one, there's obviously
• 10:47
  enormous pre-production process, but that number of people coming together that early on a project
• 10:52
  is quite unusual. A big stock frame production is an intensely busy process and what I always say
• 10:58
  is it takes a long time but it isn't slow. The process is time consuming but everyone on it is
• 11:04
  working really as fast as they can. So you also have enormous scale to these things. So I would
• 11:12
  typically on a future film be running 50 shoots in units. So get your head around that, that's 56,
• 11:18
  50 cameras, all shooting simultaneously and obviously a constant turnover or set action
• 11:26
  pressing, occupying an enormous amount of real estate. So my camera crew, my assistants typically
• 11:33
  do 10 to 15 kilometers a day around the studio space. And the animators who are doing this process
• 11:42
  which seems intensely slow are working as fast as they can, but what they do is incredibly
• 11:47
  complicated. And talking about being an actor, what an animator is doing is feeding a performance
• 11:54
  through an inanimate object and bringing it to life. So in many ways that is as performance-based
• 12:00
  and art as any piece of acting, it's even more so technical, it's very kit heavy, it's very
• 12:07
  people heavy, it's space heavy. The whole thing is I always think of it as like an ocean liner
• 12:14
  that once is underway, it appears to be moving slowly a bit if it hits you.
• 12:21
  What I mean sort of looking back to what you just said in terms of the length of some of these
• 12:32
  projects that you're working on, how do you maintain your passion and your objectivity and
• 12:38
  your creativity for such a long sort of shoot period? We know obviously in terms of live action
• 12:45
  you can be in a set or out in a field somewhere, shooting for six weeks and then you're done
• 12:53
  moving on to your next project, whereas with yourself it says it can be anything from a year to two
• 13:00
  to three and even more. So how do you keep that going? Yeah, well the shooting period is typically
• 13:06
  about 18 months, it's about 80 weeks if you like. And I really love it because what you have to
• 13:13
  understand is that the pre-production process continues almost to the end of the production process.
• 13:19
  So my typical day will involve turning around relighting, maybe a dozen shooting units, I've got
• 13:27
  a couple of other guys who work for me doing a bit of lighting under my instruction but then I'll
• 13:31
  be in edit, I'll be in VFX looking at the later stuff in VFX, I will be in script meetings,
• 13:38
  I will be in storyboard breakdown meetings and I will be in pre-production meetings for what is
• 13:42
  coming up in the next six to eight weeks and that is rolling all the way through that process.
• 13:47
  So for me, it's very busy but I always think there's a process of learning the project.
• 13:55
  When you come on, you've read the script, you've seen the storyboards but if someone mentions
• 14:00
  something, you have to thumb your way back through and find, oh yeah, that's that page and I forgot
• 14:04
  what was happening and then after a while it just kind of gels in your head and you've got this
• 14:08
  massive mental database of the film and you know, you find that if someone says, oh yeah,
• 14:14
  that sequence 26 shot 48, you can go, oh yeah, I know what that is, that's the two shot outside,
• 14:20
  you know, this happened. And once you're in that kind of zone, it becomes enormously exciting
• 14:29
  because you're kind of locked into this thing, just powering through and you really feel like
• 14:35
  you're making something. And you know, every day, the more you shoot, the more you get. So you
• 14:39
  sit in rushes every morning and you look at yesterday's material and you begin to see it cutting
• 14:44
  in to the story reel and you begin to see shots next to each other and you get a feeling of what
• 14:50
  the film is going to look like and especially if something's been very complicated or my
• 14:55
  complaining, they asked to shoot, you know, to see it actually finished, you just think, yeah,
• 14:59
  that looks great. It's, you know, that, you know, it's a constant reward, you know, it's a bit of
• 15:05
  you know, obviously to, you know, on this shot. Yeah, I suppose this sort of brings us then
• 15:13
  quite nicely onto sort of working with Wes because so you would obviously shot with Arman for,
• 15:19
  you know, 15 years, you know, at least you know, up through where I bet. And then there was,
• 15:25
  I was reading upon this and on the sort of production of Finasmus DeFlox, which is obviously
• 15:28
  the first film we shot with Wes. As the story goes, Wes was sort of, you know, setting up production
• 15:33
  here in Britain and you, I think, is the story you heard about it and they had already hired
• 15:38
  another DP, but then you were particularly keen on, like, you know, you heard that it was, it was
• 15:41
  Wes making the film and you were like, right, I need to get my foot in the door there, I need to,
• 15:45
  I need to be in the DP on that film. Is that, is that power went down as it were?
• 15:49
  But it's almost hurt, went down. Yeah. I would like to stress for the record, but I did not know
• 15:55
  they had hired another DP until after they hired me. Right.
