Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 392: From Clerks to Shooting Boba & The Mandalorian with David Klein A.S.C.
Transcript
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- 0:12Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three ninety two.
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- 1:31Speaker 2: Today on the show, we have David Klein, ASC cinematographer extraordinaire. Now,
- 1:39Speaker 2: David has been doing some amazing work lately with the
- 1:42Speaker 2: shows The Book of Boba and The Mandalorian, but how
- 1:46Speaker 2: he got his start is one of the main reasons
- 1:48Speaker 2: I wanted him on the show. He was a cinematographer
- 1:52Speaker 2: of the indie film Classic Clerks, as well as Chasing Amy,
- 1:57Speaker 2: Maul Rats and a few other of the early films
- 2:00Speaker 2: of Kevin Smith. And we go so deep into what
- 2:05Speaker 2: happened during the nineties, what happened to his career, how
- 2:09Speaker 2: he was able to kind of claw his way out
- 2:12Speaker 2: of the repugnant Harvey Weinstein pit that he was put into,
- 2:18Speaker 2: and so many other things. It's a fascinating conversation, and
- 2:22Speaker 2: we also get into the weeds about how he lights
- 2:26Speaker 2: the volume for shooting with Boba Fett and with the
- 2:29Speaker 2: Mandalorian and get into some geek geekiness as well. David
- 2:33Speaker 2: is wonderful and we had a fantastic, fantastic time. So
- 2:36Speaker 2: without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with David Klein.
- 2:42Speaker 2: I like to welcome to the show, David Klein.
- 2:45Speaker 3: Man.
- 2:45Speaker 2: How you doing, David. I'm good, I'll try I'm doing great,
- 2:48Speaker 2: brother doing great.
- 2:49Speaker 3: Man.
- 2:49Speaker 2: We've been trying to get this ready and recorded for
- 2:54Speaker 2: god months now at this point. But you're busy, man.
- 2:57Speaker 2: You're working on Boba, You're working on Mendalorian, you know,
- 3:01Speaker 2: saving the world little by little.
- 3:03Speaker 4: So I don't know about all that, but the first
- 3:05Speaker 4: two things are true exactly.
- 3:08Speaker 2: So I appreciate you taking the time out of your
- 3:10Speaker 2: business schedule to come and talk to the tribe. My friend. Absolutely, So,
- 3:13Speaker 2: first questions I have for you, man, why God's Green Earth?
- 3:17Speaker 2: Did you want to get into insane in the sanity
- 3:19Speaker 2: insanity that is this business?
- 3:21Speaker 4: Probably because I didn't know that the hours were going
- 3:24Speaker 4: to be what they are.
- 3:26Speaker 2: No one told you that, No one told me you
- 3:28Speaker 2: went into the words. You didn't. You didn't have this
- 3:29Speaker 2: podcast back in the night.
- 3:32Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be I thought it
- 3:33Speaker 4: was going to be hanging out with cool, famous people
- 3:35Speaker 4: and you know, doing cool stuff, which is which is true.
- 3:39Speaker 3: These things are true.
- 3:40Speaker 4: But uh uh man, the hours are crazy. They're they're
- 3:44Speaker 4: absolutely just insane. But to age your question, I always,
- 3:50Speaker 4: you know, I always was into movies.
- 3:54Speaker 3: I think it was Blade Runner.
- 3:55Speaker 4: I know it was Blade Runner that my father took
- 3:57Speaker 4: me to when I was what thirteen ers or so,
- 4:00Speaker 4: and he took me to the drive in.
- 4:02Speaker 3: We watched it at the drive in, and I remember leaving
- 4:05Speaker 3: and saying to him, you know, Dad, I think I
- 4:07Speaker 3: want to make movies. And He's like, sure, Ki, whatever,
- 4:09Speaker 3: you know, do it, do whatever you want to do.
- 4:15Speaker 4: And you know, he was fully supportive and he actually
- 4:17Speaker 4: helped me. You know, my grandfather gave me this sixty milimeter.
- 4:20Speaker 3: Bullocks when I was young.
- 4:22Speaker 4: And my father, you know, at the time, we had
- 4:24Speaker 4: the VHS cam quorder that would actually plug into the
- 4:29Speaker 4: you know, the VCR that you had to take with you,
- 4:32Speaker 4: you know, from the top of the TV yep. And
- 4:35Speaker 4: so I had those two devices and started making you know,
- 4:40Speaker 4: stop animation films.
- 4:41Speaker 3: And you know, funny enough, I there was a kid
- 4:45Speaker 3: I ordered that special edition Boba fet you know, which.
- 4:47Speaker 4: You take like the box tops from from General Mills,
- 4:51Speaker 4: I think it was, and he's got a check from
- 4:53Speaker 4: my dad and you send it to somewhere in Minnesota
- 4:55Speaker 4: wherever it was, and you wait.
- 4:56Speaker 3: Like eight to twelve weeks, and you're supposed to get
- 4:58Speaker 3: this little boa fet.
- 4:59Speaker 4: That comes with a rocket that shoots out of its
- 5:01Speaker 4: back right, And it shows up weeks and weeks later,
- 5:05Speaker 4: and the fucking rockets gluted its back right. So I
- 5:08Speaker 4: blew the holy hell out of that thing when we
- 5:10Speaker 4: were making one of these little sixteen.
- 5:11Speaker 3: Millimeters stop animation films.
- 5:13Speaker 4: And you know, it's I think it's it's fitting that
- 5:17Speaker 4: I would end up on some of these Star Wars
- 5:19Speaker 4: shows after that, you know.
- 5:21Speaker 2: And how much and how much? Yeah, how much would
- 5:23Speaker 2: that bubb would that be worth today?
- 5:26Speaker 3: I think about eighteen thousand dollars.
- 5:28Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be That's a good return on investment,
- 5:30Speaker 2: I think.
- 5:33Speaker 3: I get.
- 5:34Speaker 2: Oh man, listen, we all do things to our Star
- 5:36Speaker 2: Wars stores when we were younger.
- 5:37Speaker 3: That it was fine. Yeah.
- 5:39Speaker 4: You know, my dad used to help me with those
- 5:42Speaker 4: you know, those rockets, the little model rockets that he
- 5:45Speaker 4: set up the shoot off and they'll parachute, and so
- 5:48Speaker 4: one day I took one of the engines to him
- 5:51Speaker 4: and I said, Dad, if I cut the nozzle off
- 5:53Speaker 4: of this thing and put a like a wick in there,
- 5:56Speaker 4: will it just explode?
- 5:58Speaker 3: And he was like, come again, And I think he
- 6:02Speaker 3: thought maybe I should have helped you out.
- 6:04Speaker 4: And you know, so he became my my He became
- 6:09Speaker 4: my grip, my gap for my special effects man.
- 6:10Speaker 2: Everything that's amazing.
- 6:13Speaker 4: He was not in the business, but he was no
- 6:14Speaker 4: slouch when it came to helping his kids out.
- 6:17Speaker 2: Did you ever invite him on any of the sets
- 6:20Speaker 2: that you worked on?
- 6:20Speaker 3: I did, I did. I don't think he ever. He
- 6:22Speaker 3: passed a few years back. But and I don't know
- 6:24Speaker 3: that he ever really understood what.
- 6:26Speaker 4: I do same here, but they who were there were
- 6:29Speaker 4: some times, you know, I was doing a show in Hawaii, actually,
- 6:32Speaker 4: and I think that's why he came. But he came
- 6:35Speaker 4: to set and you know, spent a week on and
- 6:38Speaker 4: off the set and had a good time, you know.
- 6:40Speaker 4: But still I don't think it sunk in what what
- 6:44Speaker 4: precisely my job is.
- 6:46Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad. I invited my dad on to a
- 6:49Speaker 2: set that a commercial said. I was directing commercial and
- 6:51Speaker 2: and he just was like looking around, and he went
- 6:54Speaker 2: back and told his family and friends. Everyone just listens
- 6:57Speaker 2: to Alex. That's all everyone did, he says, And they move,
- 7:01Speaker 2: and they move. That's all I know. I don't understand.
- 7:03Speaker 2: Still to this day, he still doesn't understand what I'm
- 7:05Speaker 2: doing right, let alone this, this is, this is insane.
- 7:10Speaker 4: Well, for sure, I think at times I don't understand
- 7:15Speaker 4: what I do.
- 7:16Speaker 3: You know what I mean. I still have so much
- 7:18Speaker 3: to learn.
- 7:21Speaker 2: So when you started off in your career, my friend,
- 7:23Speaker 2: you started off on a little film, a little black
- 7:25Speaker 2: and white movie called Clerks, with a little unknown director
- 7:30Speaker 2: uh named Kevin Smith and an unknown producer named Scott Moser.
- 7:34Speaker 2: Now we've had the pleasure of having Scott on the
- 7:35Speaker 2: show as well, so I've heard it from his perspective
- 7:39Speaker 2: on how a lot of this stuff went down. How
- 7:42Speaker 2: did you get roped into this insanity that was Clerk's.
- 7:47Speaker 3: Well, it started the way so many stories start. Alex.
- 7:51Speaker 4: I follow a girl in college, right and about two
- 7:55Speaker 4: weeks after we got there, she she doted me for
- 7:58Speaker 4: another young woman, which you know, telling understandable even cool
- 8:01Speaker 4: now at the time for an eighteen year old young
- 8:05Speaker 4: man of his.
- 8:05Speaker 3: Heartbreaking, right, and so I was like, fuck this place, man,
- 8:09Speaker 3: I'm going.
- 8:10Speaker 4: To film school, which I had always wanted to do anyway,
- 8:14Speaker 4: but didn't have the courage.
- 8:17Speaker 3: I guess to go and you know, just go for it.
- 8:19Speaker 4: And so I found the Vancouver Film School, which used
- 8:22Speaker 4: to advertise very heavily an American cinematographer, which is where
- 8:24Speaker 4: I saw it, and you know, they were They have
- 8:28Speaker 4: a sister school now, which is the Los Angeles Film
- 8:30Speaker 4: School here in La on Sunset.
- 8:32Speaker 3: They're almost identical programs. At the time, there was just the.
- 8:36Speaker 4: Vancouver Film School and it was a one year program
- 8:38Speaker 4: and they had class that started every two months, so
- 8:41Speaker 4: every other.
- 8:41Speaker 3: Month the new class started.
- 8:43Speaker 4: And this young lady that broke my heart put me
- 8:46Speaker 4: on a path to end up in the same class
- 8:48Speaker 4: with Kevin and Scott, you know, had it not been
- 8:50Speaker 4: for her and all that timing, which you know is
- 8:53Speaker 4: the luck part of how you get into this business
- 8:57Speaker 4: and you know, what put you where you are, I
- 9:00Speaker 4: guess she was the luck part of it. And she
- 9:03Speaker 4: put me in the class with Kevin Scott.
- 9:06Speaker 3: You know, her time put me there.
- 9:08Speaker 4: And and to be honest, after you know, Kevin dropped
- 9:11Speaker 4: out halfway through the.
- 9:11Speaker 3: Program to save the rest of the situation for the movie,
- 9:14Speaker 3: and Mosure and I finished.
- 9:17Speaker 4: And the reason they wanted to bring me on to Clerks,
- 9:21Speaker 4: you know, too told is because they didn't.
- 9:22Speaker 3: Want a cinematographer.
- 9:23Speaker 4: Her knew more than they did, and you know I
- 9:27Speaker 4: had I think I had focused. I know I had
- 9:29Speaker 4: focused more into the cinematography aspect at the Vancouver Film School.
- 9:35Speaker 4: But still, you know, it was a one year program.
- 9:37Speaker 4: How much can you can you learn in one year
- 9:39Speaker 4: of hands on? Not a whole lot. But I think
- 9:42Speaker 4: the biggest compliment I got from Clerks was when we
- 9:45Speaker 4: were doing the sixteen regular sixteen millimeters to thirty five
- 9:49Speaker 4: blow up.
- 9:51Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
- 9:57Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
- 10:00Speaker 4: We did a lab called Goofante Film Lab or Deafonti
- 10:04Speaker 4: Filmworks in New York, and the biggest company I got
- 10:08Speaker 4: was that I exposed the film properly and really.
- 10:11Speaker 2: Well, you know, from from my point of view. I mean,
- 10:15Speaker 2: I've watched Clerks multiple times in my life. It's exposed.
- 10:19Speaker 2: I mean.
- 10:22Speaker 3: You're right about that, Alex. It is exposed.
- 10:24Speaker 2: It is exposed. You didn't under exposed. You didn't overexposed.
- 10:28Speaker 2: I mean, it's man, you you did you exposed And
- 10:32Speaker 2: it's so fascinating. I mean, and for people listening, the
- 10:35Speaker 2: young'ins listening. You shot this on sixteen, not even super sixteen,
- 10:39Speaker 2: just straight sixteen.
- 10:39Speaker 3: Right, it was regular sixteen.
- 10:42Speaker 2: Regular sixteen, wasn't It wasn't mos it was sicking.
- 10:44Speaker 3: No, no, no, it was since sound.
- 10:46Speaker 4: And we got all the uh, all the you know,
- 10:50Speaker 4: the camera equipment and the audio equipment from a guy
- 10:53Speaker 4: named Mike Sparra who had a little company called it
- 10:57Speaker 4: was called Pro Camera I think at the time, and
- 11:00Speaker 4: he actually went on to run the studio in Astoria,
- 11:07Speaker 4: you know.
- 11:07Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the big one over there.
- 11:08Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly for for a quite a few years.
- 11:11Speaker 4: And I ran into him years all those years later
- 11:13Speaker 4: when Kevin and I were there doing cop out, which
- 11:15Speaker 4: was which was kind of cool, but it was basically
- 11:18Speaker 4: all we could afford this this era flex SR just an.
- 11:22Speaker 2: SR It was just it was a straight up it
- 11:24Speaker 2: was a straight.
- 11:25Speaker 4: Up SR one, straight up SR one, and it was
- 11:29Speaker 4: all we could afford. I think we had thirty five
- 11:30Speaker 4: hundred dollars for all the you know, camera equipment and
- 11:34Speaker 4: audio equipment for the run of the show, which was
- 11:36Speaker 4: about four weeks, and so he's like, that's the one
- 11:40Speaker 4: you get.
- 11:40Speaker 3: And it sounded like a machine gun. It did.
- 11:44Speaker 4: And I mean we had we had, you know, the
- 11:47Speaker 4: the little barney that comes with it. We also had
- 11:50Speaker 4: I would end up operating the camera with that barney
- 11:52Speaker 4: and just leather jackets and all sorts of blankets and
- 11:56Speaker 4: whatnot on my head just so we weren't recording some
- 11:59Speaker 4: of that that machine gun on my camera.
