Everything You Need to Master Sports Cinematography in 2026

0:00Dom The DP:Shooting football is a weird sport. No one's telling us what to shoot. We are on our own out there and we're trying to figure things out. We don't want to be the guy who misses the touchdown. That's Dom The DP, a longtime freelance cinematographer who's best known for his work shooting for NFL films. He's captured 16 Super Bowls, worked across 20 NFL seasons, and recently won an Emmy for his work on Netflix's quarterback series. The creativity in a Super Bowl becomes a little bit more different because you're trying to find the different things that no one else is seeing. In this episode, Dom takes us inside what it actually takes to capture football at the highest level.

0:31From shooting game-winning touchdowns to understanding where to be, what to look for, and how to tell a story of a game in real time.

0:37Dom The DP:If I can get a quote from a coach talking to a quarterback that no one else got, that becomes way more seen than maybe a spiraling touchdown. We also dive into Dom's career behind the camera, talk about the pressure of being called back as a freelancer, and why being great at the job is only part of what creates longevity in this industry. There is no contract. It is an email on Sunday night. Hey, can you go to Seattle next week? I always think about it that way. Like it could end tomorrow. Okay, now the rules. Yes. Can I tell you the rules? And then you tell me if I'm wrong. Go for it. I got to pick it up off the table.

1:08Dom The DP:I got to do one hand crack. And I'm not going to prep it right now. Yep. Dude, I could. He's ready, dude. He's ready. Dude, I sit in Braden like my Diet Cokes back in the day. Oh my gosh, dude. That was a good one, man. A little bit of spillage. Okay, show me what you got. Dude, look at that. Look at the dent. That's got to be 1.2. 3.1. What do you got over here? Oh, dude. Terrible. It's just so slow. I know. You've got to get better at this. 5-1. You would think. My wife's like, are you practicing? I'm like, no, I haven't done it in a couple of years. Cheers. Come on, man. Let's go. I can't even drink it.

1:46Dom The DP:There's so many dents in it. There we go. Okay, Dom, you've shot 16 between Super Bowls. Yes. When you walk into the entrance of an NFL stadium, what's going through your mind for one of the biggest days in sports in the world? Whew, man. There's a lot. The funny thing about going to a Super Bowl, you're there like six hours early. It's different than any other game of the year. You are there so early. And then you're there the day before. There's a lot of lead up to it just to even get to the game, just like the players have to deal with. you do the same as a camera person and um so i don't really like lock in until like players are coming out in their pads like that's when i know okay now it's like a normal game for me it's the hype and pageantry all that stuff leading up to it like when they start warming up in their pads that's when i feel like i could lock in and like okay now we're gonna shoot some football and when you get into the postseason the crews get bigger and bigger and bigger now we have the biggest crew at the super bowl and so your your assignments get more narrow and narrower narrower And so I have a very narrow assignment on those bigger games.

2:55Dom The DP:And that's when I just got to focus on doing that. And actually, for me, it becomes a little bit less stressful than having to be the only person on the field like I would be maybe for a normal season game, regular season game. But yeah, the Super Bowl hyper focused on what I'm going to be doing and what assignment I have. And so are you tracking the sun with an app to kind of know where you want to be? or is it more so like I have an idea of this guy's pregame routine or these two players that I'm supposed to focus on? Like walk us through that. If we're talking Super Bowl, again, because there's so many people, like I have my little plot of land and I stay on that plot of land.

3:31Oh, okay. So you guys are all in just eight. This is my unit for the day. Yeah.

3:35Dom The DP:And there's people who are assigned maybe to shoot high speed. There's people who shoot sync speed, 23.976. Then I shoot 40 frames a second. You know, like we all have our different frame rate assignments and we stick to those. And so I know the 120 guys is going to get the killer, you know, Sam Darnold slow motion warm-up shot. I don't need to get that. But could I get, with my longer lens on a hi-hat, a cool angle of him and his coach in the foreground, like rack focusing? You're just looking. The creativity in a Super Bowl becomes a little bit more different because you're trying to find the different things that no one else is seeing, you know, as opposed to a regular season game.

