How to Film Commercials So Premium Brands Beg to Hire You ft. Zachary Guy

24:19Zachary Guy:It's a fun one, right? And you'll always level up because a lot of people will get caught up of like, oh, it doesn't look like even like comparing it to my work. It doesn't look like that. I'm like, do you think that my first spec looked like that? It looked like it was terrible. Not terrible. It was great at the time. But then I kept leveling up and trying different things. If you learn one new skill from that spec, if you meet one new person, a director, gaffer, PA, anything, that is a benefit to exactly what you're doing in your career. Because I've made so many connections over this eight year journey.

24:51Zachary Guy:And those connections have gotten me so much work now where it's just a constant I've I've put that web out far and now it's just every time every maybe two months one of those people hits me up for a job and it just works out like that feel free to tell me to fuck off but can you share how much you actually spent and invested in that new balance spec because I think a lot of people like I'd love to know like how much you spent and where did you where did the money go so the biggest thing for us that when we were creating that commercial was that we're like, okay, what money do we have now? What jobs do we have coming in?

25:28Zachary Guy:What can we afford? And we're like, okay, we kind of want this to be a stable piece. So we're like$10 ,000 Canadian. Let's try that. And then we start getting people on board. Everybody came out pro bono. And then the biggest thing that you have to look at is art and location. That's the biggest thing in Sophia's work is all her production design, all her locations are spot on and then also just working with a lot of people that just exactly know what we're doing right so things started adding up where she we were like oh we want to do all these camera transitions naturally and obviously we own our own camera so it helped out a lot but then we got a dolly involved we got the proper dolly grips extras art started adding up so by the end of it we paid 14 000 but it was absolutely worth it you love the dolly man right and there's the dolly's great.

26:16Zachary Guy:I love working off a dolly now. I've been spoiled and then I've been spoiled with dolly grips. That's all I love to do now. But the biggest thing, actually, I learned this on a job recently, is that, yes, it's great to bring in a dolly, a Chapman or a Primo, whatever the hell you want into any space. But if it doesn't make sense, don't do it. Just don't do it. Don't spare the headache and everything. I recently worked on a six-figure job where we used a Dana dolly and it worked just because i was saving the production a couple uh a couple bucks as well as like i didn't want to lug that thing down uh flight of stairs and the backup and everything like that i love it but only when it makes sense the dana dolly is a is just one of the best investments yeah one of the best investments things are beast dude and you can get you can achieve like a similar level of thing obviously like you can't go fucking up you can it's you can achieve the same exact thing and you just can't go up yeah okay i do i'm like itching to get into breaking down this new the new aquafina uh oh yeah that just came out dude so you go we go all the way out to morocco how the heck was it work work before we break it down how was it working with a crew in a totally new country oh yeah to give you some preface of how we got the job because that's another crazy story sofia got a dm and then she was like oh this feels sketchy from a producer.

27:42Zachary Guy:Her name's Raja about like, hey, have this job. Let's get on a call. And Sophia's like, hey, can you, what are the details? And they're like, no, let's get on a call. So she got on a call and then she made a pitch for Aquafina and everything. And then she was bidding against multiple directors. And then it was a long pitching process. It was like a week of going back and forth. And then she won it. And then we flew out literally like five days later. Five days? That's crazy. Oh my God. Yeah, right after the pitch. Yeah, it was crazy. And then, yeah, the biggest thing for me is the team was great because they had so many different chats.

28:18Zachary Guy:We were using WhatsApp to communicate of like, oh, camera, genie, and all this stuff and everything like that, sending us the locations. Everybody was on top of everything. But the only thing is there in Morocco and then other places where work is cheaper to do. It's like the Wild West. I can only imagine something's broken or something doesn't work and the funniest thing that I experienced is we land and then we took off at like 3pm and then we landed the next day at like 10am got off the flight, Ubered us to our hotel, took a 15 minute shower location scouts and fittings that same day prepped the next day and shoot and then fly back so we're in and out in the span of four days and then we stayed an extra day just to visit the city and everything like that but it was it was non-stop but it was so much fun and when it comes to gear because i imagine you can't rent anything in morocco when it comes to gear oh no no you can there's like two big rental houses but the thing is that it's always out and always busy so they gave me a list and i'm like okay this is how it usually works these are my nice house i'd like this and then they got back to me so there's communication between that but when you actually show up to the prep and rental house nothing was there because it was on a previous job and it was still out and they were like oh everything will be there in the morning so that's just how they work famous last words wow yeah that's how they work and i was like okay like there's nothing i can do here there's no point of making a fuss or anything like about it but generally like in Canada how it works is like okay I'll put a hold on gear then they'll give us to it not give us we'll go to the rental house the day before bring in the camera if I'm prepping a camera there prep the camera there take it home and then go to a shoot day no they're like okay we can get this stuff ready but then we're gonna prep the morning of and I'm like yes this is crazy they did it it was great but uh it was did you bring your camera I like to work did you bring your camera did you bring your camera no no no no okay no no i i didn't want to risk it like yeah i wouldn't either okay so tell me this before we break it down differences between doing uh a shoot local versus traveling to another country there's a lot more unknowns with traveling to a lot of uh another country because i've done it multiple times in the states where you're working with new crew and then this is my first job internationally so in the states it's very similar right to Canada it's the same concept everywhere he works with that but working internationally I was like I was very intimidated because I'm like okay I don't know exactly how they work how they communicate of how things around a show is and it's slightly different but everything was like 90 % the same so the biggest thing for me was just communicating to everybody of like, oh, what do we have available?