• 16:01
  That would have been an act of treachery and professionalism that I would not have conscience,
• 16:06
  but I was, I was bad. I got the job. Yeah, I mean, I had only, I say only, I had never been on
• 16:14
  staff at Ardenham. I was a freelancer and for whatever reason, I'm not sure, I even know, after
• 16:22
  cursing the whereup it, that signal to kind of break in that relationship. I still don't know why,
• 16:28
  but I obviously needed to work elsewhere and I heard that this project was going on and I,
• 16:32
  yeah, I took my reel to the producer and showed it to Wes and I got the job. So that's pretty much
• 16:38
  how it happened, you know, and they're on, from there, on the inbox, on a while curious, occasionally
• 16:45
  frustrating, occasionally exciting journey on a whole different way of making a movie. I mean,
• 16:55
  nothing is like that. Yeah, well, we were going to, we wanted to ask about this because I mean,
• 17:00
  obviously, I think we're both fans of Wes's, right? And like, we were curious in terms of
• 17:04
  stop motion and animation is such a meticulous craft. And yet, you're working with a director who
• 17:10
  is known for how meticulous his craft is when it comes to the look of the films, how, you know,
• 17:14
  how they feel the tone style, everything about them. You kind of can imagine Wes sitting there,
• 17:18
  you know, almost with a dollhouse putting it all together. And we were curious, you know, in
• 17:23
  terms of working with a guy like that with such a strong vision, was it, was it easy at times to
• 17:29
  work with it? Was it pleasant? Was it fun? Was it, you know, what was that like, that relationship?
• 17:33
  Well, on Fox, no, it wasn't fun. It was, it was a, it was a frustration process.
• 17:44
  And, you know, in hindsight, after years of therapy, he'd never done stock frame before,
• 17:53
  and we'd never worked with Wes Anderson before. And, you know, what you come to realise over the years
• 17:58
  is that you don't, you don't go on to a Wes Anderson movie and get to make anything other than
• 18:03
  a Wes Anderson movie. So the very idea that he would go, do you know what? I don't really know
• 18:10
  about this. What do you think? It was quite a common conversation between a director and a
• 18:15
  DP. That never happened. Wes knows what he wants. You know, he was asking us to do staff
• 18:22
  bats. I mean, really, as a crew, we felt was not, not great. Difficult, you know, frustrating.
• 18:32
  But, but, you know, at the end of all that, we did have a fantastic Mr Fox. And, you know, you
• 18:39
  do have to stand back and go, yeah, okay, well, a lot of people love that movie. You know,
• 18:47
  all the things that frustrated is about it are things that make it the Wes Anderson movie.
• 18:52
  You know, I mean, there are, there are physical constraints on what you can do in terms of
• 18:57
  miniature cinematography that he wanted us to bend and break and exceed. And I think, you know,
• 19:03
  he got to learn that he can't always do that because it's, it's muttonian physics. And it's,
• 19:11
  you can't have the guy by the camera and the guy on the horizon both in focus at the same time.
• 19:16
  You can in live action because humans are 1.8 meters tall. But puppets are 22 centimeters high.
• 19:24
  So, you know, we had to find new ways. But, you know, the interesting thing about him is, you know,
• 19:28
  I learned very quickly that you can't actually say to him, you can't actually do that.
• 19:33
  Because what he wants is to be shown that you can't do that. So you do actually have to take
• 19:37
  the time to do something, you know, work in order to say to him, this is what it will look like.
• 19:43
  And then he can process that and go, okay, well, if I can't have that kind of this, you know,
• 19:48
  the conversation goes on again. But, when all the dogs came around, there was a substantially
• 19:56
  better experience because what you realize is that he loves the familiarity of people who knows,
• 20:04
  and he can stress tests you. And if you get through that, then you are, you're kind of his for life,
• 20:13
  you know. So, you always see the same faces on those pictures, whether they're live action or
• 20:19
  stop playing, you know, if you look at the production crew, you will see the same production assistance,
• 20:24
  the same production manager. You'll see those names over and over again because he likes that
• 20:29
  familiarity because once he's got those people around him, he's completely free to do what he
• 20:35
  likes because it doesn't have to worry about that relationship or that relationship.
• 20:39
  Everyone understands that. And because we absolutely knew what we were getting on out of dogs,
• 20:45
  it was a much smoother process. And our relationship with him was so much richer, you know. And I,
• 20:52
  you know, I count him a very good friend now. He's extremely funny, intelligent,
• 20:59
  nice guy, the very high-end conversation, who is happy to sit in a restaurant and drink a bottle
• 21:05
  of wine with you and, you know, have that kind of relationship. But in the directing environment,
• 21:11
  he's extremely exacting. And that is just what you do with him, you know. And what I felt on Fox
• 21:18
  was that I was being underused and I was just kind of robotting what you wanted. But actually,
• 21:23
  that's not what it is at all. Actually, you're just using your skill set in a different way,
• 21:28
  because what you're doing is you're trying to get what is even his head onto the screen. And that
• 21:31
  is a challenge in itself. And it brings with it, you know, the knowledge of various tricks
• 21:39
  that to this is that you know about. So you're, you know, you're still using the
• 21:43
  alchemy of cinematography. You're just using it in a different way. And I just, I've just done
• 21:48
  another couple of, he's just done two back-to-back live action movies and we've just finished
• 21:52
  a load of model unit work for him on those. You know, he'll just pick the phone up and just go,
• 21:56
  I want you to do this. And you just, you clear the diary, because if you're not available,
• 22:01
  you know you'll have to go through the presses of finding someone else and that will be really
• 22:05
  mixing before I hit it. It's a great sense of everyone likes to be wanted, you know. That's
• 22:14
  just true of life, you know. And being wanted by waste, that's a great thing.