4:13Dom The DP:So we can talk about a regular season game because then I'm usually by myself if it's not a big game. Yeah, let's go into that. That's so interesting. When you're shooting regular season, is it still NFL films typically? Okay. And so what is your assignment? What is that? What does a game day look like shooting a regular season? And then you brought up how the people working on a Super Bowl, it expands a lot more where you're really hyper focused. I also had no idea. Why would you shoot 40 frames? What is that used for specifically? The 40 frame, it used to be 48 frames when we were shooting film.

4:54Dom The DP:And what they noticed with these newer like jumbotrons is that the flicker is harder to get rid of at 48 than it is at 40. Interesting. Well, if you're at a night game in a stadium that has prominent jumbotrons and they're going to be in some of my like wide postcard shots, they just said stick to 40 and go with it. But I mean, traditionally we would shoot 48, 60, 120. And then, of course, you have your 24 frames and then you have MOS coverage. And especially on the Alexa 35, when you shoot 24 frames flat, there's no audio file. when you shoot 23, nine, seven, six. Now they're looking for an audio file and there better be an audio file with my sound person.

5:35Dom The DP:So, um, that's what we call sync sound. And so I, if I'm shooting sync sound, maybe I have a sound person with me and a boom mic and maybe a player or coaches mic'd up, we're shooting 23, nine, seven, six all day long. I remember in college our, like our boss told us we had to study you guys's videos. That was how I kind of learned. I would like slow them down and be like okay where are they standing like what's the angle here because i think when at least when i was coming up effects were kind of like the whole thing in college like people were doing these crazy effects and stuff and i remember we were trying to learn them which was cool and made us like better editors but i felt like we all lacked shooting and then we were watching your guys's stuff to study and i remember being like fuck man i like our stuff does not look like this how can we try to emulate it on a much smaller scale so if i'm maybe a college student or I get a first job in the NFL or the NBA or something like that.

6:29What do I need to think about when I come to the arena for the first time? Like you're by yourself. How do I get the best possible shots and make something beautiful?

6:37Dom The DP:Yeah. I mean, I think it's coming up with a game plan for yourself. So do you have a written note? I know you've shot a thousand games, so it's a little different. But go back to when you were first starting. What would you tell that person? At that point, I'm so early in the game, I'm just trying not to mess up. And there's a lot to mess up, right? Especially when there's a lot counting on you. Not only are we trying to capture every play, we're also shooting film in 2007, which was my first year. So there's a whole film loading thing that, of course, a film loader would hand me a mag. So there's that.

7:10Dom The DP:There's a lot of like don't mess up. And just give – even from the VP at the time when he told me, he's like, Dom, head to toe on the quarterback. Let him drop back. Let him like fall back in that frame. And so he's going to throw it. the frame. So give him room to throw, give him room to run. Don't be dead center on him, you know, kind of rule of thirds ish. That's all he wanted was just head to toe quarterback. Anybody in the world could shoot head to toe quarterback, but can you follow that ball where it's going to go? You know? And so you shoot so tight. You shoot so tight. It's crazy. And that comes with just reps, right?

7:43Dom The DP:Shooting football is a weird sport. There's 22 people in full pads. That does not happen on the street corner every day. Like it's very hard to get reps like quality reps shooting football basketball we could go right now down the street and watch go shoot some basketball basketball is way easier to film the football and and it's such a smaller court there's not a lot of like cost of entry yeah and so when you get 22 people playing football i can do it once a week maybe and so years and years of that then we can shoot tighter and tighter and tighter um because the lens can get pretty tight the ones that we shoot on um but you don't want to you don't want to mess up you know you don't want to be the guy who misses the touchdown because you're like, oh, I want to get a cool shot.