31:16Zachary Guy:How can we make it work? So that was just ensuring that all the gear was ready. But it was a very like trusting people because I'm I like to be on top of everything. Like I usually bring in my own camera. Everything's already prepped. Wires. I have triples of everything because I've had stuff fail on me before. But there like it was just like, yeah, if it fails, it fails. I'm like, OK. right so it was it was very stressful and it was just having to go back to the by roots of what it means to be a cinematographer and a director of photography and step into that role there people are looking up to me because especially there when they have somebody who's considered i'm considered american western come over and shoot a commercial it's a huge deal like a huge deal.

32:05The amount of respect and everything that I got there from all the crew was amazing.

32:11Zachary Guy:And they were like, whatever you do, you know, we'll do whatever you need to do and get it done. So there's a big respect and everything like that. But it was a little bit too much where I'm like, guys, like, we need to get the job done. We need to move a lot faster. I will pick up the camera and move it where we need to be. You guys don't need to do everything for me. I'm not like a pampered person, right? I'm usually in the trenches with you guys. And they kind of figured about halfway through the day. And then that's when things started to pick up. But it was a big learning experience for myself in terms of how to basically communicate to different crews.

32:42Zachary Guy:Because then English was a huge thing too because they have their native language there, but a lot of people speak French as well. And their English, there's some crew members that didn't speak it well enough. So that was a big thing about battling that. But when it comes to universal hand signals, it was great. And then why Morocco? Like, did you guys get hit up? Was it an agency out of Morocco that hit you guys up? So yeah, the agency was Brand Builder. And then that commercial was supposed to be airing in Casablanca, Morocco specifically. So that was just, yeah. And the production company is based in Morocco as well.

33:17Zachary Guy:So the reason that they reached out to Sophia is because she did a spec piece. And this was two and a half years ago that she did this. And it was for Sony. and she wrote the whole thing with her one of her classmates about sound and something that was in the library over stimulation the library one that's how we got the job good that one was so good yeah yeah yeah so i i gaffed on that one because we're early on our career so we kind of did everything for each other um and then the reason that it's the same exact look same exact feel with sound and everything like that they just want to elevate it to this level so i forgot to add in that was super important that's exactly why we got the job so spec spec is super important bang let's look at it shall we yeah let's do it okay i'm pulling it up

34:42I have no idea what it said at the end there, but I like it. That's so good. That was sick. This is beautiful. Talk me through the wide shot. Okay.

34:51Zachary Guy:So I'm kind of playing you back and forth here, but this was, like when we got this shot, like the energy on set was absolutely crazy because we, in the Tech Scout, we're like, okay, this is our corridor. This is exactly what we want. We're going to fill it up with cars, but there's a tram in the background, which is like notable for the area, especially in Casablanca. So the agency brand builder was like, we need that tram in the background. And we're like, okay, someone's going to have to stand down the street and have to radio us when one's coming. so we did a bunch of uh blocking rehearsals and then we have like think like 30 background here or something crazy like that so people walking across front in the frame there this guy his name was actually zachary as well the um guy in the moped uh but his name is zachary so that was pretty cool and then there's a bunch of people in the cars honking walking in the background there's like people everywhere and that's the biggest thing when you're trying to make a shot like this come together it's not about lighting it's not about um anything that's going wrong along in terms of camera moving either i would say it's mainly about what's happening in frame with the people with so many things so in the foreground we have those people uh in the midground we have the guy in the car and in the background we have that train going at the same time and then funny enough uh the colors that we work with a lot jason zikowski who's in toronto here uh great dude and he actually did a lot of vfx on this in terms of replacing the skies so that sky is actually fake um so as a cinematographer approaching this they're like okay what uh what else can we do because ideally we land here at like one o 'clock and then the sun is kind of shooting down the corridor and that's what we planned but we only got here at two o 'clock so i'm like okay i guess i'm adding my own light so we had a bunch of lights on the uh left side which is camera left over here, just blasting through just to add texture everywhere that's going.

36:54Zachary Guy:So I believe that we had Aputure X52 and X26 and then like a 1200D on the spotlight. So pretty big lights, especially when it comes to LED specifically. And then the main thing that I'm trying to do is like, of course, hit my talent in the car, add some streak of light here. So it looks like the sun is coming from there and then paint the cars in the background as well as this little car that we see on the right and that wall. It doesn't make sense at all because if you look at the background, the sun direction is actually coming from the left and hitting the buildings. But when it comes to commercials, it doesn't matter.

37:31You just need to add a little bit of light.

37:37Zachary Guy:And then actually, if you play it through, you see some smoke coming from the left. We had a little smoke and haze machine next to the lights because I knew the light that would bring that out more so it looks like a car was stalled so this was just like a beautiful mix mash of like timing as well as working with the ad and director to make sure that everything was flowing as smooth as possible but it was a lot of yelling and just a lot of just planning to get the perfect shot how long did it take you to get this shot i would say it's pretty quick i think we once we landed and we got picture up, took us 30 minutes and probably like maybe five takes to get this.

38:17Nice.

38:17Zachary Guy:Yeah, and then how we exactly did it is we had a movie tech dolly that could go up and down and it was just like a turret-based one. And then we put a bazooka on top of that so we could get the camera up another about probably three feet. And so it gave us that wide sweeping coming down, almost looks like a technocrane because that's usually what's associated with like these big car and movie like scenes, some big sweeping movement. So that's exactly how we got that push and gypped out at the same time. Let's go to the scene at, we got the wide of the cafe at 102.48. It's just so cool. You have so much talent in here.

38:59I mean, we got, I love the light. The lights coming in. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we get to this one, the road, like on the first shot, you guys had that blocked off?