• 22:21
  There's that anecdote that on the Royal Turnin' Bounds about Jean-Hatman said, which is that,
• 22:27
  you know, that movie was, Atman's last, or one of his last movies, and when was at where's
• 22:31
  pitched him the film, he wasn't convinced by it. And then he said, then one of the things that
• 22:35
  Wes sort of said to him, sort of getting him on side, as it were, was, you'll have a great time.
• 22:39
  It'll be great. You'll have a, you'll have a, you'll really enjoy, enjoy it making it. And then
• 22:43
  about halfway through the shoot, cut to sort of however many weeks later, sort of, Atman went up
• 22:48
  to Wes and said, I'm not having a good time. I know, you essentially, you lied to me. And it was like,
• 22:54
  you know, what can I say? But I suppose it ties towards what you're saying where it can be
• 22:59
  difficult, getting that vision on screen. But the result is you get the vision. And the vision
• 23:03
  is something that's so unique and so beautifully crafted that it's, you know, the blood sweat,
• 23:08
  toiletiers. You know, at the end of all that, you get Mr. Fox, so you get our little dogs,
• 23:12
  and people love those. I mean, you literally do sweat the small stuff. I mean, I once,
• 23:16
  I was talking to him on our little dogs about something, and he, he sent me about this very
• 23:20
  funny note saying, that would be true if we were making a film that we wanted people to go and see.
• 23:29
  Well, I was going to ask Tristan, like sort of in terms of that aspect of relationship building.
• 23:39
  Did you ever have an opportunity to speak to Robert Youngman, who was the DP on his last film?
• 23:44
  Yeah, I was paying to Bob at the beginning of Fox actually, and he was sort of,
• 23:49
  he was quite funny, quite a brief conversation. I don't really know him, but I have,
• 23:56
  I have had a couple of chats with him, and he, he just said, he likes it flat.
• 24:05
  Just like that. Yeah, just saying, yeah, it doesn't really like key light, it just likes it flat,
• 24:10
  you know, it's symmetrical. It wasn't much use as a conversation.
• 24:16
  That was literally it. I was like, in fact, you know, I think I've, I've learned how to push that
• 24:23
  a bit, because I'll be honest with you, I don't like it flat. I mean, you know,
• 24:29
  you know, bloody TV commercial in the early 2000s, was at this kind of trendy, slightly
• 24:37
  beige flat look about it, which everyone raved about, I just thought, you know, a horse could do that
• 24:43
  if you showed it now. I actually quite like model biting, you know, I like cheer,
• 24:48
  I like high compliments and things like that. So I always try and weed a bit in, and occasionally
• 24:55
  he bites and he bites. I don't think you should always give people exactly what they think they
• 25:02
  want. You should give them, you should offer serving suggestions, you know, some lettuce,
• 25:10
  since Marta, and some cornbread, whatever, you know, offer it up. If this is no, then no,
• 25:18
  no, there is no, you know, there is a temple scene in our dogs at the beginning with this absolutely
• 25:25
  stunning set where the little chinto priest kind of shuffles across and wins a bell, and I
• 25:32
  lit that. I was so pleased with myself, I took a screen grab of it and took it home. And the next day,
• 25:43
  you see it, no, not how I want it to work, I want it flat. So I flattened it off and said, yes,
• 25:52
  that's great, I love it. And a couple of days later, I was talking about this to my girlfriend,
• 26:00
  and I opened my laptop and I showed you the first image and I went, what do you think of that?
• 26:05
  And she went, oh, that's beautiful, that's absolutely fantastic. And then I showed you the next image,
• 26:10
  and I said, what do you think of that? Oh, and she said, oh, that's a bit flat, that's what I did,
• 26:17
  and that's what he wanted. And she looked at me and she said, it looks like he took a piece of
• 26:22
  your soul out. That's exactly what it felt like at the time. But actually, you know,
• 26:32
  the audience think here. So you were saying earlier about how like when you and where's came to work
• 26:39
  or on dogs, you would really, that relationship had really solidified and you felt comfortable
• 26:43
  with each other and there was a bit of a short hand perhaps and you guys felt comfortable with each
• 26:47
  other, you know, because you'd sort of work that relationship out. And so with dogs, the look is
• 26:54
  so much more, it's so different to Fox. And so to me, when I was watching it back, there were so
• 26:59
  many sort of shots and framing techniques, which is so much more adventurous, they disappeared to me
• 27:04
  to be more adventurous and more bold. And I was just what I wanted to ask like whether that was a
• 27:08
  result of you and where's being more in tandem, more confident with each other in terms of what you
• 27:14
  could do with the camera and with the animation. Yeah, that's an interesting question.
• 27:20
  I mean, yes, to an extent, certainly. I mean, I think what you have with Fox is a kind of
• 27:25
  intensely organic environment. You know, it's it's hills and trees and burrows and things like that.
• 27:30
  The odd bit of kind of industrial chic, you know, sewers, things like that. Whereas our
• 27:36
  dogs, you know, the formalism of the Japanese look, you know, which borrows a lot from
• 27:45
  Hawkshire woodcuts and things like this and, you know, early Japanese cinema. And the fact that,
• 27:51
  you know, they have this beautiful tradition of lack of work and calligraphy and all these things.