8:21Dom The DP:Well, stay head to toe and then work your way in every year. Yeah, you don't want to braid in it. That's what they say, dude, in the NFL, you know? You missed the shot. They haven't had a postcard, dude. You braid in it, dude. You talking about shooting film back in the day kind of reminds me of a DJ before digital. It's like you bring your whole thing of vinyls and you're switching out vinyls for every song. yeah you're like you gotta switch out the film um i do want to go back though because yeah i would love to hear difference between shooting regular season game yes uh being one man band doing that are you still working with sound and all that kind of so like the first decade of my career i'm about to hit your season 20 for the nfl which is crazy i think brawn those first yeah yeah yeah like goat status.

9:13Dom The DP:You have the first 10 years, which is me shooting on film, 48 frames a second. We call that a ground shooter. And so that is a zoom lens, a film camera, four magazines, eight rolls of film and a film loader with you. And then there's one other dude who's up in the press box doing the same thing, but just not shooting. He's shooting 32 frames a second, which is another interesting frame rate um and so 48 frame 32 frame that's a that's a typical 2007 coverage of the browns versus raiders like we're getting two cameras now if it's patriots niners and they're both kind of coming up we're maybe going to get five crews you know top a ground a sync sound crew with a sound person um a high speed 120 frame shooter maybe on a hi-hat um and a weasel camera When did high speed come into play for NFL?

10:08Dom The DP:1962. Like that is, that's the bread and butter. Oh, wow. The tracking of a football started way early on in the company's career. And then people throughout the decades have perfected it. Primarily Donnie Marks was, is, he retired in 2017, but was the guy, the goat, the Tom Brady, the LeBron of following a football from the hand of a quarterback to the receiver in the end zone. and watching that spiral come right. And it's tack sharp from the time it leaves the quarterback to get to the end zone. Because you're not only zooming out, but you're also racking focus. And he's doing it with, if I handy do a camera that Donnie Mark started with, you'd be like, what is this?

10:48Dom The DP:It's like World War II stuff, you know? And then of course that gets better and better and better. Now we have zoom lenses. You can use a servo if you want. You can use all hands. So most of us still zoom with our thumb and focus with like our ring finger and pinky finger. and that's how we do it. And is it just second nature to you at this point? Yeah, and that lens, so there's a whole nother thing. That lens that we shoot with, a 24 by now, when I started, it was a 22 by lens. So these are lenses that you would see on your local news cameraman's camera. And it's made for a two third inch sensor camera, which is what the local news was shot on for decades.

11:24Dom The DP:They take those lenses and now that we shoot on Super 35 sensors, we adapt them. And so now we're taking an adapter that's like$5 ,000 to adapt that B4 mount lens to a PL mount camera and expand that little image circle to a bigger image circle. So when you do that, everything is not as like shallow. So it's not like we're shooting with like these big cinema. We also have cinema glass too, but the traditional B4 lens on our camera, it helps us with focus. So it's like two and a half stops better if you're trying to keep things in focus. so no it's not really shallow it's not real pretty but it helps us follow action and when you're shooting so quickly you don't really notice that it's like wait is that an f11 is that you know like yeah is that what what is the the primary stop that you guys are typically at yeah the those lenses as we've been told because they ran them through all these lens calibration tests are the sharpest set like a five six eight split which add two and a half stops to that theoretically on the on the depth of field side so now it's kind of like shooting at 11 yeah oh dude you know can't miss exactly so yes but then when you shoot these other assignments like we could talk about what a weasel camera person is but what weasel does is all around the stadium getting art pretty art and now we're using 85 to 300 cinema zooms we're using 400 millimeter prime canon lenses we're using uh 180 ultra primes like um so that's where we get the art but we're not expected to follow the football at that position we're expected to get the cleats and the mud and the rain and the sweat and the fans and the tears like everything else but the game um and that's when you get to play with the the cinema glass um but yes i don't think we go back to the question of when we go to a stadium if i'm by myself i love how nerdy we're getting this is fascinating um you you have of course that mentality to go head to toe when you're early on in your career and every year you get a little bit closer um and then yeah can i get on the backlight side of those the sideline that's gonna have the best backlight my first season i shot a seahawk game actually my very first game was seahawks bucks in seattle 2007 week one and great touchdown came right at me and I just got an email for a note from the VPs like great stuff but try and shoot on the backlit side because the fans are just nuclear at that point yeah so so they're playing especially in Seattle it's such a tall stadium and that sun kind of creeps around so you get one side of the stands it's just nuclear in the sun like very very hot and then it's all shady players so the film holds like it holds the exposure 15 something stops um but it just gives the colorists a little bit more like it'd be better if everybody's backlit and i'm shooting into shaded fans so now i want to find that sideline right and each stadium is traditionally in the nfl a north to south stadium so i'm going to be uh probably on the east side of the stadium where would you want me to go if i was like under you and you're like hey i want you to we're covering like the gameplay of action like we walk in it's the pregame what would you be telling me to do if it was my first day working with you yeah if you had the camera by the camera you were you were like coaching yeah i'm like yeah yeah where would we be going yeah i mean really like what i've noticed is that player shots without pads on don't look sick don't don't go anywhere like i've never seen a show where you get someone warming up with their resistance bands in their street clothes you know So it starts when they put their pads on, which is usually about an hour before kickoff when they come out full pads.