39:09Zachary Guy:Yeah, so we had cops. at the back and at the front. And then this opens up into like a big three-way split of a street. So they had that all sectioned up. And then all our G &E trucks and generators are behind that. And then we had the whole square block off. So yeah, to do that in Canada or do it in where you guys, it costs so much money. But there, everything is just a lot cheaper to do. And then like we had local taxi drivers. These are all like local people, which is really cool. and then there's a bunch of people just randomly sitting and standing in the background those are locals as well like they didn't care and it was great that's sick okay that's amazing i just i just had to ask because it's such a grand shot you know for for our cafe our cafe i mean we got a lot of extras lights just flooding in through these windows and we're getting it perfectly on our girl in the middle i love the i love how she's wearing the yellow too because immediately when i saw it I was like, okay, boom, that's my girl.

40:08That's who I'm supposed to be looking at.

40:10Zachary Guy:Yeah, so that's a huge thing with the director choosing in terms of that's what Sophia likes to do. She likes to choose colors and things that designate, okay, this is what my hero talent is going to wear. This is how we're going to make her pop. This is how exactly we're going to do that. And the big thing that she wanted in this scene specifically is she's in the third golden ratio. You can even notice that the table that she's sitting on is orange itself. so these things are all intentional that she wanted specifically and that's how you pop out your main character that you're trying to do but to speak about this scene was just like a lot of blocking and then we started this this was the first um shot of the entire production so we started in this cafe i believe at 10 a.m and to give you guys even more context this is supposed to be like a 12 hour day with maybe two hours of overtime it would turn into a 16 hour day so it's pretty nuts.

41:03Wow.

41:05Zachary Guy:But to just talk about the scene, we had our X-52 as well as X-26 outside, just flooding the entire cafe. And what I like to do, I don't know if you guys see in my YouTube videos and stuff like that, is I like to analyze things and be like, oh, I made a mistake here. And the biggest mistake that I made is not having these lights high enough because it was so stressful and it was like so things that I couldn't really focus on the minor details but a thing I should have done is because you can tell that those are lights what I had the colors do is kind of blend this in so it looks like one big sun but the sun wouldn't be there or I'm like oh you could sell it that's reflecting off the windows so that's something that actually bothered me when we're doing this but I should have had my lights a whole lot higher and just clipping the edge of that but that was just due to a timing thing and we just didn't have time to really finesse everything thing i kind of just put my lights there and i'm like guys let's do this but the biggest thing that you guys asked in terms of how we popped her out that there is actually a light mat four behind that column uh and it's it's an led it's about maybe four feet by three feet wide and it's blasting all that light onto her to give some lift and pop her out because if you look at everybody else in the cafe super high contrast super yeah uh dark shadows and everything like that but if you look at her she's just lifted so that's exactly how we did that and then when we were planning at the scout i'm like thank god that pole was there because it just made our life easy because we can just work off the floor when you shoot a scene do you like to start with the wide first and then get to the details yeah that's what we've learned is like we like to shoot our widest or most complicated scene when it comes to either camera movement or just the amount of blocking so when it comes to camera movement i kind of put that at last i kind of talked to her it's sophia in terms of this case of like hey what's going to be the biggest lift for you she's like i got 25 extras we gotta direct them all let's get this scene out of the way because a lot of the other shots in this a lot more technical this one was actually very awkward because we had to put a dolly on a stairway and then ratchet strap the front of the doll a slider to the railing because it was so uneven and then because usually you don't do uh dollies like straight down into something or on an angle they're usually straight or going side to side so there's no really clean way to do this i had to muscle the camera up and down constantly on this thing and that it was it was very stressful man and then when you push in what changes so do you just are you bringing in the light mat to the shot of where we're pushing through the two characters that are in the foreground the blocking on this yeah blocking school like the phone and then i like how also you got a little kiss of light on his face too like i really like that yeah that light dark so when it goes into this um i always like to look at my images of popping in salt and pepper or a checkerboard of light dark like dark so if we look at his face we got some light there and then it goes into shadow and then automatically to her with the light and then background and everything that just blends in and then even sneaking in more dark with this other talent that we snuck in here so if you look back to the wide and kind of cut between this We had to do a lot of cheating to make sure that this looked good, as well as continuity was still into place.

44:43Zachary Guy:So we kind of shifted all the tables everywhere to make this work. But for lighting, I just used a small ADC and blasted as face to give that sunlight to wrap that around. The light mat is still in play on her left side here. And then we still have all those lights outside. So that's why I like to start with my widespeed scene specifically, because then I'll set a big look with all the big lights outside and everything like that. Then everything on the floor, which is like my key, my hair light or tube or anything like that. I just kind of move around to make work. And then when we're doing the scout and then communicating with my team, I like to do lighting diagrams.

45:20Zachary Guy:I do this for all my jobs now. And then I've actually got a lot of comments from key grips and gaffers to say, like, do you know that nobody does this? Everybody just shows up and we kind of figure out what they want. So I like to plan everything to say, like, hey, this is 90 percent of what I want. And then the extra 10 percent, we can finesse on set. For this shot specifically, the second shot in this scene with the blocking. What tee stop are you at? So we wanted to do a split diopter because we wanted to kind of try something different because we wanted this phone to be in focus. It is still slightly out of focus and everything like that, but you can see now the background, even the guy in the back, he's super sharp.