- 12:01Speaker 2: Right, because you didn't did you have a blimp or
- 12:03Speaker 2: you didn't have a blimp.
- 12:04Speaker 4: We had just the you know, the standard that goes
- 12:06Speaker 4: over it, you know, another kind of leather thing which.
- 12:09Speaker 2: Use was useless.
- 12:10Speaker 4: Essentially, it was relatively useless. All the sound just coming
- 12:14Speaker 4: out of the lens, you.
- 12:15Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
- 12:16Speaker 2: Right, I'll tell you what my when I was in
- 12:19Speaker 2: film school, the camera I got to use was the
- 12:21Speaker 2: SR three and that was that who we were the
- 12:25Speaker 2: first that.
- 12:26Speaker 3: Was slick man.
- 12:28Speaker 4: I mean, but I think by the time we were
- 12:30Speaker 4: we shot Chasing Amy Super sixteen on an SR three.
- 12:33Speaker 3: It was a great camera. That was one of the
- 12:35Speaker 3: best sixteen cameras out there.
- 12:36Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, solid, and you could you can hook
- 12:39Speaker 2: up your laptop to get like reports and stuff.
- 12:41Speaker 4: You know.
- 12:41Speaker 2: That was like the big thing, like you could hook
- 12:43Speaker 2: up a laptop.
- 12:45Speaker 3: I remember that.
- 12:46Speaker 4: I remember playing, not with the SR three, but I
- 12:48Speaker 4: remember plugging my laptop into a five thirty five and
- 12:51Speaker 4: oh yeah, doing the speed changes.
- 12:53Speaker 3: And that sort of thing. It was that.
- 12:54Speaker 4: It was that black and white MacBook bro not even
- 12:57Speaker 4: the Magua pros black and white Mac but with a
- 13:00Speaker 4: one hundred and ten megabyte hard drive, you.
- 13:02Speaker 2: Know, which was which was screaming back then.
- 13:05Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you think I'll never fill this up? I said.
- 13:08Speaker 3: Email is bigger than that.
- 13:09Speaker 2: You know what I mean exactly, So so I have
- 13:14Speaker 2: to like the ins and outs. I mean, you guys
- 13:16Speaker 2: shot that movie. What in what I remember correctly, it
- 13:19Speaker 2: was like a few weeks or was it a month?
- 13:22Speaker 4: It was it was it was four weeks really, but
- 13:25Speaker 4: you know, it was all nights.
- 13:28Speaker 3: You know.
- 13:28Speaker 4: That's why Kevin wrote into the script that somebody jammed
- 13:31Speaker 4: Gum in the locks because we couldn't we couldn't have
- 13:34Speaker 4: the store during the day, and so we shot nights
- 13:37Speaker 4: and we had the store from about I want to say,
- 13:40Speaker 4: we had it from eleven PM until five am.
- 13:43Speaker 3: You know, so they were they were sure, but.
- 13:47Speaker 4: You know, we would shoot and then Kevin would actually
- 13:49Speaker 4: work at the store either either the community store at
- 13:51Speaker 4: the v Store all day and then we you know,
- 13:54Speaker 4: he'd find maybe a little time for for sleep, a
- 13:57Speaker 4: little bit asleep, and then we'd get right back the shooting.
- 14:00Speaker 3: So it was there was more days than you would
- 14:03Speaker 3: expect that they were shorter, you know, short, did you?
- 14:06Speaker 2: I mean I did. I remember when I was coming
- 14:09Speaker 2: up and I would walk on set as a as
- 14:12Speaker 2: a director, man, I early on, you just don't know
- 14:15Speaker 2: what you don't know. So luckily for you, was there
- 14:20Speaker 2: anybody on set that knew more than you about the
- 14:24Speaker 2: camera department? Or were you the top of the top
- 14:26Speaker 2: of the hill at that point?
- 14:28Speaker 4: I was the top of that very small hill, and
- 14:31Speaker 4: I was the entire department, so you know, operating the camera,
- 14:36Speaker 4: pulling focus and you know.
- 14:39Speaker 2: We're lighting too, writ or did you do like I
- 14:41Speaker 2: had a little we.
- 14:41Speaker 3: Had a little help.
- 14:42Speaker 4: You know. There was a cat named ed Hapstack who
- 14:45Speaker 4: was a friend of Kevin's and he would show up
- 14:47Speaker 4: and Vinnie Pereiro would show up.
- 14:48Speaker 3: But they had day jobs too, you know what I mean,
- 14:50Speaker 3: So they yeah, they come in and out. People gotta work.
- 14:56Speaker 3: But whenever we would go through, we'd burn through a mag.
- 14:59Speaker 4: I we would shut down, and I'd go into the
- 15:01Speaker 4: tent and change, you know, I'd reload a new mag
- 15:05Speaker 4: and unload the current mag.
- 15:07Speaker 3: So it was a one man department. You know.
- 15:11Speaker 4: It's also why if you look at the credits, the clerks,
- 15:13Speaker 4: the boom operator is credited as whoever grabbed the poll first,
- 15:17Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because it was literally whoever
- 15:19Speaker 4: grabbed it. There was I wish I had a I
- 15:21Speaker 4: wish I carried a camera around back then still camera
- 15:24Speaker 4: because there was one scene where Moser and ed Hapstack
- 15:27Speaker 4: and I were in the shot. We played the three
- 15:30Speaker 4: people that run out from the funeral home after that
- 15:34Speaker 4: whole business goes awry, right, And so it was the
- 15:38Speaker 4: three of us and Kevin were there, and so Kevin
- 15:41Speaker 4: was literally operating the camera, sitting on the ground on
- 15:45Speaker 4: the on in the street.
- 15:46Speaker 3: He had the nagra down, you know, by his by
- 15:48Speaker 3: his thigh, and so he's holding the boom. He's operating
- 15:51Speaker 3: the camera and there's the three of us running in
- 15:53Speaker 3: the shot. Excuse the intersection.
- 16:00Speaker 4: About that, but I just wish I had a photograph
- 16:03Speaker 4: of Kevin sitting there with the s R one with
- 16:07Speaker 4: the boom pole, which was I think it might have
- 16:09Speaker 4: been a hockey steak actually, with the more likely fun
- 16:11Speaker 4: attached to it.
- 16:12Speaker 3: And it's one man band at that point.
- 16:16Speaker 2: You know, so I and and I know he got
- 16:18Speaker 2: the he bought a rented a stem back and edited
- 16:22Speaker 2: the whole thing old school.
- 16:23Speaker 3: Because right there in the back of the video store,
- 16:26Speaker 3: right and.
- 16:27Speaker 2: There say I'm assuming you were there for part of
- 16:29Speaker 2: that as well.
- 16:30Speaker 3: Very just the very beginning. And then and then I
- 16:32Speaker 3: was out, how do you get a job too? You
- 16:34Speaker 3: know what I mean?
- 16:35Speaker 2: Right yeah, because I'm sure you didn't get rich off
- 16:37Speaker 2: that first job as far.
- 16:38Speaker 3: As not at all.
- 16:42Speaker 2: So so so so Clerks comes out, man, and you
- 16:46Speaker 2: I'm in imagining what do you think was going to happen? Seriously,
- 16:50Speaker 2: like I mean, from a deep piece point of view,
- 16:52Speaker 2: when you do a show like that, you're not going
- 16:54Speaker 2: to go this is going to go national, this is
- 16:56Speaker 2: going to blow up, It's going to become a phenomenon.
- 16:58Speaker 2: I'm assuming that's not what you said.
- 17:00Speaker 3: No, it's not what any of us thought.
- 17:02Speaker 4: I think at best, we thought that it would be
- 17:04Speaker 4: a calling card, just you know, to a studio or
- 17:07Speaker 4: a small production company to say, hey, these guys can
- 17:10Speaker 4: get a film made, but so let's hire them to
- 17:12Speaker 4: do the next one.
- 17:13Speaker 3: Which you know, that did happen and so much more.
- 17:17Speaker 4: You know, I don't we didn't expect it to, you know,
- 17:21Speaker 4: go to sun Dance and be the little sleeper hit
- 17:24Speaker 4: than it was.
- 17:25Speaker 3: You know, it took off like crazy, and to.
- 17:28Speaker 4: Be honest, for me, eventually it was it was a
- 17:32Speaker 4: deep hole to climb out of because to have a
- 17:35Speaker 4: movie that's successful.
- 17:39Speaker 3: And look like that is not great for a cinematographer.
- 17:42Speaker 4: The same thing happened years later with Chasing Amy, which
- 17:44Speaker 4: is a wonderful film and I stand by.
- 17:46Speaker 3: It to this day, but it doesn't look great. You know,
- 17:49Speaker 3: it's not well lit, it's not well lensed.
- 17:52Speaker 4: We barely moved the camera aside from some of the
- 17:55Speaker 4: many arguments in the movie. But you know, it was
- 18:00Speaker 4: a successful film that didn't look that great. So again,
- 18:02Speaker 4: as a cinematographer, it was that was a hole to
- 18:04Speaker 4: climb out for sure.
- 18:06Speaker 2: Yeah, because I guess you know, you were like, oh,
- 18:07Speaker 2: this would be a little thing. I can maybe show
- 18:09Speaker 2: it around a little bit. No one's ever really going
- 18:10Speaker 2: to see this and then all of a sudden you're like,
- 18:13Speaker 2: I'm known for this, Like, oh, you're the DP of Clerks, right,
- 18:18Speaker 2: And so that was a bit of a bit of
- 18:20Speaker 2: a challenge, a struggle.
- 18:22Speaker 3: It was a struggle, not as much as I might
- 18:25Speaker 3: be jumping ahead.
- 18:26Speaker 4: But when Chasing Amy was was at Sundance, it wasn't
- 18:30Speaker 4: in competition.
- 18:31Speaker 3: It was just a premiere.
- 18:32Speaker 4: And you know, we had done malaretes in between, and
- 18:36Speaker 4: malreats have been largely kind of ignored. It has since,
- 18:39Speaker 4: I think, found a huge audience, but at the time
- 18:41Speaker 4: it had been ignored, and so Kevin and the rest
- 18:44Speaker 4: of us were nervous. You know, we were nervous about
- 18:46Speaker 4: what was going to happen with Chasing Amy. And so
- 18:48Speaker 4: you know, Kevin and Scott had a meeting with with
- 18:51Speaker 4: the morally repugnant Harvey Weinstein before our screening, and Harvey,
- 18:55Speaker 4: you know, I think Harvey knew what he had, He
- 18:58Speaker 4: absolutely knew what he had in Chasing Amy, but it
- 19:00Speaker 4: hadn't even premier yet, hadn't even screened to a large
- 19:02Speaker 4: audience yet, so him was nervous about it. And so
- 19:05Speaker 4: Harvey offered him a deal for his next movie. But
- 19:11Speaker 4: there were stipulations, you know, Joey Adams, who was leading
- 19:14Speaker 4: Chase Amy, was going to be the leading dog man.
- 19:16Speaker 3: Harvey said no, he said, that's one of the things.
- 19:18Speaker 4: And he said, Joey's not going to be the lead,
- 19:20Speaker 4: and you know, Dave's not gonna be a cameraman and
- 19:22Speaker 4: whatever else.
- 19:23Speaker 2: It was.
- 19:23Speaker 4: Those are the two that I really remember because after
- 19:26Speaker 4: that meeting, we were all staying in this this condo
- 19:30Speaker 4: together and Kevin takes Joey into, you know, a bedroom,
- 19:33Speaker 4: and Moser takes me in the bedroom and breaks the
- 19:35Speaker 4: news to us, and then we all go to the premiere.
- 19:38Speaker 3: So you know, it was a very surreal experience to
- 19:42Speaker 3: have this audience.
- 19:43Speaker 4: Just adore the movie, and you know, I'm sitting in
- 19:47Speaker 4: the back row thinking, and I don't get to do
- 19:49Speaker 4: the fucking.
- 19:50Speaker 3: Next one, you know what I mean. So it was
- 19:52Speaker 3: it was a kick to the gut.
- 19:53Speaker 2: For sure, We'll be right back after a word from
- 19:58Speaker 2: our sponsor, and now back to the show.
- 20:05Speaker 4: And then for you know, Ben Harvey kept me out
- 20:08Speaker 4: for about ten years. And in those ten years, the
- 20:11Speaker 4: first question I always got when I was in a
- 20:14Speaker 4: job interview was why aren't you shooting Kevin's current film,
- 20:18Speaker 4: and I would tell them the story, and you know,
- 20:20Speaker 4: whether they thought it was true or not, or that
- 20:23Speaker 4: I was being kept out just because I was too
- 20:25Speaker 4: inexperienced or not good enough, it didn't matter, you know,
- 20:29Speaker 4: whether they believed this or that.
- 20:31Speaker 3: It didn't matter. For one reason or another.
- 20:33Speaker 4: I wasn't shooting his movies and so I had to
- 20:35Speaker 4: just get out there and I could work.
- 20:37Speaker 3: And so that's what I did, as I put myself
- 20:39Speaker 3: on a.
- 20:40Speaker 4: Tenure plan when I got to when I went to
- 20:42Speaker 4: Los Angeles, and I said, if I'm not worrying where
- 20:45Speaker 4: I want to be and need to be in ten years,
- 20:47Speaker 4: then I'm going to go do something else.
- 20:48Speaker 3: But I'm going to give it everything i've got for
- 20:50Speaker 3: ten years.
- 20:51Speaker 4: And it took just about all of those years to finally,
- 20:55Speaker 4: you know, I think get a grasp on on the
- 21:00Speaker 4: craft and being comfortable in what I could do with
- 21:04Speaker 4: the crew and set.
- 21:07Speaker 3: And telling a story. That's what it's all about.
- 21:10Speaker 4: You know, you know, all the experience in the world,
- 21:12Speaker 4: if you don't know how to tell a story, it's
- 21:13Speaker 4: it's irroment, it's all irrelevant.
- 21:15Speaker 2: It's it's fascinating to hear that story, man, because I mean,
- 21:18Speaker 2: so many people looking from the outside in, you know,
- 21:21Speaker 2: mst like, oh, well, you know you worked with Kevin
- 21:24Speaker 2: and you did a couple of his movies, and then
- 21:26Speaker 2: you know your career was set, and it's complete opposite.
- 21:29Speaker 2: It was actually you had a hole to climb out
- 21:31Speaker 2: of in the first movie, and then the second movie
- 21:34Speaker 2: or the third movie that you did with Chasing Amy,
- 21:36Speaker 2: you weren't happy with visually, so it wasn't a great
- 21:39Speaker 2: calling card for you visually. And then the movie that
- 21:42Speaker 2: might have been the movie that would have taken you
- 21:44Speaker 2: to the next level would have been Dogma because you
- 21:46Speaker 2: would have had a budget. It would have been a
- 21:47Speaker 2: studio project, a real a real studio project, and it
- 21:51Speaker 2: would have maybe opened up a lot of doors for you.