• 27:57
  You know, it's it's a very different palette. It's a very different geometrical
• 28:02
  sense of shapes to be in front of the camera. So, you know, it does have that very different look,
• 28:08
  you know, a lot of that is to do with that. You know, it's a lot of hard surfaces, a lot of
• 28:13
  squares and oblongs and things like that, rather than soft brass and balls and beams.
• 28:20
  And because of that, the palette is very different. You know, it's a city palette and a trash
• 28:25
  island palette, whereas Fox is just orange. You know, one of the most orange movies ever made.
• 28:36
  Orange and brown, yeah, it's just fantastic. There's this fantastic lighting gel
• 28:42
  called medium bastard amber. That's cool. And I went through roles and roles and roles at the
• 28:50
  start. It's kind of warm, dusk. It's the color of the sun at dusk. So it's a very beautiful color.
• 28:56
  Wow, you used a lot of that combination. Whereas dogs is completely different, you know,
• 29:01
  all the trash island stuff is meant to be kind of face white, you know, it's almost like a matte white
• 29:08
  theme. And then you'll get the occasion of a crazy color, but it's quite a lot of monochrome on the
• 29:14
  island. And then the interiors, you know, it's all about that Japanese life, it's like the hospital
• 29:21
  lab, it's a very structured, hard like a surfaces, it's a glass, which was great. I mean,
• 29:29
  it's fantastic to light that stuff, beautiful, proper set piece set building, you know, like the
• 29:36
  temple, like the salky bar, like the theater, you know, there's all sort of dual like sets, which
• 29:42
  are absolutely blasts to get inside and make it great. Very different vibe really in terms of
• 29:48
  the environment. And I think that's what gives you that different look. But, you know, the baseline
• 29:54
  is still the same, you know, there's lots of very symmetrical framing and everything is framed
• 29:59
  on the middle, the third, the quarter, the third, the seventh. And we check that with a grid
• 30:08
  on the screen, it's not approximate, but it's exact. And if it isn't, let's see. You know, there's
• 30:14
  that, the very deep depth of field, very wide lens is little signature quirks like small tiny
• 30:25
  dots of light on the horizon, just a dot of light somewhere at the back of the image, just for no
• 30:30
  reason, just like a point of light there or there, you know, anywhere, just something like that.
• 30:35
  He'll always ask, I'll have it ready now, because I know you'll want it. We have a night time
• 30:39
  scene and he'll just say just put a dot of light on the horizon. And is he doing all this on the set,
• 30:46
  sort of over your shoulders, sort of pointing it out, or is he, is he? No, I mean, you know,
• 30:50
  the legend of his absence is true, but he's there because of, you know, internet.
• 31:01
  I got immediate access to him all day long, you know, he's just not physically present,
• 31:06
  which on Fox was a nightmare. I mean, that's the biggest thing that kind of freaked us out, you know.
• 31:11
  Tell me, how do we get hold of him? Because we didn't have as good communication in,
• 31:17
  whenever we started that job, 2007, as we did, when we did dogs, but when dogs, you know,
• 31:25
  I could send him a clip or I could send him a frame and he'd be back to me within 30 seconds.
• 31:30
  And he'd either email me or what's at me, or he'd call me and we'd talk stuff through
• 31:35
  and he'd normally email unless it got very tricky in which case he would pick the frame.
• 31:41
  But he was never, he was never absent on a communication front, you know, and he, you know, we would get in,
• 31:50
  I would get in at about 7 a.m. in the morning, and I knew he'd be there when we were talking,
• 31:55
  and he would be online until the end of edit, which was about 9 o'clock. So it's 14 hour.
• 32:03
  I don't know, probably we'd in a bucket, but you know what I mean? It's just, it's present,
• 32:13
  it's very present. So I mean, that sort of leads me to actually a question that from what you're
• 32:19
  saying right now, that's what popped into my mind is in that instance, do you as the DP sort of take
• 32:26
  over the, the, the ship running the ship as it were on a day-to-day basis? Because as you've said
• 32:32
  earlier, you are there almost from, from pre-production looking at all these different teams and
• 32:37
  looking at every element almost. So do you feel like you're, you're, as well as the cinematographer
• 32:44
  Tristan, are you also putting on several other hats to make sure that the ship is, is, is righted?
• 32:50
  If anything were to go wrong? It is one vessel, but we knew the vessel, you know, you have kind of
• 32:58
  triumvirate of, of people who are kind of guiding the process. So you, you have your production
• 33:04
  designer and an art director. So you have that art department which is massive. It's like, it's
• 33:08
  finally the biggest part of the crew. You know, there are over a hundred people in the art department
• 33:14
  doing stuff. The camera department, we meet at the top. And then you have the director, you know,
• 33:19
  and then you have Edith and VFX that fish around that. And, and everyone informs the process,
• 33:24
  you know, what I have is I have 30 years of experience. So I, I can see stuff coming.
• 33:31
  So it's going to go wrong. I, I have an opinion that generally on everything.