15:08Dom The DP:Now we're going to throw passes and run routes and do our little huddles. So that's what we're going to wait for is that one hour before kickoff, they have their pads. And now we're going to say, who's the superstars of this game? You know, do we have Miles Garrett? Do we have a storyline? Is Devontae Adams coming back to Green Bay to play his old team? Like, what are the storylines that you that the world is talking about? and can we get some storytelling shot of Devontae Adams walking past his old coach or something? And knowing where he's going to go. Where does the Rams come out at an away game in Green Bay?

15:38Dom The DP:And where do they run to? And what side of the field do they warm up on? These are things you learn over time. But your first couple of games, what are you doing? What are you doing? Of the people that shoot the NFL, how many would you say are diehard football fans? and how big of a fan are you of football in general? I don't think you can shoot NFL football the way that we do without – like you've got to love it first. Yes. And, yeah, it's a special sport. It's not for everybody, but it is – the people that work with me, they like love it, and I loved it. And I grew up – so what happens is that you grew up a fan of something, the 49ers in my instance because I grew up in Central California and my dad was a 49er fan.

16:24Dom The DP:So I'm going to be a 49er fan. And then as you start to work with the 49ers and now you work with the Rams and the Chargers and the Seahawks, now you become a West Coast fan. Oh, interesting. Because if the West Coast teams do good, I get to work more. So the more home field advantages we have in Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Arizona, I can work more. So I become fans of all of the teams west of the Mississippi. be because I I'm a West Coast shooter yeah like and the East Coast has a lot of teams we I think have seven teams you know from Denver on and uh it's not a lot but when they are do are doing well like they have the last couple years it's great for business you know and and I when the Seahawks win the Super Bowl growing up a 49er fan you think I'd be devastated I loved it I loved it I love watching a West Coast team take it all I'm just like a homer that way you know that's awesome but Yeah, you got to be a fan.

17:19And you find that being a fan, it helps because you understand the storyline. You understand the players, the relationships. Like if you're in the weeds of it and you're a fan of the sport, you feel like that might lean towards knowing what shots to get even more.

17:34Dom The DP:And I think, too, I mean, I'm not like a diehard sports talk fan, which is where you can get a lot of this information. But we do get an email every week from the producers at NFL Films that say, hey, this is what to look out for. you know uh i'm dying yeah we'll wait okay i'm back i'm back i'm back i'm back let me take a sip we will get um notes from producers nfl films hey matthew stafford is 200 yards away from breaking the all-time whatever record so we these are things to look out for i loved getting those emails those are helpful not for nfl but for basketball dude this is the thing i'm like ah That makes my life easy.