- 21:54Speaker 2: But you literally had to hustle for the next ten
- 21:56Speaker 2: years to kind of whittle your whittle a niche in
- 22:01Speaker 2: for yourself so you could be like, no, man, I
- 22:03Speaker 2: can actually do this.
- 22:04Speaker 3: For sure.
- 22:04Speaker 2: It opened and opened those doors. It's a really great
- 22:07Speaker 2: lesson for people listening because it's like.
- 22:09Speaker 3: Well, it's it's a it's a good thing.
- 22:13Speaker 4: It's it's a hard road to travel because I had
- 22:16Speaker 4: to learn as I was doing it. You know, I
- 22:20Speaker 4: think it's it's an easier path to work, you know,
- 22:23Speaker 4: under somebody with a lot of experience, because you know,
- 22:26Speaker 4: everybody you ever meet on a set or in life
- 22:29Speaker 4: knows something that you don't, and you can learn something
- 22:31Speaker 4: from them, Especially on a film set. If you work
- 22:34Speaker 4: with somebody who's got a lot of experience, you're going
- 22:36Speaker 4: to learn so much just.
- 22:37Speaker 3: By watching, just by you know, watching what they're doing.
- 22:42Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And so to do to learn it on
- 22:46Speaker 4: the job was rough and there are a lot of.
- 22:49Speaker 3: Rough looking projects that I did. You know, it wasn't.
- 22:53Speaker 3: I don't think it was until nineteen ninety nine when
- 22:56Speaker 3: I really.
- 22:57Speaker 4: Started to figure out and figure out that.
- 23:06Speaker 3: I want to say, how to like? But who knows
- 23:07Speaker 3: how to like it?
- 23:09Speaker 2: Until you found a groove that you felt comfortable in
- 23:12Speaker 2: and felt comfortable with the quality of the work that
- 23:14Speaker 2: you felt from your own eye that you were comfortable with, Like,
- 23:17Speaker 2: I feel like I'm getting a grasp of this. I
- 23:20Speaker 2: like like I've talked to so many cinematographers over the years, man,
- 23:22Speaker 2: and all of them say the same thing. It's an
- 23:24Speaker 2: impossibility to master the craft. One hundred percent. There's just
- 23:28Speaker 2: so much to understand and learn, and then you look
- 23:32Speaker 2: at you know, you look at someone like Deacons, you know,
- 23:34Speaker 2: and you see what they're doing. They are arguably masters
- 23:38Speaker 2: at what they do. But there's you could probably count
- 23:41Speaker 2: those on one or two hands that are alive that
- 23:44Speaker 2: are just at that level there, just like at a
- 23:48Speaker 2: it's like looking at a director and going, oh, Chris Nolan,
- 23:51Speaker 2: David Fincher, You're like, they are at the top of
- 23:55Speaker 2: the game. Like, there's very few of those. Pete Spielberg.
- 23:59Speaker 2: There's very few of these kind of people in the world.
- 24:02Speaker 2: So it's tough. I have to ask you, though, man,
- 24:05Speaker 2: when you were during those ten years, did you ever
- 24:08Speaker 2: get pushback from crew people You're like, oh, that's the
- 24:10Speaker 2: guy who did Clerks. Did you ever get any any ship,
- 24:13Speaker 2: any any like crap out of that.
- 24:15Speaker 3: I don't think so.
- 24:17Speaker 4: I don't remember any If it was, it was behind
- 24:20Speaker 4: my back and I didn't hear it out.
- 24:23Speaker 3: So I'm sure that all this guy, this fucking guy.
- 24:25Speaker 2: Shot clips, this guy, this guy shot Clerks.
- 24:29Speaker 3: Jesus a funny movie.
- 24:30Speaker 4: But did you see that did you see that garage
- 24:32Speaker 4: band of the fucking of a Well, you know, and
- 24:37Speaker 4: you know, you.
- 24:38Speaker 3: Know the story. The reason is black and white is
- 24:40Speaker 3: because we couldn't afford to balance the lights.
- 24:43Speaker 4: You know, you're gonna be shooting shooting fluorescent, and you know,
- 24:47Speaker 4: we had a little tungsten kit and it was going
- 24:49Speaker 4: to be mixed all over the place, and we didn't
- 24:51Speaker 4: have the money to either gel the fluorescence or or
- 24:56Speaker 4: even get like an hm My package or a proper
- 24:58Speaker 4: Kino package or any of that stuff.
- 24:59Speaker 3: So wish out black and white, which is what gave it.
- 25:03Speaker 4: I think that garage band aesthetic, which I love and
- 25:06Speaker 4: it's great now now I can sit back and watch
- 25:08Speaker 4: it and just adore that movie.
- 25:10Speaker 3: But for a long time it was it was rough.
- 25:13Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the thing it is. I mean, you
- 25:15Speaker 2: look at the movie now and it's just so, it's so.
- 25:17Speaker 2: It's it's beautiful, man, it's wonderful. It's so. It is
- 25:19Speaker 2: that garage band is that raw, unfiltered just in all
- 25:24Speaker 2: aspects from the writing, to the acting, to the to
- 25:26Speaker 2: the cinematography that is directing all of it. And it's
- 25:29Speaker 2: you know, but at the time, I understand your point.
- 25:32Speaker 2: If you look Robert Robert Rodriguez had the same issues
- 25:34Speaker 2: with El Mariachi. He's like, no one was supposed to
- 25:37Speaker 2: see this, This is just my test film, and you
- 25:39Speaker 2: want to release it nationally? Are you crazy? So it's
- 25:43Speaker 2: you know a lot of those movies were like that.
- 25:45Speaker 2: When I talked to Rick about Slacker, you know, it's
- 25:49Speaker 2: the same thing. And Ed Burns with Brothers McMullen, like
- 25:52Speaker 2: all these guys when you guys were coming up during
- 25:55Speaker 2: the nineties. You know, it's just such a straight for
- 25:59Speaker 2: people who weren't a lot during that time. They won't
- 26:02Speaker 2: under they'll never understand the magic of the nineties in
- 26:04Speaker 2: the independent film space. It is a special it's a
- 26:08Speaker 2: very special time from I'm gonna say nineteen ninety to
- 26:12Speaker 2: ninety nine that that decade will never happen again. And
- 26:19Speaker 2: it had never happened before. And it was the Sundance decade.
- 26:22Speaker 2: We call it kind of a It was a Sundance
- 26:24Speaker 2: independent film decade, was where vhs really started to come up.
- 26:27Speaker 2: There was a market for these kind of do you
- 26:29Speaker 2: imagine And I asked this so everybody like, if Clerks
- 26:32Speaker 2: came out today, no one would even look at it.
- 26:36Speaker 2: It would be gone. Maybe maybe it could catch some
- 26:40Speaker 2: fire because of the writing.
- 26:41Speaker 3: Yeah, Kevin, Kevin, that's that's what that movie is.
- 26:44Speaker 2: I think it was all right.
- 26:46Speaker 3: It is, it's all writing and it could catch on.
- 26:48Speaker 4: But if it came out today, it wouldn't look that way,
- 26:50Speaker 4: you know what I mean, it would you would.
- 26:54Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 26:55Speaker 4: It's easy enough to go get a camera that gives
- 26:58Speaker 4: you a really you know, you're right. Phone, for example,
- 27:01Speaker 4: is shooting HD and you know what is it for?
- 27:03Speaker 4: Came down even and it is it is. It's it's
- 27:07Speaker 4: pretty gorgeous and it accepts mixed light, you know, like
- 27:10Speaker 4: the Alexa too, mixed light all day long.
- 27:13Speaker 2: And it low light and low.
- 27:15Speaker 3: Light light flight. And it would have been so easy.
- 27:21Speaker 2: You know what I mean, No changing, no changing in
- 27:24Speaker 2: the back, no changing in the bags in the back.
- 27:26Speaker 3: None of that. You know.
- 27:28Speaker 4: There's a funny story where we shot the salsa shark scene,
- 27:31Speaker 4: you know, clerks, and we had so little money and
- 27:34Speaker 4: Kevi wasn't happy with it. One night, but we wrapped
- 27:37Speaker 4: and I have my fucking hands in the bag, you know,
- 27:39Speaker 4: in the tent, and and.
- 27:41Speaker 3: He's like, let's reshoot that tomorrow. And I'm like, what
- 27:44Speaker 3: do you want me to do with this film?
- 27:45Speaker 4: You know, because he had decided we're going to reshoot it,
- 27:49Speaker 4: and we had so little money.
- 27:50Speaker 3: It was like, it's like, throw it out. We didn't
- 27:54Speaker 3: process it.
- 27:55Speaker 4: We didn't want to spend the money in the process
- 27:56Speaker 4: in print because that's only you know, that's what we
- 27:58Speaker 4: were doing back then, and so we drossed it out.
- 28:02Speaker 3: Yeah, deleted scenes.
- 28:06Speaker 2: She should have kept it. He should have thrown it out.
- 28:07Speaker 2: Should have just kept it. And maybe maybe maybe you
- 28:09Speaker 2: did develop it after after Sundance.
- 28:12Speaker 3: But again we were thinking, no one's this.
- 28:15Speaker 2: I was gonna see this. He's gonna so after Clerk's been,
- 28:19Speaker 2: after Clerks, you had this. It was obviously a very
- 28:21Speaker 2: big hit. It was. It was a phenomenal. It was
- 28:23Speaker 2: a phenom situation. And then you got that opportunity to
- 28:26Speaker 2: shoot a studio movie, which was which were small rats,
- 28:30Speaker 2: which had a bigger budget, arguably much bigger, bigger movie. Uh,
- 28:35Speaker 2: what was it like jumping from the one man crew
- 28:39Speaker 2: to running a crew of people who obviously many knew
- 28:44Speaker 2: more than you did, if I'm not mistaken, is that fair?
- 28:48Speaker 2: The pa, the pas, the pas knew more than absolutely.
- 28:53Speaker 2: How do you run a show? How do you run
- 28:54Speaker 2: a set like that? Man?
- 28:55Speaker 4: Well, I think you've got to have a little bit
- 28:58Speaker 4: of humility. And I was very up front with everybody
- 29:01Speaker 4: that I was turned onto and basically hiring. And I said,
- 29:08Speaker 4: you know, I remember saying to Andy Graham, who's a
- 29:10Speaker 4: really good friend of mine.
- 29:11Speaker 3: He's been a friend of.
- 29:11Speaker 4: Mine since then, but I met him on that picture
- 29:13Speaker 4: and he was a focus bowler. He since has become
- 29:15Speaker 4: an operator and he's operated for me in a lot
- 29:17Speaker 4: of projects, and a lot with Kevin as well. But
- 29:19Speaker 4: I remember telling him that I was green. I said,
- 29:23Speaker 4: I'm green man, and I'm going to fucking lean on you.
- 29:25Speaker 4: And and he said, you know, this happens a lot.
- 29:29Speaker 4: You're the first person that's ever said it, and so
- 29:33Speaker 4: I yeah, so I owned that, you know what I mean? Uh?
- 29:36Speaker 3: And Mick McNeely was the gaffer who had just one
- 29:40Speaker 3: of our producers was Jim Jackson.
- 29:41Speaker 4: He had just done Tombstone and Mick McNeel was the
- 29:44Speaker 4: gaffer on that, and so he introduced me to make.
- 29:47Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 29:54Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
- 29:56Speaker 3: I'm like, you did fucking Tombstone with Billy Freight.
- 29:58Speaker 4: Yeah, come on board. And you know I was the
- 30:03Speaker 4: same way with him. I said, I'm gonna lean on you, man,
- 30:04Speaker 4: because I'm green, and I'm you know, I'm in this position.
- 30:07Speaker 4: It's very fortunate. I'm very fortunate to be in this position.
- 30:09Speaker 4: But if I really want to learn from you, and
- 30:11Speaker 4: I learned a lot from from Mick, and it was,
- 30:16Speaker 4: you know, across the board and every every department, you know.
- 30:19Speaker 4: So I think you got to you always have to
- 30:21Speaker 4: surround yourself with with people who know more than you,
- 30:24Speaker 4: but I think you got to be upfront about it too,
- 30:26Speaker 4: you know, and and don't try and hide the fact
- 30:29Speaker 4: that you don't know anything when you don't know anything,
- 30:31Speaker 4: because everybody's been there, you know, we've all been there,
- 30:36Speaker 4: and it's it's one of the things that that a
- 30:38Speaker 4: lot of people try to hide and and it comes
- 30:40Speaker 4: out in really ugly ways.
- 30:43Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the ego and they start snapping up people
- 30:45Speaker 2: because if you see people doing that, you could see
- 30:47Speaker 2: that they're insecure. Insecure people are the insecure people are
- 30:51Speaker 2: the loud ones. The white ones are generally not the
- 30:54Speaker 2: ones you have to worry about. No that in that scenario,
- 30:57Speaker 2: In that scenario, and if there's a bar fight and
- 31:00Speaker 2: there's a quiet guy stretching in the corner. That's the guy.
- 31:02Speaker 2: You got, a quiet guy, the guy you gotta worry about,
- 31:05Speaker 2: not the guy.
- 31:06Speaker 3: Swinging and not the guy that's that's that's you know,
- 31:10Speaker 3: I'll talk.
- 31:11Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the quiet guy. But when it comes to
- 31:14Speaker 2: but being on set, like there's a quiet there's a
- 31:17Speaker 2: quiet uh a, when you know you don't need to
- 31:21Speaker 2: show in that way, like I don't have to be blustering,
- 31:24Speaker 2: like I know how to do this and I had
- 31:26Speaker 2: If you say, if you're that dude, you obviously have
- 31:28Speaker 2: no idea what you're doing. You're extremely insecure, and I'm
- 31:31Speaker 2: sure you've worked with directors like that, especially in God.
- 31:36Speaker 4: I don't think we need to get into that yet,
- 31:38Speaker 4: but yeah, it's like you know Alex Towncil, the showrunner
- 31:40Speaker 4: of Homeland, He's he's in any room he's.
- 31:44Speaker 3: In, he's the smartest guy, smartest person in the room.
- 31:47Speaker 4: He's also one of the most mild mannered and soft spoken,
- 31:49Speaker 4: and so you know when he's very thoughtful and he's
- 31:52Speaker 4: he'll talk about a scene when we're prepping and or
- 31:54Speaker 4: rehearsing a scene.
- 31:55Speaker 3: And he's very quiet, and like everybody leans in to
- 31:57Speaker 3: listen to what he's saying, you know what I mean,
- 31:59Speaker 3: he never feels he never feels the need to be loud,
- 32:03Speaker 3: And this is you know what I think. And that's
- 32:06Speaker 3: sort of thing.