• 33:39
  If needed, but, but the real person who drives a feature film, any feature film, stock frame,
• 33:44
  all I've action is the first AD. If the first AD isn't good, you literally don't get
• 33:51
  it. Yeah, I, I have quite enough to do running my department, lighting stuff and,
• 34:01
  you know, making stuff look great without doing that as well.
• 34:05
  So it's almost, it's almost like the dogs in the film where everyone is like an alpha,
• 34:09
  but it's a democratic sort of. Everyone takes a vote. Everyone takes a vote. Yeah, if you've ever watched
• 34:16
  that documentary lost in La Mancha about Terry Gilliam trying to make Don Quixote,
• 34:24
  like the one point of sanity is the first thing to do. He's the guy who is trying to
• 34:33
  hold it all together, superhuman strength as he, entire universe,
• 34:38
  around it. There's this guy and he's like, four, you know, that's absolutely what the first,
• 34:45
  a good first AD is like, you know, they are, they're there to make the film.
• 34:49
  Going a bit more in depth with dogs then, because as I was watching it back, there were just so
• 34:53
  many moments, I mean, I mean, you probably have heard this an awful lot since the movies come out,
• 34:57
  but like there are so many individual shots and moments where you just kind of want to,
• 35:00
  you want to freeze it, you want to hold on. Let me just print that about all, you know,
• 35:04
  and let me just look at it for a bit. And there were so many moments when I was wondering,
• 35:07
  like, how the hell did you guys do that? Because like, when I was researching the film and,
• 35:11
  you know, how you guys made it, it sounded like it was very, very tactile, like CGI and VFX weren't
• 35:16
  resulted to as much as on other animated films, like some of the ones that armoured a part out,
• 35:20
  or obviously, you know, even other stop-motion films, and the PFX are used to film the gaps,
• 35:24
  but like the so that so specifically, I don't know if you could tell us about it, but the shot where
• 35:30
  they inject chief, the dog with the flu vaccine. And there's that amazing moment where it sort
• 35:36
  of becomes an X-ray shot. And you see the serum doing its work on him. And you're looking at
• 35:41
  they're going, how would that work? I mean, it's gorgeous, you know, looking at it, just going
• 35:45
  about how the hell did they pull that off, you know? So, I mean, that is the quick, how the hell did
• 35:49
  you guys pull that off? Yeah, I mean, there's such a world of pain involved in that shot.
• 35:57
  All about the, the world of pain shot. Oh, God. That was originally going to be
• 36:04
  a VFX shot, because it's staggeringly difficult to do in camera, but was very, very insistent,
• 36:14
  and once he dicks his heels in, you have no chance, you know? So, they made a transparent dog
• 36:24
  with all his organs inside, like those old anatomical models, you know, I think they
• 36:30
  mean the unhurst of a big version of one of those. So, it was based on one of those models that
• 36:35
  you could take apart and take all the organs out, or they had to look like that, and they have all
• 36:39
  these tubes in there. What you can do is, is the animator, animator puppet, and then takes a frame,
• 36:45
  okay? And then they have to move the puppet again to take the next frame, but they,
• 36:49
  they don't move the puppet. You can then, you can take that frame again,
• 36:54
  within a different lighting state, and you can take it again in a different moment and say,
• 36:57
  and again, in a different lighting state, and we quite often do this, so we have multiple lines
• 37:01
  of exposure for every frame, and they all sit in a different file, the use of the file system.
• 37:09
  The animator has no part in this, they just press the button, and they stand aside, and the lights
• 37:12
  do what they have to do, and the camera does what it has to do, and then it just goes, okay,
• 37:16
  you can do the next frame, and the animator just sees the line they're working on, but what it
• 37:20
  gives us is the opportunity to have different lighting states, which we can then utilize and blend
• 37:26
  together in order to give us a kind of magical feel, so to get the kind of glow,
• 37:33
  and you know, very specific kind of tiny lighting effects, we can actually just take a frame
• 37:39
  with just those lights on, or just one element turned on, and then what the effects do is they take
• 37:46
  those and they layer them all together, so they're not actually creating the effects, they're creating
• 37:51
  composite, if you will, but it doesn't technically involve creating anything just
• 37:59
  blending, but obviously there's a bit of the effects in there because
• 38:08
  it's impossible for some of that stuff, but yeah, so that dog, they had to make this lighting
• 38:13
  transparent dog, which is just it weeks and weeks and weeks, because it's incredibly difficult to
• 38:18
  make a transparent dog that's only, you know, 20 centimeters high, that has high clarity to the
• 38:24
  perfect specs that you've made it from, that is in every detail the same as the dog underneath,
• 38:28
  and then working out a way of subbing it in, so it looks like that's happening.