18:14Dom The DP:With all the hype and hoopla around every game, you're like, what am I supposed to like, what can I do? And so those are very help to like dial in and people coming back to play their former team or this guy's coming off of injury. This will be his first game back, blah, blah, blah. So they want ISOs of those players. And those might just be as simple as like, I'll have my pregame checklist in my mind looking at that list. Cool. Okay. 17, 9, 33. three like give me i'll get isos of them in case i didn't get a shot of them during the game there's something they can use in the edit okay so you shoot if you're shooting regular season you're starting coverage about an hour before because typically stuff before that won't get used yes but super boy you're starting five hours even earlier yeah there's definitely people shooting earlier at the super bowl uh there's there's weasel camera that might jump on a train and get a cool shot coming across you know there was like a light rail transit right in front of levi stadium so you got to get that shot but that's their assignment um sometimes i like shooting at stadiums i'm not used to shooting at so something like this last year they sent me to tampa bay i haven't been to tampa bay since 2007 so it had been a while since i've been there and then you start looking at the architecture of the building and you're like because i don't normally shoot there it's not my normal stadium like i start thinking outside the box like could i grab my 11 to 16 wide and just kind of post up here get fans walking by like you try and find some of those moments as you're entering the stadium like what would look cool and some of that gets lost when you shoot at the same stadium every week because it becomes like monotonous and you know what's already been shot you know what's already in the can you know what's already in the archive and so oh they'll they could reuse like oh yeah yeah oh yeah that's the way to do it i would tag all my shit dude i'd be like oh that fan shot i'm gonna steal that for the playoff video dude And so imagine having an archive from 1962.

20:06Dom The DP:And you guys got archivists, man. See, that's the bar. 62 to 2026. And it's all in the building in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. And most of it is on film. And so you have reels of film in a very, very chilly room that they constantly scan. As new scanners come out, now they're scanning in 2K. Now they're scanning in 4K. And they're scanning every roll. And this is like all the footage. Like everything that I shot from 2007 to 2013 is all on film. It's in the vault. It's on negative. We can hold it up and we can look at each frame and they don't throw it away. It's there. So, so fast. And someone.

20:46Dom The DP:So now when we shoot there, it gets, of course, ingested every quarter. So every stadium has a really cool system that takes our cards, sends it right to New Jersey. And there's someone taking it in every quarter from every stadium and they're logging it. wow so now when a company wants a shot of their product they can go right to the nfl and say can i have a shot of matthew stafford drinking a gatorade or whatever and it's like okay cool we have 67 instances of that in 2025 which one do you want oh my god you know like and so everything is is it's like the ultimate system of like archival stuff have you have you seen the archive in person so the internship was was the launch pad and then that's when you're in the building working with the camera department and then you see the film vault and you take the tour and that's awesome you walk past all the emmys yeah that's crazy once the game actually starts where do you want to be on the field if like if we have a right-handed quarterback yeah where should someone be like what is the prime spot that i need to be crouching down to get my shot if it works out where the light you're in an outdoor stadium and there's backlight you want if you could be on the side that the sun is hitting you on so they're in backlight and they are opening up to you so they're taking the snap and now i'm shooting him this way and he's gonna throw it that way because he's right-handed that would be a perfect way to be behind the line of scrimmage and get him throwing the ball back that because he's looking at me or looking his body's and what if the sun's not being our friend then what do we got i still go i go backlight over over what i just described oh okay then left-handed quarterback i'm still over there but now his back to me still interesting stuff to do but it's not like if i had to pick because i'm in let's say i'm in a dome no backlight situation i can go anywhere i want you know but do you always for the most part want to see them opening up to see eyes yes okay there's other things in fact that play in that the two there's like a home sideline is a lot more congested than a visited sideline like a visitor sideline so when you have when you're on the home sideline you get a lot more riffraff and you got a lot more stuff to weave through when you're trying to get to the other side so sometimes we favor that visitor sideline because it's not as congested not as many carts not as many reporters not as many cables to trip over like because when we go we go like i don't want to miss a play and so i try and time it where i can i can take a shot of the play boom he gets tackled little couple seconds and then if at that point everybody starts to move i'll hold back i'll wait to play because that's that's let the masses go i'll get another shot from behind the line of scrimmage and then once they do another play then i'll go and i can beeline it to the other side without having to miss play because sometimes when it gets when everybody when everybody moves it's hard to you're gonna miss a play because it's like you're surfing yeah everyone's chasing you're like i'm gonna stay over here yes no one's over here i'm gonna catch a wave and then yes that's and that's just years of experience like what waiting for the right time to move because you don't want to be stuck behind the cart okay so you told us about how you were not backlit first game incredible shot yes have you worked your way up and had to essentially prove yourself to be able to have better or more interesting assignments um and how does that work yeah like what are you assigned when you're first starting out and then what is like the crown jewel what are you trying to get to like oh one day i'm gonna shoot the hyper slow man yeah it's exactly that you start like in in in 2007 when i started it is 48 frame ground shooter have at it go shoot the game shoot every play don't they don't tell you what to shoot just shoot every play and then try and tell the story of the game with your camera knowing that there's another camera and then yeah as you work your way up now maybe you'll get an assignment it took me like 10 years to like get a sound assignment with the sound person and now we're shooting behind the benches and we're getting all the jubilation and the dejection of players when they come to the bench.