- 32:07Speaker 4: And you know I run into that, you know, you
- 32:10Speaker 4: run into that all over the place. And like composition,
- 32:13Speaker 4: we're going with Dave Filoni and Jeff have Avreaud and
- 32:15Speaker 4: the the same way. You know, they never feel the
- 32:17Speaker 4: need to be the loud voice in the room. It's
- 32:19Speaker 4: the quiet voice in the room that everybody listens.
- 32:22Speaker 3: To, you know.
- 32:23Speaker 2: Yeah, And when you're working at that level, man, with
- 32:25Speaker 2: that kind of caliber of people, you know, they've done
- 32:28Speaker 2: so much, each of them in their own right that
- 32:31Speaker 2: you know, and I'm sure you've you've you've had the
- 32:33Speaker 2: pleasure of working with some amazing directors and collaborators over
- 32:36Speaker 2: the years. You know, you start seeing when people know
- 32:40Speaker 2: what they're doing, they just they just are, you know,
- 32:43Speaker 2: they just do. They don't talk about it, they're just
- 32:47Speaker 2: very quiet, very like why didn't we move over here?
- 32:50Speaker 3: Well?
- 32:50Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 32:51Speaker 4: And also also I think at this level, as you know,
- 32:53Speaker 4: there's a there's an amount of preparation that's gone into everything.
- 32:55Speaker 3: And and I've done this enough times that I know
- 33:00Speaker 3: that I got it. I have to be prepared. I
- 33:02Speaker 3: have to be I have to be ready.
- 33:03Speaker 4: And whether that means knowing all the shots that were
- 33:07Speaker 4: going to do or just understanding how we want a
- 33:10Speaker 4: light to set to tell the story, you know, you
- 33:14Speaker 4: just have to be I have to be.
- 33:15Speaker 2: Prepared now after mal Rats, which you said, you know,
- 33:19Speaker 2: and I actually one of the five people who saw
- 33:21Speaker 2: it in the theater. I actually saw in the.
- 33:25Speaker 3: Theater, So who are the other three?
- 33:26Speaker 2: I guess I know it was Kevin Scott. I actually
- 33:30Speaker 2: saw it in the theater while I was in college,
- 33:32Speaker 2: and I actually got it was it was a special screening,
- 33:35Speaker 2: and I got the mall Rats. Got the book at
- 33:39Speaker 2: the theater. They were handing them out at the theater.
- 33:41Speaker 2: I never forgot this the original book. I had it
- 33:44Speaker 2: and and I saw Mallrats. I loved it. I thought
- 33:47Speaker 2: it was genius. When I saw it, I was like,
- 33:48Speaker 2: this is the greatest thing I've seen since Slicespread. This
- 33:51Speaker 2: is amazing. And then it died on the vine. It
- 33:54Speaker 2: didn't find an audience at the time, so Kevin was
- 33:56Speaker 2: pretty much putting in director jail at that point. Correct
- 34:00Speaker 2: He was like, oh, it was once it was a
- 34:01Speaker 2: fluke kind of thing.
- 34:03Speaker 4: Well, you know, he had the script for Chasing Amy,
- 34:07Speaker 4: and I think what happened is is, you know, we
- 34:13Speaker 4: went to Universal for this this project, and Harvey always
- 34:17Speaker 4: wanted to work with Kevin. He knew what he had
- 34:18Speaker 4: it Kevin, and and so Kevin had the script Chasing Amy,
- 34:21Speaker 4: and he took it to Harvey and he had a
- 34:24Speaker 4: meeting without without Scott Moser, which may have been a
- 34:28Speaker 4: little bit of a mistake because Kevin agreed in that
- 34:30Speaker 4: meeting to do it for a price, you know, without
- 34:35Speaker 4: any script changes, and and and so when he goes
- 34:40Speaker 4: back and meets with Moser, he's like, hey, I got
- 34:42Speaker 4: our money. Most you're thinking, you know, a couple of
- 34:44Speaker 4: three million, four million, whatever. He's like, great, what did
- 34:47Speaker 4: you get turn fifty grand?
- 34:50Speaker 3: And coming in what.
- 34:53Speaker 4: And so we ended up making that movie for a
- 34:55Speaker 4: turn of fifty grand, which is, you know, kind of
- 34:59Speaker 4: it was a bummer the time. You know, we all
- 35:01Speaker 4: wanted to make movies for more money, which which means
- 35:05Speaker 4: more time, you know, that's what it means. It means
- 35:06Speaker 4: you can actually take the time that you want to
- 35:08Speaker 4: devote to each and those scenes or more.
- 35:11Speaker 3: Time anyway, you never have enough time.
- 35:12Speaker 4: Nobody ever has enough time, even on the biggest things
- 35:15Speaker 4: I've done.
- 35:16Speaker 3: That seems like we're always scrambling. You know.
- 35:18Speaker 2: It's crazy. Even if I'm assuming on a Marvel set,
- 35:22Speaker 2: they're scrambling still. I've heard I've actually talked to some
- 35:24Speaker 2: people who worked on those hundred million, hundred fifty million
- 35:26Speaker 2: dollars budgets and they're like, yeah, we stole this shot.
- 35:28Speaker 2: I'm like, you stole a shot.
- 35:30Speaker 3: What you guys were shooting for one hundred and thirty days?
- 35:34Speaker 3: Why do you have to steal this shot?
- 35:35Speaker 2: No, I think it was Chronworth Jeff Cromworth on the
- 35:38Speaker 2: show some network. He's like, yeah, I stole this shot
- 35:40Speaker 2: and this shot and I mean David, Like it was
- 35:41Speaker 2: just me, David and like another guy. I'm like, because
- 35:44Speaker 2: they needed a shot at Harvard and they couldn't get it,
- 35:46Speaker 2: so they stole it.
- 35:47Speaker 3: Oh that's right. I remember. I remember eating about that and.
- 35:51Speaker 2: I was like, what, that's amazing. You can't forget your roots, man,
- 35:57Speaker 2: you can't forget that that hustle man. You no matter
- 35:59Speaker 2: how big you get him in the oscars, you win.
- 36:02Speaker 3: It's true. But anyway, so we ended up. You know,
- 36:07Speaker 3: we made that that for two and fifty grand and
- 36:09Speaker 3: then what I already mentioned what.
- 36:10Speaker 4: Happened at Sundance, and I think that was ninety six,
- 36:15Speaker 4: and I pushed out for ten years. I went and hustled,
- 36:18Speaker 4: and at the same time, you know, Harvey didn't let
- 36:21Speaker 4: Kevin use the same cineatographer twice.
- 36:24Speaker 3: You know, Bobby Omen shot Dogman. Bobby Oman is an excellent.
- 36:28Speaker 4: Cinematographer, and Harvey said no for the next movie. So
- 36:31Speaker 4: then they did Kevin did jayde Sound Up straight Back,
- 36:34Speaker 4: and it was Jamie Anderson. Jamie Anderson, another great cinematographer,
- 36:39Speaker 4: and Harvey didn't like the way that looked either, and
- 36:41Speaker 4: so on Jersey Girl gives him no more. Segment ends
- 36:45Speaker 4: up really not liking the way that looks either. So
- 36:47Speaker 4: Kevin finally said, well, maybe it's not the DP, maybe
- 36:48Speaker 4: it's the director that you're unhappy with. And so after that,
- 36:53Speaker 4: Kevin was basically like, give me my guy back. And
- 36:56Speaker 4: so he and I got got back together for Clerks too.
- 36:59Speaker 4: So we've we've been apart for ten years, nine and
- 37:02Speaker 4: a half, ten years, and so we were bringing ten
- 37:06Speaker 4: years of experience of working with other people together to
- 37:10Speaker 4: an existing friendship and it was the greatest reunion I've ever.
- 37:13Speaker 3: Had, you know.
- 37:14Speaker 4: And then we went on to do another four or
- 37:17Speaker 4: five pictures. We did you know after Clerks too, We
- 37:20Speaker 4: did Zac and Mary Make a Porno, and we did you.
- 37:22Speaker 3: Know, cop Out and Red State.
- 37:25Speaker 4: We ended up doing a pilot or two and it
- 37:29Speaker 4: was just it was wonderful because it was bringing ten
- 37:32Speaker 4: years of experience and and just just getting back together
- 37:35Speaker 4: and we we had a language from before, but we
- 37:39Speaker 4: had a new way of telling stories from all this
- 37:42Speaker 4: experience and that coming together, I think created some of
- 37:46Speaker 4: the best work that we've done culmination, which was was
- 37:50Speaker 4: Red State.
- 37:50Speaker 3: I think it's our finest hour, you know together. I
- 37:55Speaker 3: love that movie. I love it.
- 37:56Speaker 4: I love it so much. A lot oflood, sweat and tears.
- 38:00Speaker 4: That was us getting back to our roots. And you know,
- 38:04Speaker 4: I was the Kevin and I actually wrote a letter
- 38:06Speaker 4: to Stephen Poster, who was the president of the Union
- 38:09Speaker 4: at the time, to allow me to operate, you know,
- 38:11Speaker 4: because that the Union would have to allow this to happen,
- 38:15Speaker 4: and you know, it's got to be a creative choice.
- 38:17Speaker 3: It can't be budgetary.
- 38:18Speaker 4: And it was absolutely creative, you know, we were trying
- 38:20Speaker 4: to get back to where we'd started. And you know,
- 38:23Speaker 4: Steven understood that Stephen has worked with Kevin actually and
- 38:29Speaker 4: you know, likes Kevilina, and so they agreed to it.
- 38:30Speaker 4: The union agreed to it. So I actually operated the
- 38:32Speaker 4: camera and we were literally we were, you know, back
- 38:38Speaker 4: to where we've begun. And it was a much bigger project.
- 38:42Speaker 4: It was four million dollars, but you know, four million
- 38:44Speaker 4: dollars as it goes far in two thousand and eight
- 38:48Speaker 4: or whatever it was two thousand and nine, ten, as
- 38:51Speaker 4: as it did back in the nineties.
- 38:54Speaker 3: No question.
- 38:54Speaker 2: And listen, man, after all the years that you were
- 38:57Speaker 2: doing you've been doing this, is there anything you wish
- 39:00Speaker 2: someone would have told you at the beginning of the
- 39:02Speaker 2: career of your career besides beware of these sides, get
- 39:06Speaker 2: out be besides get out and be aware of the
- 39:08Speaker 2: morally repugnant Harvey Wentzon.
- 39:12Speaker 4: You know, I think, and it's probably one of the
- 39:14Speaker 4: hardest things that I've had to learn, is that there's
- 39:16Speaker 4: there's and there's an elegance in simplicity, you know what
- 39:21Speaker 4: I mean, Because when you're when you're starting.
- 39:24Speaker 3: Out, or when I was starting out, anyway, I can't
- 39:25Speaker 3: speak for other people.
- 39:26Speaker 4: But when I was starting out, you know, I was,
- 39:28Speaker 4: I was really trying to light a scene to tell
- 39:30Speaker 4: the story, and I was I think it was a
- 39:32Speaker 4: lot of it was was forced, you know, and it
- 39:35Speaker 4: was just too much.
- 39:37Speaker 3: And it took me a while to sit back.
- 39:39Speaker 4: And you know, when you're lighting a scene, you're always
- 39:42Speaker 4: going to look for the light to turn off because
- 39:44Speaker 4: there's always at least one there's always at least one
- 39:48Speaker 4: that is unnecessary and you don't need it, and it's
- 39:50Speaker 4: not telling the story. It's just you know, you're you're
- 39:53Speaker 4: showing off or you're being you know, you're being cute
- 39:55Speaker 4: or something.
- 39:57Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 40:03Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
- 40:06Speaker 3: But you know, I wish that that's the lesson that
- 40:09Speaker 3: took the longest to learn. I wish somebody would have
- 40:11Speaker 3: told me that that just just fucking relax.
- 40:14Speaker 4: And there is there's a real elegance, elegance in simplicity,
- 40:18Speaker 4: and I think, you know, it's hard to describe.
- 40:23Speaker 3: It's hard for me to describe what is simple or
- 40:26Speaker 3: elegant in lighting.
- 40:27Speaker 4: Because I don't I can't tell you why I have
- 40:31Speaker 4: seen a certain way, it all comes from the gut.
- 40:33Speaker 4: And that's another piece of advice I wish I would
- 40:35Speaker 4: have learned that, you know, just just follow your gut,
- 40:37Speaker 4: follow your instinct, and and don't second guess yourself. And
- 40:40Speaker 4: even if it's gonna even if you're wrong, just fucking
- 40:43Speaker 4: do it. And you're going to learn from your mistakes.
- 40:46Speaker 4: You know, if you are wrong, you'll learn from it.
- 40:49Speaker 3: Can you can you?
- 40:51Speaker 2: Can you talk about the the happy accidents because as
- 40:56Speaker 2: as cinematographers men and even their directors, we all want
- 40:59Speaker 2: to control everything at all times, which is insane. It
- 41:02Speaker 2: never happens ever. Yeah, but there are these little things
- 41:05Speaker 2: you're like, how did that that was perfect? How did
- 41:08Speaker 2: that light just hit the eye just right? The flare
- 41:11Speaker 2: hit at the right moment. Can you talk a little
- 41:14Speaker 2: bit about that?
- 41:14Speaker 3: Absolutely?
- 41:15Speaker 4: I mean some of the some of the coolest things
- 41:18Speaker 4: that I've learned have been complete and total accidents.
- 41:22Speaker 3: You know, and when when you're when you're on a set,
- 41:26Speaker 3: you'll keep you.
- 41:26Speaker 4: Have to keep your eyes on it for these things
- 41:28Speaker 4: because you know, electrician will be moving a light and
- 41:31Speaker 4: it'll be on and you know, because it's to day
- 41:33Speaker 4: your mind, it's not going to free strike, and so
- 41:35Speaker 4: they want to keep it on while it's moving, and
- 41:37Speaker 4: you'll it'll hit something that was completely unintentional and it
- 41:42Speaker 4: comes over here, and you know, it just reflecting off
- 41:44Speaker 4: of that sitting the set and you're like, fucking stop.
- 41:46Speaker 3: Just freeze where you are, that's what we want.
- 41:48Speaker 4: And then the grips are like, oh great, now we
- 41:50Speaker 4: got to contend the rest of it, you know what
- 41:52Speaker 4: I mean.
- 41:53Speaker 2: So spill off.
- 41:54Speaker 4: Yeah, turn those lights off when your mood.
- 41:57Speaker 3: Don't let them see the lights on your moon around,
- 41:59Speaker 3: you know, turn them off. But you always have to
- 42:03Speaker 3: be open for that.