46:05Zachary Guy:So we were shooting on the Cook at Ace and then those stopped down to 1.8 and then at 1.8 you wouldn't be able to see what's going on in the background that much or even in the foreground. So we shot this at a T10 or a T8, I think. We were talking to, we had a podcast not too long ago with another DP and he was talking about how important F-stop is, T-stops is because I think when you're first starting out, you often think let's just shoot fucking wide open, baby, like shallow depth of field. but to your point like all the work that sofia puts into you know the all the decisions that she makes and it's something when he told us this carlo when he told us this on the podcast i was like oh that makes so much sense it's like there's uh you want to show it off there's the art department and the mise en scene of everything going on in the frame and so it's like if you're just shooting you know wide open you miss a lot of the details that so much effort was put into it yeah and then And yeah, that's exactly what you do.

47:07Zachary Guy:It's just like you're given a beautiful canvas by your director or art department. And then like you have to show it off. Like that's the difference when it comes to high level productions. And I feel like when people shoot out 1A, 1.4 or something like that, it's distracting of what the actual narrative is. Technically, it looks great, but in motion, it just throws things off, right? So that's why I stay away from filters. I stay away from shooting like that. and i usually shoot at a t8 uh to a two eight to a t4 talk to us about the the shot at where we're at the library and we got this beautiful streak of light hitting the table and we got like four three main on the wide yeah yeah the wide so is there is there a light mat that's tucked behind the person rolling the cart and then are you doing a spotlight down onto onto him and then what's going on with the at the back table how did you get the little thing at the back table okay one second sorry you exactly you guessed it exactly right that's exactly how we did it so this is a funny one um because uh i i feel like i learned something every production and what i do now is i prepare a cinematography brief before a project to say like hey this is what we're shooting here's what the boards look like here's what the previs looks like here's my lighting diagrams and here's what the look and feel.

48:31Zachary Guy:Everybody was super aligned. But the more details that you get into everything, the better. Because we have three main scenes here. We have our traffic scene. We have the cafe and then we have this library. When we got to the library, it was night. And I'm like, oh, this is supposed to be daytime of how it's supposed to be boarded. And then we started lighting it. And then I had a bunch of lights outside blasting through the hallway that you see in the background here. So if you look at the top right, not top right, a frame, like the edge right of frame, see that light on the floor? Yeah. Those are big lights outside kind of giving levels to the book, bookshelves and everything like that as well as the floor.

49:09Zachary Guy:So we had those at 100 % blasting through, like beautiful light coming in. And then the one of the guys from the agency is like, hey, we were thinking that this was actually supposed to be nighttime and I'm like oh I'm like oops so that kind of put like a wrench into me because I already had all these plans lighting diagrams ready to go and then I kind of had to rework my mind of actually what this is supposed to look like so then Sophia and I had like a two minute like reconversation then let alone this is like two in the morning as well so we're running on fumes uh and then she's like think Sony think exactly how we lit that and I'm like 100 let's do it.

49:51Zachary Guy:So in that corner behind the guy pushing that trolley, there is a light mat and you can actually see the extension cord, unfortunately. And then that's just pushing through and giving us like, it looks like a light is on in the background over there. And then on the tables, we have these like small little lights and everything like that. Those are from just Amazon that they sourced. And then actually on top of this, you can see the kind of the edge of it, but there is a second floor to this and then it's kind of like a balcony that looks down. So we had a spotlight rigged up on a 600C. We had this at a very low power and then that's giving us a streak on the table and you can see where it's coming from because the edge of the shadow on the floor is there as well.

50:35Zachary Guy:So it's very untraditional how we did this but Sophia was like, yeah, I just want hard line on him but I want to feel it at nighttime. And I'm like, perfect, I'll figure it out. And then also on the outside of frame right, we have like a light pushing into the ceiling and that's kind of pushing this general blue. So I have that set at like 7000 Kelvin. So I like to push blue into my background. So that's just what I like to do. And then light with orange lights to give you that tasteful teal and orange look that we always like to go. So white balance at the camera at what, like 5000 or 4400 or something?

51:11Zachary Guy:I usually like to go 4 ,400 and then 32 on my warm sources, which is like tungsten, and then maybe 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 on my cooler sources. Okay. Can you talk to how you have a lot of match cuts and how you go about achieving that when going from location to location? Yeah, so this again, pre-production is everything when it comes to big commercial sets. Even if you can start implementing this into your smaller commercials or even videography jobs that you want to kind of bring out into something bigger, is when we actually were doing these like five days of like heavy pre-production, they already had the storyboards mapped out of exactly what this is going to look like.

52:01Zachary Guy:And then Sophia took those and then she uses an AI program and then she takes the location scout photos and puts them in. And it looks like almost shot for shot. I'll share you a link later, but there's an animatic. An animatic is like a previs, but it's like a storyboards animated. And it looks exactly like how we shot it. So it was just planning of like, hey, these are the exact shots. We're not going to deviate from it. So when we showed up on set, no one was getting creative of like, oh, the camera's going to do this. The camera's going to do that. No, this is already set in stone. And then when we were on the location scans, we previs a lot of the stuff.

52:35Zachary Guy:So when you see the match cut between her hand and his hand, we just took pictures on our monitors. I have a small HD monitor. So I just took a picture of that and overlaid it when we went to the new area. So it's not a one for one match cut. It's just an action match cut. And then Sophia and I were going back and forth and back and forth of like, has to be the same focal length, has to be this, has to be that. and then we were looking at references and we're like oh no it doesn't we just have to match the action and roughly the same camera angle and it will work out because if it's um too matchy you have to get it perfect but if it's matchy enough and then like you're just playing on the action and not the focal lengths and lighting you can get away with a lot and then can you talk to us about lighting the actual bottle yes that was the one i was going to talk to you about the last frame yeah like lighting the bottle because dude people don't understand how hard it is to light products it is so different than dude so i'll put you guys on game i know you don't need this but like for the rocks listening i shot something with one of our good friends who's like product god in los angeles this dude boy evan he just fucking does product all day long so i'm shooting at a studio and he had these these lee filters and they're like a little diffusion paper and i'm I'm sitting there.