24:47Dom The DP:And then, okay, maybe give you a long lens and put you up in the stands and put a mic on a coach, mic on a quarterback, mic on a receiver, and now just follow them the whole game. And so now I'm working my way up. So it's like 48 frames. Then you start getting like sync sound and mic'd up assignments. And then the holy grail is to shoot 120 frames at a Super Bowl, like game action. And that I don't think it'll ever happen to me because there's other things that I also enjoy shooting. I do love being able to hear and shooting a mic'd up player or having a sound person with me. Like I've been doing that more recently than the 48 frames standard ground shooter.

25:25Dom The DP:But yeah, like we all there's three or four currently with NFL films. Steve Andrich, Ben Johnson, Austin Porter, even Hannah Epstein. She's a weasel camera person, but she shoots all high speed and it's so beautiful and art. So those are up here. And maybe when I was younger, I'd strive to do that. But I know these people so well and they're so good at what they do. I'll sit on the bench with my sound person all day, every day and get really cool sound. Sound cover. Because what I've noticed over the years is that as the NFL has all this access to the sound, that becomes way more seen than maybe a spiraling touchdown.

26:10Dom The DP:If I can get a quote from a coach talking to a quarterback that no one else got, that's going to replay over and over and over, and you get more essentially runway with that than a pretty shot of one touchdown. Do you guys all invest in the cameras for the most part? Or is that a rarity that you bought in Alexa 35? There's definitely a handful of us. We call them owner-operators. I think I live in California. I'm pretty far away from New Jersey. there's some people of course who live on the east coast who are close to the building there's a handful in the building for people to use it's not a requirement but there's also people like me who are owner operators and can essentially rent back the equipment if if they allow me to and so yes i would say maybe 40 60 40 percent owner operators 60 use the equipment from nfl films it's all the same equipment you just don't own it what's the go-to glass if you had like take your pick the one probably is the one the the fujinon 24 by with that glass adapter piece that you know when you say 24 by yes yeah sorry what is that you don't want me to tell you you should put it on the screen with the actual sure it's like 24 by 7.8 millimeters uh it's s-10 like it's some weird freaking so we just go by the so it's not like a 24 to 70 it's no no so it's like on the barrel go back to like the new shooter dude so on the barrel of that lens it'll say 7.8 millimeters to 240 millimeters oh i see and that is pertaining to that little sensor and so that little sensor of course that's an equivalent to that but when you magnify that those barrel markings on this adapter now we're somewhere between a 25 millimeter and 450 millimeter same lens just adding adapter losing some light gaining some depth of field um same lens but it's just different because you're shooting on a bigger sensor there's a lot of math involved yeah if you want to like rack your brain i've tried man i've tried to like get the specs on that adapter and what's the exact magnification percentage it hurts my brain it hurts my because people say like well how far can you zoom like i think it's around 450 mil like to be in the back line of the end zone i I can shoot a quarterback at the 40-yard line.

28:22And you don't like to use a servo. You like to use your thumb to zoom in.