- 42:03Speaker 4: And even in you know, in life, you're you're out
- 42:05Speaker 4: at a restaurant, you're you know, you're at a bar,
- 42:08Speaker 4: you're at the movie theater, whatever it is, pay attention
- 42:11Speaker 4: to your surroundings because there's there's always you know, I
- 42:14Speaker 4: learned so much about lighting from being in far too
- 42:18Speaker 4: many bars in New York in the mid nineties, you
- 42:20Speaker 4: know what I mean. They were all dark and and
- 42:23Speaker 4: a lot of them were die bars, and and you
- 42:26Speaker 4: would just see the way that that these dimly lit
- 42:28Speaker 4: bars had really cool things going on, you know, and
- 42:32Speaker 4: always you always have to be open for that and
- 42:34Speaker 4: keep your eyes open for it, because you can learn
- 42:39Speaker 4: just as much sitting in a CD dive bar in
- 42:42Speaker 4: New York as you can't be on a film set
- 42:44Speaker 4: when it comes to lighting.
- 42:46Speaker 2: Now, there's trust me. I've I've been in some time
- 42:51Speaker 2: fars No, Uh, you knows. As a cinematographer, there's always
- 42:55Speaker 2: a day on set where the entire world feels like
- 42:59Speaker 2: it's crashing down around you. It could have been on clerks,
- 43:02Speaker 2: that could have been on Mandalorian Are those Is there
- 43:05Speaker 2: a day that sticks out in your head that you
- 43:08Speaker 2: felt like I shouldn't be here this whole I'm going
- 43:12Speaker 2: to get fired, this whole thing's not going to work.
- 43:15Speaker 2: And what did you do to kind of go through
- 43:17Speaker 2: that and get through that obstacle.
- 43:19Speaker 4: I don't know if there's a day or a handful
- 43:22Speaker 4: of days in particular, Alex, but all that it happens
- 43:26Speaker 4: all the time. It happens all the time, and you
- 43:29Speaker 4: just have to push through.
- 43:30Speaker 3: You know.
- 43:31Speaker 4: There are so many times when it feels like the
- 43:33Speaker 4: set's falling apart and your behind schedule and you're not
- 43:37Speaker 4: going to make your day and you're you're not getting
- 43:39Speaker 4: the shots the way you want, But you just have
- 43:40Speaker 4: to push through. You know, you have to always have
- 43:43Speaker 4: to push through because it it feels.
- 43:47Speaker 3: Like that a lot.
- 43:49Speaker 4: You know, I had there was a point I was
- 43:52Speaker 4: going for and I missed it. Ask me something else, man,
- 43:54Speaker 4: I'll come back to that.
- 43:55Speaker 2: Well. I mean, as I've been I've been blessed to
- 43:58Speaker 2: talk to so many amazing people on this show. I've
- 44:02Speaker 2: realized that everybody, from the Oscar winner to the first
- 44:07Speaker 2: time filmmaker all suffered from imposter syndrome, every single one
- 44:11Speaker 2: of them. Even to this day. You know, I'm talking
- 44:14Speaker 2: to some Oscar winning screenwriter. He's like, yeah, I don't
- 44:16Speaker 2: even know if this next script. I'm like, you just
- 44:18Speaker 2: won the Oscar. What's wrong with you? Like you just are,
- 44:21Speaker 2: Like you're considered one of the best writers ever, Like
- 44:24Speaker 2: why are you? Yeah? I just I just do. And
- 44:28Speaker 2: I think I came to realize that everybody deals with it,
- 44:32Speaker 2: and I think it's something that kind of keeps you sharp.
- 44:35Speaker 2: I'm assuming that you have the same issues as far
- 44:37Speaker 2: as imposter syndrome on.
- 44:38Speaker 4: SAT always and yeah, yeah, you have to be I mean,
- 44:41Speaker 4: you have to be your most You're a Fiercis critic,
- 44:45Speaker 4: you have to be your biggest fan. You have to
- 44:47Speaker 4: be your biggest supporter. You have to be you know,
- 44:49Speaker 4: your most most critical. I against yourself, I think, because
- 44:56Speaker 4: nobody knows what anybody else thinks.
- 44:58Speaker 3: All you have is yourself.
- 45:00Speaker 4: So and you have to rely on all the people
- 45:03Speaker 4: around you. Let me sound pretentious for a second. Quote
- 45:07Speaker 4: was it Orson Wells said that, you know, a painter
- 45:10Speaker 4: needs a paint pressure, a writer needs a pen, and
- 45:12Speaker 4: a filmmaker needs an army, you know, And it's true.
- 45:15Speaker 4: And no, no cinematographer, no director, no filmmaker is an island.
- 45:19Speaker 3: We can't. You can't do this alone, you know what
- 45:21Speaker 3: I mean.
- 45:21Speaker 4: You have to have this this support, this support system
- 45:28Speaker 4: that is is you know, it's the most it is
- 45:32Speaker 4: the most complicated and sophisticated recording device non demand, you know.
- 45:37Speaker 4: And a lot of times, you know, a lot of
- 45:41Speaker 4: times it is like being deployed.
- 45:43Speaker 3: You know, I did Homeland.
- 45:44Speaker 4: For for six years and we were either for seven months,
- 45:48Speaker 4: either out of the state or out of the country,
- 45:50Speaker 4: sometimes both within the season, and it is like a deployment,
- 45:55Speaker 4: you know.
- 45:55Speaker 3: I it's it's I can't I can't equate it to
- 45:59Speaker 3: to going to war. I can't compare it to going
- 46:01Speaker 3: to war.
- 46:01Speaker 4: I've never been to war, but in my life's experience,
- 46:05Speaker 4: it is like a deployment, and you know, you're just
- 46:08Speaker 4: in the trenches for seven months, eight months, you know,
- 46:11Speaker 4: and it's non stop and it's hard to remember sometimes
- 46:17Speaker 4: to get out of the way, you know, because if
- 46:21Speaker 4: somebody looks at something that and this is probably paraphrasing,
- 46:25Speaker 4: I think deacons, but if somebody looks at something that
- 46:28Speaker 4: I've shot, it's just wow, that's a great looking episode.
- 46:31Speaker 4: You know, that's a great looking show, that's a great
- 46:33Speaker 4: looking movie. Without talking about the story, then I've failed,
- 46:37Speaker 4: you know. I think it is our It is right
- 46:40Speaker 4: my job as a storyteller to be almost invisible, and
- 46:45Speaker 4: it should be.
- 46:46Speaker 3: We should be the silence between the notes, you know.
- 46:50Speaker 4: And and if somebody looks at something that I've shot, well,
- 46:53Speaker 4: you know that was that was a great story, you know,
- 46:56Speaker 4: then that's a success for everybody, for all of us.
- 46:59Speaker 4: But if they sing out the cinematography, the lighting, the
- 47:01Speaker 4: camera work, then then I don't I don't think we
- 47:04Speaker 4: were We weren't serving the story at that point.
- 47:08Speaker 2: Very true. A lot of a lot of times, especially
- 47:10Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but when I started out,
- 47:12Speaker 2: I wanted the coolest shots and the story was the
- 47:15Speaker 2: like I was like, I want to do that Scarsese
- 47:16Speaker 2: shot and good feelings. I want to do that shot
- 47:18Speaker 2: that Kubrick did. I want to do that shot that
- 47:20Speaker 2: Spielbrick did, Like we all we all do it. But
- 47:22Speaker 2: as you get older, you start realizing, like, what's the story, Yeah,
- 47:26Speaker 2: what's the story? Because before it was a it was
- 47:28Speaker 2: a lot harder to do those shots. It was super
- 47:31Speaker 2: hard to do a lot of those shots back in
- 47:32Speaker 2: the eighties, seventies, eighties, nineties. To do some of those
- 47:35Speaker 2: insane shots that those masters did was difficult. Where now
- 47:39Speaker 2: the technology has gotten to a place where you know,
- 47:42Speaker 2: you could with the Ronan you can run around instead
- 47:46Speaker 2: of getting a full giant steady camop and you can
- 47:49Speaker 2: you can you could do some insane shots running in,
- 47:52Speaker 2: jumping through, going through like there's things that you can do.
- 47:55Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's not the cool stuff anymore, it's not.
- 48:00Speaker 3: And but but there's there's still there's.
- 48:02Speaker 4: Still always the next level. There's still somewhere to take it,
- 48:05Speaker 4: you know, but it has to sort the story. I
- 48:07Speaker 4: worked a lot during Manda Mandalorian season two. I worked
- 48:10Speaker 4: a lot with Sam Hardgrave. He was the main seging director,
- 48:13Speaker 4: and then he went on to do you know, extraction
- 48:16Speaker 4: and some of the stuff that that he was doing
- 48:19Speaker 4: and did an extraction is absolutely insane, and it.
- 48:21Speaker 3: Was a perfect blend of It was a perfect.
- 48:24Speaker 4: Blend of his background being a stuntman and becoming a
- 48:28Speaker 4: second year director and then a director and combining that
- 48:33Speaker 4: with all the new technology of the day. You know,
- 48:36Speaker 4: there's that scene you look at the behind the scenes
- 48:38Speaker 4: stuff where he's basically riding on a four wheeler on
- 48:42Speaker 4: ATV of some sort and he's actually directing and operating
- 48:45Speaker 4: the camera and somebody you know, chasing a car basically
- 48:49Speaker 4: going forward and then reverse and and then somebody detaches
- 48:53Speaker 4: him and he runs up and shoves the camera through
- 48:56Speaker 4: the window, and then there was this takeover of some sort.
- 48:59Speaker 4: They did a CG usual effect blend, you know, going
- 49:02Speaker 4: into the car and then they're all all of a
- 49:04Speaker 4: sudden in the car. In another shot they blended together
- 49:07Speaker 4: and the car drives away, and so it's this It
- 49:10Speaker 4: was beautiful choreography and and it was it was like,
- 49:14Speaker 4: you know, watching a ballet dancer, except you know, it's
- 49:19Speaker 4: more punk rock than that.
- 49:21Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean there's always a place
- 49:23Speaker 2: to take. I mean, look at that shot that Spielberg
- 49:25Speaker 2: did in War the World inside the car with the
- 49:28Speaker 2: cameras just rotating around the car while the you know,
- 49:32Speaker 2: the aliens are attacking and things are exploding, and you're
- 49:35Speaker 2: just like when you know, when you and I sit
- 49:37Speaker 2: there going how the hell did they do that? Then
- 49:42Speaker 2: they've done, They've gone to another place because we.
- 49:44Speaker 3: You know, children driving shot children.
- 49:47Speaker 2: Men, Jesus. I mean you're just like, how did he
- 49:51Speaker 2: do that? So it's it's it's it's pretty remarkable. Man.
- 49:55Speaker 2: Now I have to ask you about Mandalorian brother. We'll
- 49:58Speaker 2: be right back after a wh from our sponsor. And
- 50:04Speaker 2: now back to the show. Like you worked on season one, Oh,
- 50:10Speaker 2: you didn't work on season one, you worked on the
- 50:12Speaker 2: season season.
- 50:12Speaker 4: I came into season two as the second year serment,
- 50:16Speaker 4: second uar cinematographer to Bazwin and uh Matt Jensen, and
- 50:23Speaker 4: so I was doing singing, you know, and Matt Jensen
- 50:24Speaker 4: got a little overloaded with prep work, and so he
- 50:27Speaker 4: turned episode six over to me.
- 50:29Speaker 3: And that's you know, when I met Robert.
- 50:32Speaker 4: And I had I had gotten here, I'd gotten here
- 50:36Speaker 4: from an introduction to Fabreau through Leslie Lincoln Glattter who
- 50:41Speaker 4: was my nam Prus and Gretron Homeland, and then you know,
- 50:45Speaker 4: Matt Jensen also brought me up, and so that's how
- 50:47Speaker 4: I kind of came to be here. After season two,
- 50:52Speaker 4: you know, Matt and Baz were going off to do
- 50:54Speaker 4: their own things. They weren't coming back for their own reasons,
- 50:57Speaker 4: and so I got, I guess promoted do the main
- 51:00Speaker 4: cinema from the book of Bobo set.
- 51:03Speaker 2: So so when you're I have to ask you some
- 51:05Speaker 2: technical stuff, Man, how the hell do you light in
- 51:08Speaker 2: the volume? Because I know I have a couple of
- 51:11Speaker 2: buddies of mine who are VFX people working who work
- 51:14Speaker 2: the Mandalorian season one, and he was telling me that
- 51:17Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, they shoot a lot, but there's still
- 51:19Speaker 2: a lot of cleanup work that we need to do
- 51:21Speaker 2: with some of the edges and and uh and increases
- 51:24Speaker 2: and things like that that it's not all in camera,
- 51:27Speaker 2: but it's a lot better than where it's not a
- 51:29Speaker 2: green screen either, So there's a kind of happy medium.
- 51:32Speaker 2: But how do you light that? You know, I'm assuming
- 51:35Speaker 2: there's not an h GM I off, like, how do
- 51:37Speaker 2: you do that how do you light it?
- 51:39Speaker 4: You know, it's it's that's a hard question to answer.
- 51:42Speaker 4: It's it's kind of like asking how do you light?
- 51:44Speaker 4: How do you light anything? You know what I mean,
- 51:46Speaker 4: it's it's got its own it's a it's a it's
- 51:49Speaker 4: a process.
- 51:51Speaker 2: I'm gonna just tell you it's it's It's fucking hard, dude.
- 51:53Speaker 2: It's hard.
- 51:54Speaker 3: It is.
- 51:55Speaker 2: It's weird.
- 51:56Speaker 3: There's nothing easy about it.
- 51:57Speaker 4: I think I had a I had a lucky innerduction
- 52:00Speaker 4: to it in that you know, I was doing just
- 52:02Speaker 4: a few days here and there during season two, and
- 52:06Speaker 4: so I was getting to know it, and I was
- 52:08Speaker 4: able to watch Bass and Matt do their thing in
- 52:09Speaker 4: the volume, and so I had a slowan introduction to
- 52:11Speaker 4: the volume in season two and then rolled right into
- 52:16Speaker 4: Boba Fet shortly after that and was thrown in the
- 52:20Speaker 4: deep end. You know, where there's a there's a long prep.
- 52:24Speaker 4: There was a long prep to Boba Fet. I think
- 52:26Speaker 4: I was on for about five months before shooting started.