53:50I'm like, dude, we tried to shoot a can. This was like a year ago. And I can't get this light to look right on the side of the can. Like, it's just too harsh, you know? And I'm like, it's, I'm soft. I like have, I'm pouncing it muslin, but I just cannot get this thing to look perfect. He goes, dude, let's go get some leaf filters. And I had to go all around the city to find this very specific. It was like half diffusion from the leaf filter and you shoot the light through that. And then it really softens it up and it made it look pretty sick. just toss it out there for the rocks might be trying to shoot a can or something

54:20Zachary Guy:100 % I don't do product I stay away from it because it's a nightmare of reflections and just you need soft soft soft soft lighting like magic cloth like a bounce source into magic cloth or like your leaf filters that you're talking about it's just super soft and you have to have it like as close to the product as possible so the source looks as big as possible right no it's a nightmare so this we were rushing and I had like this whole thing set up in terms of how we wanted to do it. So we're swapping between a a RE I think it was like a 25 to 80 no 18 to 80 and then the Cook S4s and then because sorry the Cook S8s and because we're running so behind in the schedule because our first location took a while to do just because it was just the first location things take a while usually with that.

55:13Zachary Guy:We had to shoot this on the zoom lens, which I wasn't really a fan of. And then what I did with the lighting is I just brought all my backlights down. As you can see with like the hard contrast in the back, everybody feels like super dark. And then just popped out the bottle with that ADCs as well as that light mat, but then went super diffused on the light mat by putting a bunch of fabrics in front of it. But that got us maybe 60 % there. And then I didn't have enough time to finesse everything this is a lot of retouching in post with our colorist like the stuff that he does like i can show you the i would love to show you the offline stuff but like he did so much work because when we were even looking at it like i had to reassure a client that like hey can can do this don't worry so he popped the labels in the bottle he killed a lot of the reflections the thing that i got right was all the sparkling in the water which they really loved especially the reflections on the um the wood itself like they were like super stoked about that they just felt like the level of the bottle was super low because it's just like if you have a huge backlight coming in it's gonna feel super contrasty and then you try to lift it and then it just looks like shit so i just kind of left it with the super contrast and i'm like oh jason can just lift this up all in post because i've worked with him on like probably maybe 30 color sessions right now and the stuff that guy does is crazy damn and did you know going in that they wanted this as like the shot because they wanted the bottles on the you know right third of the frame so that they could put the text on screen at the end oh yeah we had like a ppm which is a pre-production meeting and we had that at their agency and then they're very adamant like hey the pack shot is going to be like this there's going to be three levels of the bottle of the product we need to show off all three and then we need it in the right so we have the whole thing and usually that's what a vtr or dit does sorry vtr does which is a virtual technician i don't exactly remember what it stands for but basically that's the guy on set that will do playback for everybody that will put supers up that will do everything so the client can feed that.

57:31Zachary Guy:Unfortunately, we didn't have one of those. So we just had to trust that it was enough. Yeah. We left enough space. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for breaking that down. That was really, really cool. Yeah, that was amazing. Of course. You can't stop that screen recording. That was sick though. Okay. Gun to your head. Five pieces of gear that you can't live without, dude. What are you bringing? Five pieces of gear. Welcome to the new segment called Gun to Your Head. Five pieces of gear that you're like, these have just saved my ass. I keep going back to them, and they got to stay in the gear bag.

58:07Zachary Guy:Okay, so are we talking about accessories? They could be anything. They could be anything. Yeah, it could be a camera. You could be like, this is my favorite focal length. I always find myself coming back to this one. Could be a piece of camera equipment. Could be a light. Could be a cable. Disregard the camera itself, though. Okay. Okay. Okay, disregard the camera itself, because everybody's going to know I'm going to say Sony FX3. So that's a given. I'll give five on top of that. So my thing that, because I have like the bag for the Venice that I bring all the time, but then I have like this spare kit bag of just stuff I bring in case it goes wrong.

58:42Zachary Guy:Number one thing I would say is I always have a multi-tool on set. So not just like a small rig, rinky-dink one. I'm talking like a proper one with a knife, pliers, everything possible, wrench. Just a good multi-tool will last you very long, especially when it comes to being a cinematographer and just trying to fix things on the fly. Do you have a brand? I feel like that's great. Brand that you recommend for that? I've been using this. I don't have it on me. I've been using this Milwaukee one, but any brand will do. Leatherman, Swiss, anything. Just a good one that has a bunch of stuff that you would actually use.

59:23Zachary Guy:second piece of gear that I always bring is this is like two lenses that I'm it's my Sigma Sigma 24-70 I will live and die by that this is my favorite lens that I've ever used and it's the generation one it's just there's a sharpness towards it that I love it Sophia and I were just into Dolomites and we shot an Airbnb spec that's going to be coming out soon and very soon as well and I just love it and it's just the most versatile thing that I've ever used. So sometimes in a pinch, I'll throw it on the venison. Okay, wait, hold on, hold on. Okay, pause. Did you have to go all the way to the Dolomites to do an Airbnb spec?

1:00:06Zachary Guy:Yeah, of course. No. You're just like, let's fucking go off. Yeah, just throw a pause on that. Was this like, we're planning a family vacay to Italy and we're going to be in the Dolomites, we might as well shoot a spec? I wish that we had that much time and money that we could just say, I want to shoot a speck in the Dolomites. No, it's not like that. That is so unrealistic. Do not do that if anybody is like planning to do a speck and do that. No, we basically, her sister was getting married in Rome and then we bought the tickets like maybe three months ago. So we're four days in Rome and we're like, okay, we're here.