28:26Dom The DP:Yeah. What I noticed is that I can be more – as you shoot in higher frame rates, it's a lot less – if I'm shooting higher frame rates, I can use my thumb because I can be jerkier because the frame rate slows it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 120, 60, like if I'm snapping a zoom, it's not as jarring as when I'm at like 24 or 48. Like you'll see that jarring. zoom out and so when i'm shooting like a mic'd up assignment i'm gonna go servo because it'll just smooth things out especially if that quarterback's like i'm on a high hat and the quarterback's walking from the sideline to the huddle like i don't need to be like you know i'm just like nice and smooth going right into his as he's walking to the huddle then he says his little speech to the huddle kind of widened you know so i'll use a servo when i'm shooting mic'd up assignments and then i'll go with the manual mode to shoot action okay favorite shot you've got in both of gameplay and then maybe a mic'd up moment that wasn't yeah of the gameplay um like have you ever got did you have you ever like been shooting mic'd up and i can't believe you just fucking said that uh yeah you get those moments definitely you get you get some some moments you're like wow they're gonna totally use this and you get wow they're totally not gonna use it because you gotta think about this this is this is the league and we work for the league as freelancers and so they're they're gonna put out what promotes the league and what's best for the company and there's a lot in the archive i'm sure they'll never be seen which is fine and that's the trust that you have with the players right so they agree to put on a microphone own why would you turn your back and and try and throw out their dirty laundry like so yes there's there's tons of goods and tons of bads but i mean this last season matthew stafford just had of course an mvp season and he's mic'd up i forget what week it was but we're at sofi um and he has a game-winning touchdown essentially against the colts and he's mic'd up so now it's like where do i go on a game-winning drive when the quarterback's mic'd up and i'm on the field what's the best place to be so i'm like well these are things you have in your head sometimes you'll bounce ideas off your sound person too um but i went downfield a little bit kind of near the the corner of the bench and so he's way down near the goal line on the other side he throws a ball and i'm just gonna be on him he throws a ball right to me and i'm like wow and this is a split second decision to say do you go with the ball even though he's mic'd up do you go with the ball and get the catch it's a game-winning touchdown or do you stay on him but i'm gonna get blocked i know i'm gonna get blocked because these guys are i'm right next to the bench and they're gonna come running towards the dude so i follow the ball like just in like instinct kicked in and i follow the ball boom catches right in front of me and he runs right past me and then i get blocked by everybody and then stafford comes running around back towards me i can't see anything because i'm on a high hat luckily when you have a high caliber person like that mic'd up usually you're double shooting him so someone's in the stands so they have his angle when he comes running around just going crazy that's one that is recently memorable um from the mic'd up stuff and then there's a kaepernick shot from like 2012 against the packers he had a 60 yard run he just torched the packers in a divisional playoff game and i was the only one downfield for his 60 yard run right to me kisses his bicep right in front of me that was on film 48 frames and wow so that's probably my most memorable like playoff yeah like shot and then anything with stafford he's just he's really it's a treat to shoot you know and be with okay and talk to us about the differences between shooting film and digital and when you guys started shooting digital where was it kind of like going from driving in a manual car to an automatic and you're like oh dude we have a little bit more room to yeah a little bit more room for error here yes uh it's night and day it's but you get you get you get so used to shooting film and so what nfl films did they brought they flew us all freelancers out in 2014 and showed us what what the future was and it was the uh area mirror um and there was a camera that hadn't even come out yet it was they were buying the first like 40 of them off the assembly line in germany they were going right to nfl films because they were switching from film to digital um and it was i mean so we needed that like orientation because we're so used to this like this ancient machine to shoot football and now we're getting this like ferrari um and we have focus peaking in our eyepiece like what is this you know like the the the focus peaking alone is worth its weight in gold when you're shooting sports like you and you're doing all manual focus like I need to see what's in focus and what's not in focus and if that little you know feedback EVF uh you know focus peaking helps I love it I love it and so that alone sold me on that camera and of course now we don't have any we'd have we they would usually send me eight rolls of film a game you know and if I shot more than that I was out of film.