- 52:30Speaker 4: And it has a lot to do with lighting the
- 52:33Speaker 4: content that's going on the volume walls, you know, and
- 52:39Speaker 4: so essentially you're in the unreal engine, You're in a
- 52:43Speaker 4: VR session and you're lighting the content the way you
- 52:46Speaker 4: would want to light it practically, you know, And that's
- 52:49Speaker 4: that's one thing that is always a sticking point of Fabreau,
- 52:53Speaker 4: because the tendency for a cinematographer when you get into
- 52:56Speaker 4: a VR environment and a virtual lighting environment is to
- 52:59Speaker 4: do whatever the fuck you want, you know, because you
- 53:01Speaker 4: can do just about anything, but you also have to
- 53:05Speaker 4: match that in the practical set that's going to be
- 53:07Speaker 4: inside the volume. And and one of Faver's things is like,
- 53:10Speaker 4: don't light it, however you could in a virtual environment
- 53:14Speaker 4: light at how you would in reality or else it's
- 53:17Speaker 4: going to start to look like a video game. It's
- 53:19Speaker 4: going to you know, it's yeah, you can put a
- 53:21Speaker 4: source the size of the sun out there and do this.
- 53:24Speaker 4: But could you do that if you were lighting this
- 53:27Speaker 4: virtual environment practically, No, you could, you know, you'd have
- 53:30Speaker 4: you'd have hmis and whatever you're going to use. And
- 53:33Speaker 4: that's also what you're going to use on the practical set,
- 53:36Speaker 4: So you know, it starts with lighting the virtual environment
- 53:41Speaker 4: and and knowing how to bridge the gap between the
- 53:47Speaker 4: virtual and the practical because.
- 53:49Speaker 2: You could actually move light sources within the volume itself,
- 53:54Speaker 2: that meaning the the VR aspect of the unreal engine.
- 53:57Speaker 2: You could put a light somewhere in the virtual space
- 54:01Speaker 2: that lights through the LEDs on and there is an
- 54:04Speaker 2: aspect to that, correct.
- 54:05Speaker 3: There is there is you're not going to get. You're
- 54:07Speaker 3: not gonna get directionality, You're not gonna get hard light.
- 54:10Speaker 3: You know, you're gonna get a lot of soft light.
- 54:11Speaker 4: You're gonna get all the interactive soft light that you
- 54:13Speaker 4: get from the environment. But any any direct hard light
- 54:19Speaker 4: you're gonna have to do practically. And so when you're
- 54:22Speaker 4: doing it in the virtual environment ahead of time, you know,
- 54:27Speaker 4: you have to know that I'm not gonna be able
- 54:29Speaker 4: to do this entire wash of sunlight in here. I'm
- 54:31Speaker 4: only going to be able to do this, you know,
- 54:34Speaker 4: these spots and these broken up bits of sunlight. So
- 54:38Speaker 4: that's what I should do in the virtual and then
- 54:41Speaker 4: I'll do that also in the in the practical you know,
- 54:43Speaker 4: with HMI s OR, we've also gone into tungsten now
- 54:47Speaker 4: with some of the loads started doing that on Bobafet
- 54:52Speaker 4: didn't didn't know if it was possible or not, and
- 54:54Speaker 4: I've been told that it was not possible to go
- 54:56Speaker 4: to tungsten in the volume. But then I was talking
- 54:58Speaker 4: to everybody from from State Trapped and Island and they said,
- 55:01Speaker 4: we can absolutely.
- 55:02Speaker 3: Go to Tuxton. I don't know who told you that,
- 55:04Speaker 3: and I, to be honest, I remember he told it
- 55:06Speaker 3: to me either.
- 55:07Speaker 4: But once we started using Cleston lighting there, it I
- 55:11Speaker 4: think it made everything feel a little more real because
- 55:15Speaker 4: it's just it's a full spectrum, you know, light source,
- 55:18Speaker 4: and it just kind of fills in all the blanks
- 55:20Speaker 4: of the wavelengths, you know, and it just it just
- 55:24Speaker 4: made it all feel a little more real for me.
- 55:27Speaker 2: A lighting of it when I was talking to Dean
- 55:29Speaker 2: Condy because he was on the show and he was
- 55:31Speaker 2: right before he was heading out to Bulba. I think
- 55:33Speaker 2: he shout he did did you shoot Boba? Or do
- 55:35Speaker 2: you shoot those all the men? Look, he did shoot
- 55:37Speaker 2: some episodes of Boba. He was telling me that he
- 55:39Speaker 2: was lighting outside the volume as well, getting some light
- 55:43Speaker 2: spillt it's something like that, or am I mistaken?
- 55:46Speaker 3: No, You're not mistaken.
- 55:47Speaker 4: One thing that we haven't, you know, we haven't been
- 55:51Speaker 4: able to do, and I don't know that it'll ever
- 55:52Speaker 4: be possible is to do a broad you know sunlight
- 55:55Speaker 4: source or you know, open moonlight even any anytime you
- 55:59Speaker 4: want to just just fill the volume with light, if
- 56:01Speaker 4: that's what the scene requires, you need to take it
- 56:03Speaker 4: outside because first of all, there's not a room.
- 56:08Speaker 3: It seems like it's a big space, but it gets
- 56:09Speaker 3: it gets very small, very quickly.
- 56:11Speaker 4: And if you did wash it with with you know,
- 56:14Speaker 4: giant hmis or big tongs to sources, the light's just
- 56:17Speaker 4: going to bounce all over the led walls and render
- 56:20Speaker 4: them uselessly.
- 56:21Speaker 3: So anytime we need open sunlight, anytime we.
- 56:24Speaker 4: Need you know, say the desert at night where it's
- 56:27Speaker 4: supposed to be a moon source, we'll go on the
- 56:29Speaker 4: back line. But if we need pockets, if we need
- 56:34Speaker 4: you know, a skylight here and there shooting some sunlight,
- 56:37Speaker 4: and then we have some some parts of the ceiling
- 56:40Speaker 4: that we can take out, big sections of the ceiling
- 56:43Speaker 4: that we take out. There's still there's a lot of
- 56:45Speaker 4: ringing up, there are a lot of hard works work around,
- 56:47Speaker 4: and so there's.
- 56:48Speaker 3: Still not a lot of space to get lights.
- 56:51Speaker 4: You know, away from where they need to be so
- 56:53Speaker 4: you can have good shoutows. And so we end up
- 56:56Speaker 4: you know, using mirrors a lot. So we'll have an opening,
- 56:59Speaker 4: you know, opening in the ceiling that might be five
- 57:03Speaker 4: by ten, five x twelve something like that. Then we'll
- 57:05Speaker 4: have a big mirror up above, and then we'll have
- 57:08Speaker 4: n each of my Thompson for now whatever it is,
- 57:11Speaker 4: you know, another fifteen twenty feet away, so that there's
- 57:14Speaker 4: a good amount of distance from the light and whatever
- 57:16Speaker 4: is cutting it, which is usually a gobo hanging beneath
- 57:21Speaker 4: the opening in the ceiling, so that we're trying to
- 57:24Speaker 4: get it as far away from the light as possible
- 57:27Speaker 4: so that we have good shadows, you know, and there's
- 57:29Speaker 4: there's just so much hardware to work around that it's difficult,
- 57:33Speaker 4: but we we kind of cracked it a little bit
- 57:36Speaker 4: and are getting better at it we as we learn more,
- 57:39Speaker 4: which you know, we're learning something every day that we're
- 57:42Speaker 4: in there.
- 57:44Speaker 2: Right, it seems like from season one to season two
- 57:47Speaker 2: to Boba and now hopefully I can't wait to see
- 57:50Speaker 2: season three, it seems that things are you can just
- 57:54Speaker 2: sense things are getting a little bit more real in
- 57:57Speaker 2: the way it's shot. It just looks like the end
- 57:59Speaker 2: sequence of you know, the famous Luke Skywalker see in
- 58:03Speaker 2: the season two like that's it's a master work. Honestly,
- 58:07Speaker 2: that whole episode's a master work. It's absolutely it's a
- 58:11Speaker 2: absolute master work. I've watched the end sequence a thousand
- 58:15Speaker 2: times because I'm a geek, and and I got to
- 58:19Speaker 2: ask you seriously, man, you're you're you're your similar vintage
- 58:23Speaker 2: as me as far as age is concerned. So you
- 58:26Speaker 2: got to geek out every once in a while, dude,
- 58:28Speaker 2: Like you're like, you got to geek out everyone, Oh
- 58:31Speaker 2: for sure?
- 58:31Speaker 4: And no, I'm turned into a twelve thirteen, fourteen year
- 58:35Speaker 4: old very often, offset you know. I mean, yeah, throw
- 58:41Speaker 4: ten Stormtroopers in front of a camera and I'm twelve
- 58:43Speaker 4: years old again, you know what I mean.
- 58:45Speaker 2: It's yeah, a lightsaber, a lightsaber pops up. You're just like,
- 58:49Speaker 2: I'll forget it. I'm out, I can't.
- 58:53Speaker 4: You know. It goes back to me blowing the hell
- 58:55Speaker 4: out of that little that little special edition boat with
- 58:57Speaker 4: fat And you know I.
- 58:59Speaker 3: Had all that. I had all the toys.
- 59:01Speaker 4: I have some of them, some of them in my
- 59:03Speaker 4: office right now, little daby clients Star Wars toys.
- 59:07Speaker 2: That's amazing.
- 59:09Speaker 3: Uh.
- 59:09Speaker 2: But so you on Boba, you got to shoot with Robert.
- 59:12Speaker 2: You shot for Robert Rodriguez, who is known very well
- 59:16Speaker 2: known for being his own DP. So what was it
- 59:18Speaker 2: like shooting for Robert because Roberts not used to working
- 59:22Speaker 2: with other dps generally speaking.
- 59:25Speaker 4: I'll be honest, he he largely left me alone, you know.
- 59:30Speaker 4: He I think he enjoys not having all the responsibility,
- 59:35Speaker 4: you know, because he's still you know, he's still he
- 59:40Speaker 4: still edits everything. And even when we were prepping he
- 59:45Speaker 4: we were prepping remotely because it was the beginning of
- 59:48Speaker 4: the pandemic, and so he was in Austin with his kids,
- 59:50Speaker 4: and he was shooting basically animatics.
- 59:53Speaker 3: Or stunt viz with his kids and with some of
- 59:56Speaker 3: his old you know, Star Wars toys from when he
- 59:59Speaker 3: was a kid.
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
- 1:00:10Speaker 3: So he's still very hands on. But when it came
- 1:00:13Speaker 3: to the the you know, how are we gonna like this?
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: How are we gonna like this set?
- 1:00:18Speaker 4: He had ideas that we would talk about when we
- 1:00:20Speaker 4: were prepping and when we were lighting some of the
- 1:00:22Speaker 4: virtual environments, but for the most part he left me alone.
- 1:00:26Speaker 4: He would, you know, like most directors, he'll tell me
- 1:00:28Speaker 4: if he doesn't like something. But it wasn't like he
- 1:00:33Speaker 4: was pointing me in a specific direction for lighting. You know,
- 1:00:36Speaker 4: we he let me alone, let me do my own things.
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: He trusted, he trusted that you knew what you were doing.
- 1:00:42Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so. I don't know if that's true,
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: but he might think of it.
- 1:00:47Speaker 2: So no, I saw. I thought it was in one
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: of the behind the scenes that Dave Faloney was like,
- 1:00:52Speaker 2: you seeing the atomatic that you're talking about, and he's like,
- 1:00:55Speaker 2: can you stop? Can you stop it right second? Did
- 1:00:57Speaker 2: you just shoot an atomatic which worst toys in your backyard?
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: Yeah?
- 1:01:02Speaker 2: He goes, yes, yes I did, and he's like, that
- 1:01:05Speaker 2: is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my time.
- 1:01:07Speaker 2: I think that was the moment that the Book of Boba.
- 1:01:10Speaker 2: He's like, wait a minute, let's bring Robert into the
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: Book of Boba, and let's bring him into this because
- 1:01:16Speaker 2: this is this is insane. And did you do with
- 1:01:19Speaker 2: the season two Boba episode or No, I did that?
- 1:01:22Speaker 3: That's that was episode six, that's the that's the one
- 1:01:24Speaker 3: that I did with Robert.
- 1:01:27Speaker 2: Oh my god, dude, you gotta I mean, okay, let's
- 1:01:29Speaker 2: stop for a second. Geek out for a second. When
- 1:01:31Speaker 2: you saw Boba show up for the first time on set?
- 1:01:36Speaker 2: What I mean you guys have to be five year
- 1:01:38Speaker 2: old at that point.
- 1:01:39Speaker 4: Absolutely, we are that that was a tough shoot though,
- 1:01:43Speaker 4: and you know it was I can't say it was
- 1:01:46Speaker 4: anti climactic, but we had shot a lot of the
- 1:01:48Speaker 4: scenes with Boba Fett, you know, on stage and.
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: On the volume prior to the you know, when he
- 1:01:55Speaker 3: first introduce the introduction.
- 1:01:57Speaker 4: Yeah, and the introduction was was done out and seeing
- 1:01:59Speaker 4: me out because it had you know, we just needed
- 1:02:02Speaker 4: the travel. That scene needed the travel that you can't
- 1:02:05Speaker 4: get in the volume, and it also needed that that
- 1:02:07Speaker 4: open sunlight, and and so it it forced us to
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: go out to Seaming Valley and might be one of
- 1:02:15Speaker 4: the reasons I got that episode because maybe Bas and
- 1:02:17Speaker 4: Matt didn't.
- 1:02:18Speaker 3: Didn't want to go out there. You know, it was
- 1:02:20Speaker 3: it was not an easy shoot. It was it was rough.
- 1:02:23Speaker 3: It was rough. It was five or six days out
- 1:02:25Speaker 3: there in Seeming Valley. It was a lot of fun.
- 1:02:28Speaker 4: But and like I said, I can't say it's anti climactic,
- 1:02:31Speaker 4: but we had already been introduced, and so you know,
- 1:02:37Speaker 4: I can't say that we were out there just to
- 1:02:38Speaker 4: get it done, but there was a certain aspect of
- 1:02:42Speaker 4: we got to get this done because we had a
- 1:02:44Speaker 4: finite amount of time. And you know what's funny is
- 1:02:47Speaker 4: we only had six stormtroopers out there.
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: Really, yes, so you did an alien style where they
- 1:02:54Speaker 2: only had six aliens.
- 1:02:56Speaker 4: Either that or I mean there are a lot of
- 1:03:00Speaker 4: complete CG VFX stormtroopers. Wow, really if if you you know,
- 1:03:05Speaker 4: and they're really good, they are really good. It's because
- 1:03:08Speaker 4: I think it's you know, it's obviously much easier in
- 1:03:10Speaker 4: VFX to do a stormtrooper.
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: Than than hurt and face, you know. And there's there's
- 1:03:17Speaker 3: one that.