1:00:43Zachary Guy:Why don't we take a little five day vacation for ourselves? So we drove up to the Dolomites. and then as as we were planning that when the wedding was coming so he was like i want you to spec i'm like that's not a vacation but i love it so now you got me thinking bro i've taken see i'm taking chloe to to i'm taking her to australia put her to work december i'm like talent dude talent that's free talent that's expensive talent yeah no but there it is but the thing is like uh the thing i absolutely love about sophia is that she has an idea and she will go to whatever lengths to get it done and she'll just get it done right so she picked out all the airbnbs we did a lot bunch of activities of mountain biking and climbing the trails and everything to get these beautiful scenics and shots and everything like that so that's another one i'm stoked to do it out but it was just like yeah we took the trip for ourselves but also like this is this is the only time that we're going to be here in such a beautiful season so why not shoot something and it's so and it's so fun you know like that's so fun to get to do a spot like that together out there that's cool oh yeah no it's beautiful the last one we did we had so much fun doing so something that we try to do every time okay so yeah my second piece of gear is this good suction cup i have this one i don't exactly know the brand but you can find them by any brand i think kupo makes a really good one it's about a six inch one that has a baby pin on it and then i use this for car rigs.

1:02:10Zachary Guy:I use it to put a camera up on a wall, put it on glass, put it anywhere. It's like an addition to a tripod that's very nice that I use all the time. A third piece.

1:02:28Zachary Guy:My ND and CPL. So I use one by KNF Concept. So it's an ND and CP combined. So a lot of people are sleeping on that. Oh, CP doesn't really matter. Because you can just you can, it's just only when you're shooting through a window. But it's actually, you can really dial in your highlights as well as to even shift the image to how you want it. there's a lot of time where i'm just shooting normally on all my commercials i always get a rotopola which is a cp and then i'm always when i'm looking at a shot i'm just like okay what does this do just rotating it and then sometimes it'll kick down a bunch of highlights that you were trying to get rid of before so that's a really good one uh what number am i on four yeah two more four two more that's tough or one more oh no you have one more you have one more this is your last one yeah i said it's 24 7.

1:03:20Zachary Guy:uh my last one is the friction arm that i just recently picked up picked up three months ago i've been using it it's by uh mofage so m-o-f-a-g-e and it's a really solid one that i use it for my monitor all the time okay no no can i can i rotate you can rotate okay i would change my 24 to 70 my trusted 24 70 to a good uh seven inch monitor so I feel like the biggest thing is like when people are getting serious about cinematography and everything like that they're like oh I need to buy a camera I need to do this I need to do that no get a good monitor so I have a small HD cine 7 and then I just add an ultra 5 as well so I kind of swap between those two monitors sometimes I'm using two cameras and like a seven inch monitor that you can actually see that you can actually get into details you can use all your tools you can use your scopes and everything like that those allow you to be a good cinematographer they allow you to be a cinematographer and it kind of levels you up from being a videographer i'm with you on that that's the first thing i invested in yeah i'm with you on that that was a big purchase and it's something that we always rent out it hurts it hurts man it hurts because you're like you know i could buy like a shitty car for this price of this monitor and it's all good yeah how is it how is it working with your significant other at the level that you do because it's not like we have i was gonna say it's it's it's there's one thing to do something similar as your significant other but you guys are actually working together on like the same projects yeah so like to give you guys any more context 90 of the work that i do is with with my fiance and it's absolutely a blessing for me because there's a lot of times where will be involved in the entire process from when she gets a brief and she starts pitching.

1:05:11Zachary Guy:I'm involved in the creative process in terms of picking your brain, working on the technicalities of like, we'll be sitting in our living room and she's like, okay, I got to figure out this idea that I'm like, okay, how about you just tell me idea and I'll type it out and then we can kind of work on it. So she has the creative freedom to do that. Because I feel like when you like the question that you asked, there's like similar fields or like this exact same field. We're in the exact same field so there's a lot of understanding of exactly what we're doing of exactly what she needs what i need and then when we're on set and we're actually creating something together it's like one of the most beautiful things that that you could do uh it's funny because it goes opposite ways when people are like oh you guys are together isn't that weird and we're like no it's it's great so some people love it and then some people get skeptical about he goes in a flight on set right so we love it i bet no i bet that's so fun too i mean you love hanging out together and it's like now we're getting paid this is great yeah this is awesome yeah she like we're best friends we're partners and partners in life and then also in business which is the best thing i could ask for you guys aren't really going down the route though of building out a full-on production company if i'm not mistaken correct no can you speak to that No, I feel...

1:06:30Go ahead.

1:06:32Zachary Guy:Yeah, yeah. So to give you context, I started off solo, then ran a production company, and then recently I'm moving to more freelance because it just makes more sense in terms of what we're doing. You can approach this two ways. She's a director, I'm a cinematographer, and then we could brand this and make this into a production company. But I don't want the responsibilities of a production company and what that entails. I don't want the responsibilities of an agency. And then I have to start chasing clients. I have to start doing all that extra work just to sell a job. What we're good at doing is actually creating that job, creating that work when that job exists.

1:07:14Zachary Guy:So we wanted to fit in the middle ground of like, because we've experienced everything when it takes to run a production company. And we're like, that just doesn't make sense for us. We're in the middle ground where we're really good at ideation, taking somebody's idea and executing and bringing it to real life and then just all the technical aspects of that. So we're in the middle ground where it's just like we have connections with production companies, with agencies, with producers, with so many people where those just fish us work rather than going up to that level where we're going to be competing with everybody else.