• 38:34
  We had a similar, but much cruder thing in Fantastic Mr. Fox, where Fox reaches out to touch
• 38:39
  his wife and says, there's a certain glow about you tonight, and where's one detail to look like
• 38:45
  a child's lamp, so they made a mould of the puppet out of hard pink plastic and then painted it
• 38:54
  really crudely and they've got a light bulb inside it, and so when he turns to her and goes,
• 38:57
  there's a certain glow about you, she's actually like a little lamp, that's what he wanted, you
• 39:02
  wanted that comedy moment of this rather crude, 1950s acolyte light fitting, yeah, so yeah, he's keen
• 39:13
  on that, but it's a nightmare, I mean, registration of those things is terribly difficult, just
• 39:17
  getting everything to line up. Well, we do it, you know, you pulled it off, I mean, you know,
• 39:24
  more brilliantly, yeah, yeah. How long does something like that take to plant? Is that something that
• 39:31
  you intended, or like you said, Wes said, you know, dog is hills and so was that something that
• 39:38
  then had to be gone back to the drawing board? Well, I mean, this comes back to this kind of
• 39:43
  rolling pre-production process really, so you know, we would have confronted that at full on,
• 39:51
  about six to eight weeks out from shooting it, and at that point, the conversations would have
• 39:55
  been had and people would have gone, oh well, we're going to do that in the effects, aren't we?
• 39:59
  And everyone would have gone, yeah, and that's okay, and then we prepare a document to send to
• 40:04
  Wes and Wes would have gone, no, this is not what I want, I want to do it like this, and then everyone
• 40:09
  would have gone, oh, especially the puppet department who are absolutely round, so an island of dogs,
• 40:19
  you know, they made over 600 puppets, just considered the implications of that. So every one of those
• 40:25
  puppets has a steel and brass fully articulating armature inside, and then they are skinned, and then
• 40:31
  they are questioned, and then they are with it, and then they have all their facial replacements for
• 40:36
  speaking. So, and they are, you know, key characters of which you make several, so that you can work
• 40:42
  across multiple sets with those key characters, you know, the dogs are every single hair on those
• 40:47
  dogs is punched in by hand into a silicone maker. So those dogs are conservatively 20 to 25
• 40:55
  grand apes, so it's a very expensive ultra-time consuming, ultra-specialized thing, and the puppet
• 41:02
  department are writers, you know, they're just like, we're going here, we have to have this ready
• 41:08
  by this day, and then suddenly you get a binded way, can you make an anatomically perfect transplant
• 41:14
  dog? Okay, you are crying, and by that point in the production, you've probably got every decent
• 41:21
  puppet maker on the planet working in your puppet department. It's united nations on these jobs,
• 41:28
  it really, you know, people come from every corner of the world, and Japanese women nation control
• 41:34
  operator on other dogs. And another Japanese girl in the electrical department, had a Turkish woman
• 41:42
  on the camera crew, you know, I had, in the camera crew alone, which is probably one of the smaller
• 41:46
  departments, I had people from nine different countries, so, you know, you gather town, so when
• 41:52
  you throw something like that at them, you really are pushing the boundaries, and then you know,
• 41:57
  they start, they come into the weekend, they come in holidays, and they are a little bit like that.
• 42:03
  I can say, on a, on a thing like that, on a, on a project like that, do you keep any sort of
• 42:09
  souvenirs? If there's 600 puppets, is there two or three in a space in what homes on the planet?
• 42:17
  On West films, West gets everything at the end. He has an enormous archive, which is just getting
• 42:22
  bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, but he did give dogs to all the key crew, and I did get a dog,
• 42:31
  and I got the best dog, I got black chief. Hey, I'm so into chief, before he becomes white chief,
• 42:38
  he's under a glass dome in my house in private place.
• 42:44
  There's a 20 round puppet, that was a good gift to get. Because you were describing how,
• 42:48
  you know, how much blood and sweat went into the, that shot of the, you know, the transparent dog
• 42:53
  and the flu injection, we were sort of wondering, like, are you actually able to sit down and actually
• 42:58
  watch a movie that you worked on and look back at it, like, or objectively, or do you just see
• 43:03
  the mistakes or the pain, is it worth, though it's making it? You do see the mistakes on the
• 43:10
  thing, because you're looking out for them. But there's a kind of fantastic chemistry that takes
• 43:17
  place when the mixed soundtrack goes on. And you don't, the crew don't see that until the film is
• 43:26
  finished, finished. So, you know, even when I'm grading the movie, and I'm sitting in the
• 43:31
  D.I., you know, I'll probably watch the completed movie 40 or 50 times during that process,
• 43:37
  until I'm sick to death of it, but I watch it mute. So I probably know what it sounds like with
• 43:46
  the vocal track on, but I've got no idea how it is with the orchestra or the folie or the effects,
• 43:53
  you know, everything. And it's so transformative. I mean, really sound makes such a different
• 44:00
  difference to picture. It really does. It's unbelievable. And it kind of soothes over a lot of the
• 44:09
  stuff, which is odd, isn't it? So there's kind of audio plaster on the bits of the image that
• 44:17
  don't quite work. And I think because it helps the car so much, you know, you can, you can drive a
• 44:22
  cup through with a piece of music that wouldn't otherwise work on a purely visual basis. So there
• 44:29
  is that kind of delight, but they're always a bit painful. I've just got to the point where I can
• 44:34
  watch chicken run. That's a really great film, because I've forgotten how we did a lot of it,
• 44:41
  which is, which is fantastic, because you then think, oh, look at that, we did that. How do we do that?
• 44:47
  That's great. And I think about chicken run, there are no VFX effects. It's all in camera,
• 44:53
  you know, all those daytime experience. That's that's in front of the camera, all that stuff.