33:36Dom The DP:Like I can't, I don't, there's no more. So I had to really like, if I'm in the fourth quarter, I should have at least two rolls left. Like I don't want to overshoot because I have a limited supply of film. And for, for those who don't know, AKA me, how much time is one roll of film? Like how long can you hit record? Yes. If, if, if you're shooting, let's say 24 frames per second, you can shoot 12 minutes of footage in 400 feet. Oh, you better be locked in. Now, if you're shooting 48 frames a second, which is what I was traditionally doing, six minutes of footage per roll. But, you know, every play takes about eight, nine seconds to happen.

34:15Dom The DP:And you're not rolling usually on the 40 seconds to lead up to the next play. And so, you know, you can get a couple rolls a quarter. And there was one game I shot 13 rolls of film and I thought I was going to be done. Like, I thought that was the end of my career because I shot too many. It was a playoff game, so they sent extra, and I just kept shooting. And it was a really good playoff game between the Saints and the 49ers. And it's one of those things I was just waiting for the phone call to be yelled at because I shot too much. But because I think it was a playoff game and it was a really good playoff game, I'm still here today.

34:46Dom The DP:But those are the things that we would worry about. Like how much film do I have? And we would bank film. So if there was a blowout and I could bank and save a half a roll, 200 feet, loader would put it back in the can. We would save it for the next home game at San Francisco or whatever. And now I've got free film to shoot pregame stuff for the next game. And so you're like – you're playing this negotiation with the film and you don't want to be the guy who shoots too much film because you probably won't be shooting for much longer because it's expensive. What does a rule of film go for? I think they yeah I think you could probably buy a 400 foot roll of film right now for maybe 300-400 bucks 200 bucks so that's just your memory card right?

35:34it's like the hard drives these days

35:35Dom The DP:and that's just your memory card and that's a 6 minute memory card and you gotta have 8 of those a game and then you gotta process it and develop it and tell us any and transfer and put it on an Avid system so a producer can edit it. And so the biggest, the reason that they told us why they were switching is like the flagship show at that time in 2014 was a show called Inside the NFL. It was on HBO for decades. And then it switched to Showtime. And then Showtime, I think, said, we like that Wednesday spot for something else. So we're going to give you the Tuesday night spot. Well, when you go from a Wednesday night show to a Tuesday night show and you shoot on film and all of your footage is captured on Sundays and it's all over the country.

36:19Dom The DP:And so it has to fly back without being x-rayed. And you have, you're losing a whole day of production, of post-production. And so that was the tipping point. And they had already been playing with some of the Alexa classics for some of the tripod shooters. And they loved it. And so it wasn't too hard of a switch because we were all shooting Aerie film cameras. We switched to Aerie digital cameras. They did. Yeah. That is fast. Yeah. It's actually insane to think about you guys having these drum backs and swapping them and not having a card. and that was just the way. And by the way, I shot, you shoot a touchdown.

36:53Dom The DP:Nowadays it's awesome. I just play it back during the TV timeout. Did I get it? Was it sharp? Like I can see all that in the moment. I can play it back on my EVF right now. I cannot see it on film. How heavy is that camera? It's similar to an Alexa 35 built out. I mean, we're 20 something pounds. It's actually probably lighter than an Alexa 35 because we have so many batteries now on the back because we got to run them for a long time so yeah and is there anything like focus peaking for film no you're just just so what you're doing your diopter is really important so you know when you get to a camera like this fx6 and it has if it has an eyepiece you have that little like plus minus thing on there so that's like you know helps you focus your eye on the little screen well that's what you're doing on a diopter on a film camera you're just focusing that to where it looks sharp to your eye on that mirror essentially that's but it's you know if it's dark outside it's dark in the viewfinder there's no like putting it to level 20 like so candlestick park is a very dark stadium so when you're looking through like god it's dark because i'm shooting at a 5 6 8 on a thing that's going through another adapter now the adapter now because it's super 35 is bigger than the adapter we needed uh back in the film days because we're going from a two same lens but we're going from a two-third inch lens to a super 16 millimeter sensor so still pretty small but bigger than two thirds so the light loss wasn't as much um but it was still dark like it's still dark to look through a film camera at a nighttime football game is there a shot that haunts you