1:07:48Zachary Guy:you know i mean to run a production company and to bid for jobs just at a not a creative level it just doesn't align for us we need a whole team to do that so we kind of had to look at jobs that we can do as individuals that we can bring in a lot of profit as well as just operate as individual businesses i love that i think yeah i think people don't really understand all the bullshit that comes with that like the insurance that i pay is fucking crazy dude It's insane how much insurance is. It blows my mind. I'm like, this is coming out every month. Like, do we have to pay you guys? It's just what it costs.

1:08:25It's just what it costs to run a business.

1:08:26Zachary Guy:It's crazy. Yeah, it's run a business and run a production company and then just insurance, the liabilities associated with that. I'd rather somebody else take care of that. I'd rather somebody else find work for me. Obviously, I'm still finding my own work, but with all these connections of different production companies with them not being tied down to one business, I feel it just opens the doors to work on so much more and actually do so much more output and just do the job that I'm good at. What's been the hardest part for you being a full-time creative? I feel like it's a full-time creative should be a full-time business person, a business whatever, right?

1:09:09Zachary Guy:And it's always just the influx of work when it's going to be busy, when it's not going to be busy and actually how to plan for that. It always comes back to financials. Like I know that we're creatives and we're in this business and everything like that. But we're all trying to feed ourselves, invest into our future, start a family, buy a house and everything like that. And it's really hard to plan for the future when things are busy and when they're not busy. right so i feel like that's the biggest thing because just being a business owner and having so much more onus i'd love to sit in a nine to five and know what i'm projected for the next 30 years but i don't even know what the next month looks like for me right so that's the the thrilling part of it but also the scary part of it do you get a lot of joy out of teaching because oh yeah The reason I bring it up is because you almost went down the route in the aerospace career that you were going down.

1:10:09You said you were thinking about potentially even being a teacher. Do you feel like that is just kind of something that you're naturally drawn to? You have your career and you're obviously incredibly talented, but there is a certain fulfillment, I think, that comes from sharing that knowledge that you've learned over the years and helping the next generation.

1:10:27Zachary Guy:Yeah, I think you feel that hit the nail on the head. But to give you more context, like, it didn't come out of nowhere. Like when I was in high school, when I started in university as well, I was teaching kids school programs. I was involved in the community aspect. There's this Ontario Science Center that I was a teacher there for as well when I was in high school. So that was kind of always engraved into me. And I feel like that's something my parents taught me in terms of passing on knowledge. And then that's just something I enjoyed. But when it came to in my engineering career, when I was doing my master's, which is in mechanical engineering, I was a teacher's assistant.

1:11:03Zachary Guy:So I was teaching thermodynamics and heat transfer and stuff like that. Stuff I was really interested and passionate about. And then when you get something and then you can explain somebody to it in a term that you understand that they understand as well. I feel like that's something that really clicks with me. And it's just like, I get so frustrated at the traditional ways of how things are taught, even when I was in engineering school and everything like that, just everything is so outdated. And I feel like that I wanted to apply when it came to filmmaking, because I started that YouTube channel just because I was documenting exactly what I was doing.

1:11:38Zachary Guy:I didn't know how big of effect I had, how big of a community that I would develop by now, even on Instagram about the teaching stuff that I do as well. So the biggest thing for me is like when I started, there was nobody putting out information that looked like me as well as at that higher level. So I'm like, why can't I be that person? Why can't I figure out how to do that? And it's just like a lot of the stuff, even with a breakdown, I just told you exactly what I did. There's a lot more money involved. There's a lot more people. But like, hey, from my side, It's the exact same stuff that you guys are doing, but just at larger scale.

1:12:14Zachary Guy:And you'd approach it the same way. It doesn't matter if it's tungsten. It doesn't matter HMI, RE, RED, Sony. It's all the same. And I try to level the playing field with people to say like, hey, this is accessible. You can do this. And there's been so many rewarding experiences that I've had from that, where I've met people from other parts of the world that have come to Canada to start their journey. or when I was in Morocco, the first person that we interacted with, he's like, hey, I know your full story. And it was the PA driver that took us from the airport to the hotel. So I feel like that's why I do it because a lot of people are like, okay, wow, it's accessible.

1:12:55Zachary Guy:I can do that. And that's the biggest thing I want to do. I think that your YouTube channel is priceless information. Like that is stuff that takes people like a decade to learn. And you've been so kind with just your knowledge and helping people get into it. I'm sure the messages you get are crazy from people who are like, oh, I was not into this field and now I'm doing commercial spots, which has got to be incredible. But I want to know, what's a piece of traditional filmmaking advice that you absolutely do not agree with? That's something that maybe was told to you that you're like, that is just not true at all.

1:13:28And I don't think you have to follow that.

1:13:33Zachary Guy:I can start off with one I do agree with. Okay. Because the big thing I get a question is, because I kind of have to think on that, is because I don't know what a lot of traditional stuff is. When you ask me, like, what's traditional, like film or things, I never learned traditionally. I learned off of YouTube University. I learned off of being on set and everything like that. And the thing that I do agree with is that film school is important. Not because of what you learn and everything like that. I agree that it's important for the people that you meet and the connections that you can make.

1:14:05Zachary Guy:because it doesn't take a single person to make a movie or a commercial. It takes 10 people, 20, 30, 40, and 50. And then to start off, you need those people to do that. So that's where I, it's kind of weird coming from my background because it's like, oh, you didn't go to film school. But Sophia did that. She went to film school and like from, she graduated about two years ago. And now she's at the level of directing this, the commercials at this level. and that was because the connections and the fire that she had at the beginning so that's what i observed then i'm like oh that's what's important in film school and everything like that but when it comes to traditional stuff i i don't know i don't know i can't answer that question because i didn't learn traditionally me neither man i was just wondering if you maybe yeah shit i was like give me the camera let me figure this out trial by trial by fire this has been yeah i feel like a big mis...