• 44:59
  That's all set and painted backdrop. Right there. There's no green screen. There's no digital set
• 45:06
  extension. Nothing. It's all work. That's all of 35 millimeters of film. And I can now look
• 45:14
  at it again. Yeah, that is a piece of work. Well done, you did a good job. And it was a
• 45:20
  paranormal, which I'm very, very proud of. I think of everything I've shot. I know very few people
• 45:26
  have seen it, but for me, from my point of view, the cinematography on that is the best thing I've
• 45:32
  done. I got to do my thing on that job in a way that's very rarely gifted to you as a cinematographer.
• 45:39
  Speaking of cinema talking again, we know that you had a chance to meet Jack Cardiff
• 45:46
  legendary. Yeah, we were doing our research for this and we found came across that little
• 45:52
  editor you said where you met him and it was just kind of amazing because we've seen the red
• 45:56
  shoes. We've seen like those pal and precipice like a movie he did where that the cinematography
• 46:00
  he did is like so ahead of the curve and it looks amazing. It still looks incredible. And we were
• 46:05
  just kind of wondering what that experience was like meeting this this sort of legend of cinematography,
• 46:10
  like this British sort of icon in a way. Yeah, well, he was a legend. I mean, he must have been
• 46:19
  90 and lunch with him. And he was just full or anecdote, which is always fun. I mean, he could
• 46:30
  just talk about stuff he'd done. I mean, if you've ever read his book Magic Hour boy, he had a life,
• 46:37
  he had a saucy life, you know, I think he, they did a lot of significant actresses in this time
• 46:44
  and as well as shooting a lot of great films. And he was only about five foot four, you know,
• 46:48
  120 gold teeth. Yeah, still talking about stuff that has kind of annoyed him years and years ago.
• 46:55
  He was talking about shooting Anna Karenina, which was directed by King Vidal and Audrey Hepburn
• 47:01
  played Anna Karenina. And he was, he was mainly on about this scene where she gets into a carriage
• 47:08
  and sits back. And Jack had wanted to sit back and go into complete darkness,
• 47:14
  because he felt that it spoke to the plot rather well and King Vidal wouldn't have it. He said,
• 47:19
  King just wasn't brave enough to let that happen. He wanted light on the thing.
• 47:26
  And still annoyed him. This is what you were talking about, isn't it? We've, you know,
• 47:31
  with some of the directors you worked with, like, you know, you want to do one thing,
• 47:34
  then they're like, they dig the hills and then they're like, no, it's got to be this way.
• 47:37
  Yeah. Yeah, some directors just don't direct cinema told us at all, you know,
• 47:41
  you just kind of turn up and you go, and they kind of go, yeah, that's fine.
• 47:48
  Well, what about if I did this? No, it's fine. Sometimes feedback is good, you know.
• 47:54
  Just let's have a conversation about it, you know. I've done this. What do you think?
• 47:58
  You know, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this. You know, this is just a suggestion.
• 48:02
  But some people's heads are just in the action, you know, that's all they want to think about.
• 48:07
  It's funny. It's funny. Yeah, like the best directors are people you can have a dialogue with.
• 48:11
  And I'm choosing commercials, you know, you work with some absolute mentalists,
• 48:15
  but they are better by far at the end of the day than the person who doesn't know what they want,
• 48:22
  or just thinks everything is fine. Because actually, you know, they cut the more mental,
• 48:29
  just pushing you towards something different, you know, and they recognise that in themselves,
• 48:35
  you know, they go, you know, I know, I know this is going to take us ages.
• 48:39
  You know, we'll be here till 3am, but I just want to see if we can do it.
• 48:43
  And you go, okay, yeah, I get that. Let's do it. You know, a bit of a mental doesn't hurt
• 48:48
  when you're being creative. You know, you don't want a committee, and you don't want indecision.
• 48:55
  You want a decision, whatever it is. So at least you can go, that's wrong. Let's not do that.
• 49:02
  Ask for what you want. I think that that is the key to being a director. Ask for what you want.
• 49:06
  And don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Because generally, if people like you,
• 49:14
  they will try and do it. Even if everything about it seems ridiculous,
• 49:20
  they will try and do it because they can see in you that quality, that suggests that you can see
• 49:26
  something they can't. You know, it's an interesting dynamic that serving the director,
• 49:33
  which is what we're there to do. If, as a cinema talk about, I think I'm the director,
• 49:37
  I shouldn't be on that job. So we're talking from Reversible on University, which has a lot of
• 49:42
  animation students, and a lot of film production students who are no doubt, you know, wanting to
• 49:46
  get into cinematography and also break into animation in some form. And we were just wondering,
• 49:50
  like, you know, what kind of advice would you give, you know, just for people who want to break into
• 49:54
  the field that you're working in? Well, of course, animation and cinematography are not necessarily
• 49:59
  the same thing. If you are an animator, you know, you need to show real. You need to be able to show
• 50:13
  what you can do, and you need to be more than willing to start as low as it gets. So, you know,
• 50:21
  luckily places like Artman do run training schemes. They have the Artman Academy.