- 1:03:18Speaker 4: I'll point out, and it's the last one to jump
- 1:03:20Speaker 4: on the transport when the transports are taking off that
- 1:03:23Speaker 4: you can kind of tell.
- 1:03:25Speaker 2: I remember it. I remember remember that one, right, I
- 1:03:27Speaker 2: remember that one?
- 1:03:28Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so that's the one that that And I
- 1:03:32Speaker 4: think it was only because I knew, you know, going
- 1:03:35Speaker 4: in that that that was CG and that that only
- 1:03:37Speaker 4: a portion of the rest of them that were jumping
- 1:03:40Speaker 4: on the ramp were actual troopers.
- 1:03:43Speaker 2: You know, it's pretty that episode. Oh, it was so
- 1:03:48Speaker 2: much fun that when I saw that episode. When I
- 1:03:50Speaker 2: saw that episode, I was just blown away by how
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: how cool it was. And you could tell it was
- 1:03:55Speaker 2: the first time they were off the volume right in
- 1:03:57Speaker 2: the whole series.
- 1:03:58Speaker 4: Well, not no, not exactly, because there's a lot of
- 1:04:00Speaker 4: backlot work. There's there's a lot of backlot work, and
- 1:04:03Speaker 4: that location, correct.
- 1:04:06Speaker 2: That was the first locate. That's what it was.
- 1:04:07Speaker 3: It was the first location, the first location. You're right
- 1:04:09Speaker 3: about that.
- 1:04:10Speaker 2: And in.
- 1:04:13Speaker 4: Boba FET we had a lot of a lot of
- 1:04:15Speaker 4: backlot and we had one location which was Huntington Gardens
- 1:04:19Speaker 4: we went to for a few days, two days for
- 1:04:21Speaker 4: the for episode six, which was on the Band Before Us,
- 1:04:26Speaker 4: you know, the the Luke Sawarker episode of FET.
- 1:04:29Speaker 2: I thought that looked familiar, like I was watching them, like,
- 1:04:32Speaker 2: damn it, man, that looks like hunting you know, we did.
- 1:04:36Speaker 3: We did three versions of Bamboo Forest in that episode.
- 1:04:39Speaker 4: One was backlot, one was on the volume, and one
- 1:04:41Speaker 4: was huntingon and going back to, you know, being the
- 1:04:45Speaker 4: silence in between the notes. Some of the Band Before
- 1:04:47Speaker 4: Us that we did on the volume was some of
- 1:04:50Speaker 4: the that that might have been the hardest volumelood that
- 1:04:52Speaker 4: we did in the entire season for for many different reasons.
- 1:04:56Speaker 3: But I think it blends in pretty well. And the
- 1:04:58Speaker 3: fact that that.
- 1:05:01Speaker 4: You know, the transition from back lot to volume to
- 1:05:03Speaker 4: Huntington is seamless. I didn't is one is one of
- 1:05:08Speaker 4: the things that makes it successful. But it's also, like
- 1:05:11Speaker 4: I was saying earlier, it's getting out of the way,
- 1:05:13Speaker 4: and it's it's making making that transition, you know, invisible,
- 1:05:18Speaker 4: and and and just just having a sort of elegance
- 1:05:25Speaker 4: and simplicity.
- 1:05:27Speaker 2: Well, man, congrats on all the amazing work you're doing,
- 1:05:31Speaker 2: uh with John and Dave up there in northern California.
- 1:05:35Speaker 2: You guys are doing some good work with the Mandalorian.
- 1:05:37Speaker 2: We're all super excited to see the new season coming
- 1:05:39Speaker 2: out this year. And I didn't you just finish it's production.
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: It's not done, though, I can't talk about it.
- 1:05:45Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
- 1:05:46Speaker 2: I thought it was. I thought I read it somewhere. Brother,
- 1:05:48Speaker 2: I'm not trying to get you anything, no, no words
- 1:05:50Speaker 2: or words, don't care. I thought I read that.
- 1:05:51Speaker 4: I've recently, I've recently finished another a season of a
- 1:05:56Speaker 4: Disney plus streaming chef.
- 1:05:59Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:06:00Speaker 2: Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough now? But no, seriously, man,
- 1:06:04Speaker 2: congratulations on all the hard work you've done and now
- 1:06:07Speaker 2: knowing your backstory a bit more than I did before. Man,
- 1:06:10Speaker 2: I respect it even that much more. Because I didn't
- 1:06:13Speaker 2: know about the ten years in the wilderness that you
- 1:06:15Speaker 2: had to go through, like you were.
- 1:06:17Speaker 3: You were out there as Yeah, then years.
- 1:06:21Speaker 2: In the wilderness trying to trying to kind of carve
- 1:06:23Speaker 2: you a way and climb your way back out of
- 1:06:27Speaker 2: the situation that they're repugnantly more the morally repugnant Harvey
- 1:06:32Speaker 2: and uh and those circumstances kind of hurt you on
- 1:06:35Speaker 2: the way up. So kudos to you man for keeping
- 1:06:38Speaker 2: up there. And hopefully this is a lesson for lessons
- 1:06:40Speaker 2: for people listening that like you gotta custle, doesn't matter
- 1:06:44Speaker 2: where you start, what happens, it happened. You know, things
- 1:06:47Speaker 2: happen that can slow your progression down in the seat,
- 1:06:50Speaker 2: and then you have to ask yourself, how bad do
- 1:06:53Speaker 2: you want it?
- 1:06:54Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the question, you know, saying earlier about you know,
- 1:07:00Speaker 4: advice to the young and up and coming.
- 1:07:04Speaker 3: You know, my father was an North Peak surgeon.
- 1:07:06Speaker 4: He would not let me be a doctor because he
- 1:07:09Speaker 4: was a doctor and his father was a doctor.
- 1:07:10Speaker 3: My grandfa was a doctor, and.
- 1:07:12Speaker 4: They were never home, and so I chose a profession
- 1:07:16Speaker 4: with hours worse than a fucking surgeon, you know what
- 1:07:19Speaker 4: I mean?
- 1:07:20Speaker 3: So you really got it.
- 1:07:21Speaker 4: You really got to think long and hard about if
- 1:07:24Speaker 4: you want to be in this business, because it takes
- 1:07:27Speaker 4: a toll, you know.
- 1:07:28Speaker 3: And I've got a marriage that was destroyed. I have
- 1:07:34Speaker 3: a fourteen year old daughter.
- 1:07:35Speaker 4: Who as she was growing up, you know, from from
- 1:07:40Speaker 4: six to eleven or five to eleven, I was doing
- 1:07:42Speaker 4: Homeland and I was gone seven months a year. And
- 1:07:46Speaker 4: so I turn around and she's twelve, you know what
- 1:07:48Speaker 4: I mean, And I'm like, where'd all that time go?
- 1:07:51Speaker 4: I missed all that time. So you got to think
- 1:07:54Speaker 4: long and hard about it.
- 1:07:55Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's something that they don't tell you in
- 1:07:57Speaker 2: film school now and tell you that a lot of
- 1:08:00Speaker 2: especially for dps, even more so than directors, dp's are
- 1:08:04Speaker 2: always working. You know, they're you know, they're not getting
- 1:08:07Speaker 2: the fat you know checks a lot of times. So
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: they have to keep hustling. They got to keep working,
- 1:08:12Speaker 2: They got to keep going. And that's time, man, and
- 1:08:15Speaker 2: that does break up. I know a lot of them. Know,
- 1:08:17Speaker 2: a lot of dpeas with marriages don't make it. They
- 1:08:21Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's tough. So you really got to
- 1:08:24Speaker 2: love what you're doing. You really really got to love
- 1:08:27Speaker 2: what you're doing.
- 1:08:27Speaker 4: I remember being uh at a festival, Hatch Festival in Bozeman, Montana,
- 1:08:32Speaker 4: and they would always have a couple of cinematographers there.
- 1:08:34Speaker 4: One one year I was there as one of the
- 1:08:36Speaker 4: cinematoraphers and Haskell Wexler was the other. Oh, and so
- 1:08:39Speaker 4: we were speaking to a group of university students and
- 1:08:43Speaker 4: we were talking about the hours, and you know, he
- 1:08:45Speaker 4: was he was still promoting Who Needs Sleep, the documentary
- 1:08:48Speaker 4: that he made about the working hours in the business,
- 1:08:52Speaker 4: and and we were talking about the hours, and one
- 1:08:55Speaker 4: of the one of the students, you know, asked the question.
- 1:08:57Speaker 3: How how do you, guys make it work?
- 1:08:58Speaker 4: You know, how how do you how do you have
- 1:09:01Speaker 4: a life, live a life and work these hours? And
- 1:09:04Speaker 4: Haskell just goes, I'm on marriage number three, guys. You
- 1:09:08Speaker 4: know it sometimes it doesn't.
- 1:09:11Speaker 2: Damnah. That's a drop the mic moment right there. That's
- 1:09:15Speaker 2: what kind of is That's that's just raw and truthful
- 1:09:18Speaker 2: as as it gets. That's so awesome, man, that is
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: so awesome. Now, I didn't I know you wanted to
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: address the accidental shooting that happened on the set of
- 1:09:26Speaker 2: Rust with your Friends. Can you can you discuss that
- 1:09:28Speaker 2: a little bit.
- 1:09:29Speaker 4: You know, I've known uh Helena for for a short
- 1:09:33Speaker 4: amount of time, you know, about a year. She was
- 1:09:36Speaker 4: a wonderful person, she was I thought she was a
- 1:09:37Speaker 4: great cinematopher. I'd introduced her to some some members of
- 1:09:42Speaker 4: camera department that we're actually working with.
- 1:09:44Speaker 3: Her on rust. And I'll be honest, Alex. I you know,
- 1:09:48Speaker 3: when we were first getting into.
- 1:09:50Speaker 4: This, it was so raw, and I had a lot
- 1:09:52Speaker 4: of emotional opinions about it, and I don't remember exactly
- 1:09:56Speaker 4: what I.
- 1:09:58Speaker 3: Wanted to say specifically.
- 1:10:01Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 1:10:07Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
- 1:10:10Speaker 4: But I'm not you know, I did see a letter
- 1:10:12Speaker 4: that was going around at the signed by a lot
- 1:10:13Speaker 4: of cinematographers about no no actual weapons ever again, you know,
- 1:10:18Speaker 4: no real firearms on self.
- 1:10:19Speaker 3: Lets do it all of the effects. And I'm not
- 1:10:22Speaker 3: that guy.
- 1:10:23Speaker 4: You know, I've probably photographed two million rounds, you know,
- 1:10:26Speaker 4: obviously blanks in in.
- 1:10:30Speaker 2: My day.
- 1:10:30Speaker 4: And she was you know, she was a friend of mine,
- 1:10:34Speaker 4: not a like I said, not a long time friend,
- 1:10:36Speaker 4: but she was a friend of mine. And it's a
- 1:10:38Speaker 4: it's a horrible strategy what happened, But I think what
- 1:10:43Speaker 4: needs to happen is there just needs to be a
- 1:10:45Speaker 4: safety officer. You know, there needs to be a position
- 1:10:49Speaker 4: created that that oversees all safety because you can't you
- 1:10:53Speaker 4: can't put that on the ads. You know, you can't
- 1:10:57Speaker 4: put that solely on the armor. You know, there has
- 1:11:00Speaker 4: to be a checks and balances and there needs to
- 1:11:05Speaker 4: be a new position I think created that is that
- 1:11:07Speaker 4: is safety.
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: And we've seen it for the last two years during
- 1:11:11Speaker 3: the pandemic.
- 1:11:12Speaker 4: We have safety officers that have been going around, you know,
- 1:11:15Speaker 4: and for the first year of it, it was put
- 1:11:17Speaker 4: your face shield down, keep your mask and put your
- 1:11:19Speaker 4: face shield down.
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: And now it's now it's just masks. But still there
- 1:11:23Speaker 3: there have there has been an entire department created.
- 1:11:27Speaker 4: So I think there should be a safety officer, you know,
- 1:11:31Speaker 4: there should be that that at least that one position
- 1:11:34Speaker 4: that is in charge of.
- 1:11:37Speaker 3: The thing the things that we all think the long
- 1:11:41Speaker 3: squarely on the shoulders of the ads. You know, you
- 1:11:45Speaker 3: can't you can't.
- 1:11:46Speaker 4: Put it on them because that it's it's just not right.
- 1:11:50Speaker 4: I think I think we need a new position that
- 1:11:51Speaker 4: that oversees all this time.
- 1:11:53Speaker 2: I'd agree with you on that because you know, you know,
- 1:11:57Speaker 2: working with ads all my career, man it so they
- 1:12:00Speaker 2: could they can handle a lot, man, they handle a
- 1:12:02Speaker 2: lot on their shoulders, and they should be one layer
- 1:12:07Speaker 2: of protection. But it shouldn't stop with them, so that
- 1:12:10Speaker 2: the AD should still have some sort of say and
- 1:12:12Speaker 2: what's going on and let everybody know. And you know,
- 1:12:15Speaker 2: while I'm shooting on set that they stopped said, Hey,
- 1:12:18Speaker 2: we've got a live, live arm on set. Everyone be aware,
- 1:12:23Speaker 2: this is it.
- 1:12:24Speaker 3: This is that.
- 1:12:25Speaker 2: I get that part. And the armor should definitely also
- 1:12:27Speaker 2: have an uh you know, have some sort of another
- 1:12:30Speaker 2: layer of protection. But there should be the last stop
- 1:12:33Speaker 2: gap someone who just finally goes, let me see the gun,
- 1:12:37Speaker 2: let me check it, make sure everything's good, all right,
- 1:12:40Speaker 2: and go forward. You know, I've I've done both. I've
- 1:12:43Speaker 2: worked with live rounds and I've worked with VFX or
- 1:12:45Speaker 2: you know, the airstoft guns, and you know, it's it.
- 1:12:50Speaker 2: Can it be done? Yeah, But.
- 1:12:53Speaker 3: Here's the problem I have with it, Alex.
- 1:12:55Speaker 4: You know, even even a quarterload blank or a half
- 1:12:57Speaker 4: load blank, an actor doesn't react to the way they
- 1:13:00Speaker 4: act react to a full blank.
- 1:13:03Speaker 3: You know, I don't even I don't like half loads.
- 1:13:06Speaker 3: I don't like cortloads.
- 1:13:07Speaker 4: I like full low blanks because that's that gives them
- 1:13:10Speaker 4: the correct reaction from the gun for them to.
- 1:13:14Speaker 3: Respond to, you know. And that's that's exactly, and that's
- 1:13:18Speaker 3: that's my main thing.
- 1:13:19Speaker 4: And like I said, you know, I hate them when
- 1:13:21Speaker 4: people say, oh, I've been in this business for this
- 1:13:22Speaker 4: amount of time.