• 50:26
  If you want to go into animation direction, then you should be looking to go to the National,
• 50:32
  because at least there your stuff will be seen by a suitably large audience. But I know people,
• 50:37
  I work with people who've been to the Ravens Forum. You know, there are some hardwoods and
• 50:40
  animators who've come out of there. So, you know, that's obviously working, you know,
• 50:47
  it's about innate talent, and it's about getting that down. But as in anything visual,
• 50:52
  audio describing what you've done is not going to cut it. You need to be able to show stuff you've
• 50:57
  done, you know. So, make sure you finish your graduation film, because no one wants to
• 51:03
  give you a graduation film that's got cards in it with unfinished written on them, or, you know,
• 51:09
  black space. And God knows I've seen plenty of this. In terms of cinematography, I don't know,
• 51:17
  I mean... This is the key question, you know. I think, you know, the advice I always give is
• 51:26
  it just seems like the coolest thing you could possibly do. And in many ways, it is quite a cool
• 51:34
  thing to do. But it's incredibly hard work. You have to be very, very good at it, and it ain't just
• 51:39
  about making things look pretty. You know, the amount of people management you have to do,
• 51:44
  the amount of just daily digging about with production, and, you know, everything that being
• 51:51
  the head of something brings with it. It's, you know, we are not left in monk-like peace to perform
• 51:58
  our art to the rest of our ability, because there's always a schedule, there's always a budget,
• 52:03
  and there's always someone who wants to do something to take you away from that. There's always
• 52:08
  somebody in your way, you know. So, it's just about, you know, like animation, it's about
• 52:16
  doing enough to show you can do something, and getting, just making sure you make the most of
• 52:23
  your opportunities, you know, so shoot whatever those to shoot, you know. Work for your mates,
• 52:30
  shoot short films for your mates, shoot popcorns for your mates, shoot whatever classes for a
• 52:35
  popcorn and that's don't make, you know, digital content. You know, use your phone, you can shoot
• 52:42
  4k on your phone, if you're going to say you can imagine, you know, if I'd had that, when I was
• 52:47
  petite, I'd just shot 10,000 times more stuff, you know, we were shooting on 16 millimeter,
• 52:53
  which was £100 a tin. So, you know, you've essentially got all your filmmaking tools free in
• 53:00
  your hand, and if you're halfway decent with a camera, you can make something that looks halfway
• 53:05
  decent. So, it's about having stuff to show, you know, showing willing is good, showing interest
• 53:14
  is good, but showing stuff, that's what people are saying. And also, you know, there is a progression
• 53:20
  within the camera department, and I think people think they can get around that, they can kind of go
• 53:25
  college, do you think? Actually, that's great. You know what, you might have some
• 53:34
  heaven-sent talent, you know, some enormous heaven-sent that you might be absolutely brilliant,
• 53:39
  but what you need to remember is you need to do that every day. You'll get up in the morning,
• 53:46
  and you will feel like death warmed up, you'll have flu, probably flu, and you will have to go and
• 53:56
  shoot a £250,000 commercial, which you've got one day to get it right, and you need to be
• 54:04
  to go in there and do it. And all your heaven-sent talent is going to count for nothing if you haven't
• 54:11
  got the experience to just run on autopilot, and just really go in and go, okay, I basically can't
• 54:17
  think, I don't know what my name is, but I do know that if I do this, this, this and this,
• 54:22
  and this camera, this set of lenses, and I do this, it will look okay. Because my experience is all,
• 54:29
  you know, and I have trainees, I don't need a CV, 10 pages long from a trainee, I know when
• 54:38
  in the 21, but you haven't done very much, but at least show me what you have done, you know, and
• 54:44
  they don't waste anyone's time. And my number one piece of advice, if you're applying for a
• 54:52
  traineeship in the camera department, do not write the word direct photography at the top of your
• 54:58
  CV, because if you are a director for photography, why you're applying for a traineeship,
• 55:04
  and if you're a trainee, why are you calling yourself a director for photography? Right,
• 55:12
  trainee at the top, and then someone will read it, but if I read a trainee CV and it has director
• 55:18
  for photography at the top, there's in the bin. Because I'm a DP. It's a bad point, it's a very,
• 55:28
  very bad point. Thank you so much for talking to us, Justin, this has been an absolute pleasure,
• 55:34
  and you know, it's been great, you know, talk about your work, and for me, I think for both of us,
• 55:39
  personally, talk to the guy who shot all these movies, which have meant so much to us over the years,
• 55:44
  since we were literally kids. It's a great pleasure and a privilege, so thank you for both of us,
• 55:50
  for chatting to us, but it's been great. You are welcome. I always love to hear that stuff,
• 55:54
  but it always makes me feel incredibly old. I was thinking, I forgot this, but I was thinking
• 56:01
  before we said, like, do I mention like that? I was like, no, no, I've forgotten that, I'm afraid so.
• 56:06
  One of you is younger than wrong trousers, I think. No, I'm not younger than wrong trousers. 92,
• 56:13
  we shot wrong trousers. Yeah, no, I was about, I would have been about two.
• 56:17
  I suspect you weren't born. That is, that is from, yeah, that is correct. You do know when you were born,
• 56:27
  but yeah, yeah, yeah, more or less, no, it's the first of the time. I mean, his close shave was 95,
• 56:33
  wasn't it? Yeah, something like that. Okay, and that's not even go there.