- 1:13:24Speaker 3: They usually lose me when they say that. But I
- 1:13:26Speaker 3: have photographed a lot a lot of blanks, of rounds
- 1:13:31Speaker 3: of blanks, and never had an issue, never had a problem.
- 1:13:36Speaker 2: Well, I mean listen, and I got called by a
- 1:13:39Speaker 2: variety in Hollywood for you know, quotes and trying to
- 1:13:41Speaker 2: you know, asking my opinion on what was going on,
- 1:13:43Speaker 2: and I said, listen, guys, And they got this from
- 1:13:46Speaker 2: a few other industry vets who said, how many stutment
- 1:13:49Speaker 2: have been hurt in the course of the last hundred
- 1:13:52Speaker 2: years on a set? Do we now do away with
- 1:13:55Speaker 2: all stunts and do everything virtually? No, they're safety. There
- 1:13:59Speaker 2: was mistake, you know what happened in the plylight zone.
- 1:14:02Speaker 2: You know, that horrible, that horrible accident that happened there.
- 1:14:06Speaker 2: And there's so many other you know, you list, you know,
- 1:14:08Speaker 2: accidents that happened in the stunt department. Things happen sometimes,
- 1:14:12Speaker 2: but there has to You can't just wash everything away
- 1:14:16Speaker 2: like you can't.
- 1:14:17Speaker 3: And I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'd be willing to
- 1:14:20Speaker 3: bet I'd be willing to bet that that condor.
- 1:14:23Speaker 4: Lighting cranes have hurt more people in the last ten
- 1:14:26Speaker 4: years than stunts have.
- 1:14:28Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Agreed, we have so many
- 1:14:31Speaker 3: new there are so many.
- 1:14:32Speaker 4: New you know, new safety rules and regulations regarding condors
- 1:14:39Speaker 4: all the time. You know.
- 1:14:40Speaker 3: I remember back in the day when they didn't need
- 1:14:43Speaker 3: a horns.
- 1:14:45Speaker 2: I remember you remember, Oh remember you remember that the cranes.
- 1:14:50Speaker 2: How about the cranes when you're sitting there, I mean
- 1:14:52Speaker 2: those long cranes with the camera at the top and
- 1:14:54Speaker 2: you see the pictures. And I got up on one
- 1:14:57Speaker 2: of those cranes once. I'm like, where's my seatbelt? Are you?
- 1:14:59Speaker 2: Are you? No, I'm not doing this. I'll do this
- 1:15:01Speaker 2: from the bottom. I'm not going to do this. It's
- 1:15:03Speaker 2: it's insane.
- 1:15:04Speaker 4: Well, you know, going back to the nineties, as we
- 1:15:06Speaker 4: used a lot of those cranes that you know, the Chapman,
- 1:15:08Speaker 4: the Titans, the Nikes, all the stuff, because they were
- 1:15:11Speaker 4: so much cheaper. When the remote heads were new, you know,
- 1:15:15Speaker 4: remote heads were coming out of the late eighties early nineties,
- 1:15:18Speaker 4: and and so they're very expensive. So we rode those
- 1:15:20Speaker 4: crains all the time. And there usually is they're usually
- 1:15:23Speaker 4: our seatbelts but.
- 1:15:25Speaker 3: Just feel cheaper. But you are, you're up there, you know,
- 1:15:28Speaker 3: you're fifty feet in the air or whatever it is.
- 1:15:30Speaker 3: You're like, wow, this is this.
- 1:15:32Speaker 4: Is you know, it's the most treasuous thing I've probably done,
- 1:15:35Speaker 4: aside from you know, being being in stunt cars, you know,
- 1:15:40Speaker 4: as a as a camera operator, because cars is pretty
- 1:15:42Speaker 4: wild too, but a lot of that I've been, you know,
- 1:15:47Speaker 4: it was more dangerous than any of the any of
- 1:15:50Speaker 4: the work with blanks that I've done over the years.
- 1:15:52Speaker 2: Wow. Man, Well, I hope that I hope that there
- 1:15:56Speaker 2: is some changes made. I think there will be. I
- 1:15:58Speaker 2: hope they're not just a knee jerk reaction. I hope
- 1:16:00Speaker 2: there's a really thoughtful way of moving forward with it, because,
- 1:16:04Speaker 2: like I agree with you one hundred percent, I think
- 1:16:05Speaker 2: there has to be some sort of position created to
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: help this, to help this in there, because obviously there's
- 1:16:11Speaker 2: a problem, especially with so many low budget, non union
- 1:16:16Speaker 2: you know situations which I've been involved with a lot
- 1:16:18Speaker 2: in my in my day, I get that, and it's
- 1:16:22Speaker 2: a while it's a little wild wild West, no pun
- 1:16:24Speaker 2: intended because I was a questern, but it's a little
- 1:16:26Speaker 2: bit wile wild West in the sense that, oh, yeah, yeah,
- 1:16:29Speaker 2: we'll do this, it's gonna cost too much, We're not
- 1:16:31Speaker 2: going to do that, and that there has to be
- 1:16:33Speaker 2: some sort of rules has to answer.
- 1:16:35Speaker 4: There has to be an account of you know, account accountability,
- 1:16:38Speaker 4: and I think the way to do it is to assign.
- 1:16:42Speaker 3: A person to you know, overall safety agree as we've
- 1:16:46Speaker 3: been during the pandemic.
- 1:16:47Speaker 4: You know, our our COVID safety officers will will give
- 1:16:51Speaker 4: us speech, you know, to us about mask wearing and
- 1:16:53Speaker 4: social distancing and all that stuff. So it's it's easily done.
- 1:16:57Speaker 4: You know, that position is easily created. And I look,
- 1:17:00Speaker 4: I know everything comes with a price tag, but there's
- 1:17:04Speaker 4: no price tag as big as the one.
- 1:17:06Speaker 2: You know.
- 1:17:08Speaker 3: There's what Helena s meant, you know what I mean?
- 1:17:10Speaker 2: Amen, brother, Amen, I appreciate it. I appreciate you will
- 1:17:14Speaker 2: be willing to talk about that and bringing that out
- 1:17:16Speaker 2: to light. H Now, I'm going to ask a few
- 1:17:18Speaker 2: questions ask all my guests. Bro. Yeah, what advice would
- 1:17:21Speaker 2: you give a young cinematographer or filmmaker trying to break
- 1:17:25Speaker 2: into this vicious business.
- 1:17:28Speaker 3: Don't fucking do it?
- 1:17:32Speaker 4: Run away.
- 1:17:35Speaker 3: An actual and actuality, you know, I would say, take.
- 1:17:39Speaker 4: A long, hard look at this industry and and really
- 1:17:44Speaker 4: think long and hard about whether you want to.
- 1:17:48Speaker 3: Commit this much of.
- 1:17:50Speaker 4: Your life to to this because it'll take every every
- 1:17:54Speaker 4: minute that you give it. This industry will take every minute, every.
- 1:17:57Speaker 3: Hour that you give it.
- 1:17:58Speaker 4: And then some so think long and hard about it.
- 1:18:00Speaker 4: And because none of them will listen to that piece
- 1:18:04Speaker 4: of advice, I will then say, you know, you got
- 1:18:08Speaker 4: to get out there and work.
- 1:18:09Speaker 3: You have to learn.
- 1:18:10Speaker 4: As I said before, everybody on a film set, everybody
- 1:18:13Speaker 4: in life knows something that you don't, so learn from them,
- 1:18:15Speaker 4: you know.
- 1:18:17Speaker 3: And when you're new in the.
- 1:18:19Speaker 4: Business, you have to just get on set every in
- 1:18:23Speaker 4: any and every way that you can't, because you'll learn
- 1:18:25Speaker 4: more in a day on set, you know, being that
- 1:18:28Speaker 4: fly on the wall, then you will in the year
- 1:18:31Speaker 4: of film school. You know, at least in terms of
- 1:18:35Speaker 4: the day to day, hands on practical way of telling stories,
- 1:18:41Speaker 4: you know, And that's what it all comes down to.
- 1:18:43Speaker 2: Absolutely, No I learned more doing my internship at Universal
- 1:18:47Speaker 2: Studios Florida than I did in going to going to
- 1:18:51Speaker 2: my college. I would skip school just to go and
- 1:18:54Speaker 2: hang out on stages and just watch the grips going
- 1:18:58Speaker 2: go on time, go that cable, and I'm like, all right,
- 1:19:01Speaker 2: all right, this is so cool. You mean that big
- 1:19:04Speaker 2: pile over there that's been sitting there since nineteen seventy Sure, okay, sure,
- 1:19:11Speaker 2: Now what is the lesson that took you the longest
- 1:19:13Speaker 2: to learn, whether in the film business or in life.
- 1:19:18Speaker 4: You know, I think, and we touched on it earlier,
- 1:19:21Speaker 4: is I think the longest lesson it took me to
- 1:19:23Speaker 4: learn is that is to get out of the way,
- 1:19:26Speaker 4: you know, and that there is an elegance in simplicity,
- 1:19:29Speaker 4: and you know, don't don't light things.
- 1:19:35Speaker 3: Just to light.
- 1:19:36Speaker 4: You got to serve the story. You have to be
- 1:19:38Speaker 4: telling the story or all the experience and all the
- 1:19:41Speaker 4: knowledge that you have is irrelevant, you know. And and
- 1:19:44Speaker 4: all the slick lighting that you can do is irrelevant,
- 1:19:47Speaker 4: you know, unless you're serving the story. If you want
- 1:19:51Speaker 4: to be you know, if you want to shoot just
- 1:19:53Speaker 4: just slick images, then do commercials absolutely, you know, because
- 1:19:58Speaker 4: that's what they're all about.
- 1:20:00Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
- 1:20:06Speaker 2: And now back to the show.
- 1:20:10Speaker 4: And and that in and of itself is telling a
- 1:20:13Speaker 4: story as well. It's telling you a story of how
- 1:20:15Speaker 4: to buy bud light or whatever it is. And so
- 1:20:19Speaker 4: it has to be flashy and in your face and
- 1:20:22Speaker 4: and you know, high key and whatever else is. But
- 1:20:27Speaker 4: but just just tell the story and otherwise get out
- 1:20:30Speaker 4: of the way, you know, be the silence in between
- 1:20:33Speaker 4: the notes.
- 1:20:35Speaker 2: And three of your favorite films all the time.
- 1:20:39Speaker 4: Oh, that's a tough one. I gotta say, Blade Runner.
- 1:20:44Speaker 4: That's that's one of the films that got me in
- 1:20:46Speaker 4: this into this business, in this industry. And not only
- 1:20:51Speaker 4: do I think it's a great movie, but it it
- 1:20:54Speaker 4: looks amazing and its look is relentless, relentlessly devoted to
- 1:21:00Speaker 4: its story, you know what I mean.
- 1:21:02Speaker 3: It's it's creating that world of what was at twenty
- 1:21:05Speaker 3: nineteen Los.
- 1:21:06Speaker 2: Angeles, not too far off, not too far off.
- 1:21:10Speaker 3: We're playing cars out, I'm playing cars.
- 1:21:13Speaker 2: I'm still waiting for the Jets and man.
- 1:21:19Speaker 3: But it is relentlessly devoted to its story. The look
- 1:21:22Speaker 3: of it it is.
- 1:21:24Speaker 4: After that, I don't kind of target three favorite movies
- 1:21:28Speaker 4: there are so many. Number two, I'd say everything that
- 1:21:32Speaker 4: Conrad holl Ever shot, you know, everything and just about anything.
- 1:21:38Speaker 3: You know, I've been devoted to studying his his work
- 1:21:43Speaker 3: for a long time and still.
- 1:21:44Speaker 2: He did Bobby Fishing, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, god yeah.
- 1:21:48Speaker 4: And it's again talk about somebody who was relentlessly devoted
- 1:21:54Speaker 4: to telling the story.
- 1:21:55Speaker 2: You know.
- 1:21:56Speaker 4: It's some of the things that he did with his
- 1:21:58Speaker 4: lightning are still blow my mind. And I don't know
- 1:22:01Speaker 4: how he did it or where he came, where the
- 1:22:03Speaker 4: idea came from. And I don't know that he knew either.
- 1:22:05Speaker 4: It seems like he was somebody that that didn't shoot
- 1:22:08Speaker 4: from the hip, but you know, it all came from
- 1:22:12Speaker 4: from the gut, from the heart.
- 1:22:14Speaker 2: You know, he was channeling, he was channeling somebody.
- 1:22:17Speaker 3: So he was channeling something, that's for sure. That's for sure.
- 1:22:20Speaker 3: And you know that takes up my next two answers,
- 1:22:23Speaker 3: I think, Okay, otherwise it's just so hard. So I mean,
- 1:22:27Speaker 3: when you.
- 1:22:28Speaker 4: Choose something like Citizen Kane, you choose something you know,
- 1:22:31Speaker 4: like like nineteen seventeen, even you.
- 1:22:34Speaker 2: Know, there's there's too many, there's too many, but that's
- 1:22:37Speaker 2: you know, that's a that's a good that's a good,
- 1:22:39Speaker 2: a good start. And can you tell us what you're.
- 1:22:41Speaker 3: Up to next. I'm prepping a new Disney Plus series
- 1:22:52Speaker 3: yet to be announced, Plus announce serious.
- 1:22:56Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, fair enough? All right? So so it's
- 1:23:00Speaker 2: gonna be the jar Jar series. I know, I know
- 1:23:02Speaker 2: what it is. It's a jar Jar series. You could
- 1:23:04Speaker 2: just say you don't even have to admit it and
- 1:23:05Speaker 2: know it's the Chargear series.
- 1:23:07Speaker 3: Not can admit it.
- 1:23:11Speaker 2: Brother man. It has been an absolute honor and privileged
- 1:23:14Speaker 2: talking to MF and it has been so much fun.
- 1:23:16Speaker 2: Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us
- 1:23:18Speaker 2: in the Tribe today and continued success bro that you're
- 1:23:21Speaker 2: an inspiration out there for us.
- 1:23:22Speaker 3: Man, So thank you, Thank you, Alex, thanks for having me.
- 1:23:24Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
- 1:23:25Speaker 2: I want to thank David so much for coming on
- 1:23:28Speaker 2: the show and sharing his journey and dropping his knowledge
- 1:23:31Speaker 2: bombs on the Tribe today. Thank you so much, David.
- 1:23:33Speaker 2: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
- 1:23:35Speaker 2: about in this episode, head over to the show notes
- 1:23:37Speaker 2: at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot TV Forward Slash three ninety two.
- 1:23:40Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening, guys. As always, keep
- 1:23:43Speaker 2: on writing, No matter what, I'll talk to you soon.
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
- 1:23:50Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.