1:15:04Zachary Guy:I feel like a big misconception, here's one, is that you don't have to always shoot at your base ISO. As long as it looks good, it's fine. There it is. Let them know, dude. Get rid of the denoise after, man. Just use that after. The color is... Well, okay, don't crank it past no return, but there's a lot of times where I'll be telling people how to expose stuff, and then they'll be coming at me with the technical aspects of like, oh, you should do this, rate one stop, do this. and I'm like, you know why I did this and it looks the way it is? Because it looked good on the monitor. That's it. Nice.

1:15:37I love that. Zach, this has been such a fun episode. This has been episode 210 of the 505 Podcast. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace. So I think I figured it out. Okay. You must have showed the guy working the door a proof of concept spec project of you maybe at another party and you're like, listen, this was me at another party. Let me in. That is what I've been trying to tell you guys. It's a spec, dog. That's the whole thing. And no one seems to understand. I showed him the video of me hitting a crazy move.

1:16:13Remember the Dougie back in the day? So I showed him that. Yeah, and he was like, this will work. But don't do that here. And he let me in. That's why we're here. This is strictly a no Dougie after party. Yeah, but so that's why I said, hey, I won't make it. Proof of concept. Won't have it work. But you could see how I could get the crowd riled up. You showed him the Dougie, the jerk. Yeah. Dude, you just unlocked a core memory. I remember watching a YouTube video and being in the mirror trying to learn how to jerk. You were studying how to jerk. Yeah, how to jerk. But now we're here. And that is how you become a videographer to a cinematographer.

1:16:44It's all about spec work. He is, dude, Zachary, Zach. I'm going to call him Zach because he's a good buddy of ours now. He's Mr. Spec. Mr. Spec, dude. Spec's in his middle name. Zach Spec Guy. That's his name. Zach Spec Guy. Yeah. He crushes filmmaking in his life. He's a great dude. Honestly, he was super fun to pod with. I think that we had a ton of chemistry. Chemistry is off the charts for this one. Yeah, I was feeling that too. Dude, the Canadians to the rocks, it's like a symbiotic relationship. They're so nice. You know what I'm saying? I just feel like every time we talk to any Canadian, I'm like, we get each other.

1:17:18You know what I mean? And I think that's why 30 % of the audience is in Canada. Like there's something about our lingo that really just resonates with the brothers and rocks up north and the sisters up north. The spec stuff has seemed to be a common thread over the last couple of episodes, but it really is so true. Yeah. And I think back, dude, to when I made my first ever Nike spec. It was dog water. It was cheeks. Yeah. But you have to make those. Same with we had Danny on. Danny said the same thing. You have to go make the thing before someone's going to trust you to make the thing. yeah i also man like this isn't a trade where like you go to plumbing school or you go to learn to be an electrician you come out you're like oh i've been doing electrician stuff for the last year or two years of my trade school yeah filmmaking's not like that where you can't just like you bought your camera hey you're ready to you're ready to make a thirty thousand dollar commercial doesn't work like that man you've given some really good advice i think that you know i believe we asked i I think I asked Zach on this episode, like, how do you get on set?

1:18:23Yeah. If you don't have any connections, if you don't live in a big city and you're like, I don't know how to get on set because I want to learn. You gave the advice of hire someone who knows what the fuck they're doing. Yeah, that's great advice. Like, if you want to direct and you want to know how a great DP works. And you got the job. Like invest in just paying the DP that you want to work with or learn from their day rate and have it be a paid project for them, but have it be a spec for you and vice versa. You could bring on a director or a gaffer or whoever it may be, an editor. Like you can either do it one of two ways.

1:19:11You can either, you know, assemble a crew of friends who just wants to make some stuff together. But you got to have friends. Sure, you got to have friends. It's a hard part there. What do you think is harder, making friends or getting on set? Getting on set. Yeah. Getting on set is hard, but I think the most practical ways that you can get on a commercial film set, you make friends with the producers, and you understand and you watch a shit ton of YouTube videos so you know what all the stands are and how to open them up so you don't look like an idiot. And you know some of the terms, a couple of the terms people are going to throw out.

1:19:43you meet people that own a production company like myself and you offer stuff that i would need as help right you're like hey i would do bts and i'm a killer at bts okay so this was another really good yeah that was a great it was a good one he was like don't just say i can do whatever well because who yeah everyone can fucking do whatever yes yeah i think the best way for what he said getting on set by shooting bts is always you know always a value one of the first bigger commercials I think I ever got on was a L 'Oreal commercial and I was doing BTS for this this guy had hired me and I was locked into what the heck was going on because I had never seen a bigger commercial set probably like a half a million dollar budget maybe a little bit more but they had like a stage and they had the whole nine yards everything was you know was there big lights whole nine but the same principles apply to you in your room trying to make your room look nice than like a big set, right?

1:20:42And everything just gets bigger. The lights way bigger, way more people. Instead of having one person help you, there's 16 people helping you, you know? And I remember, this is a great story to tell the rocks. I was on vacation with my buddy, Andrew, where I'm on Mystique. I met this guy who owns a, he's like number two at a very big commercial film house that's in New York. And they do all the ads for like Taco Bell, McDonald's, this company's very big. and I remember asking him I'm like man I'm so nervous to graduate because I don't know how to use like a red camera and I don't even know if like that was the the camera that these companies were using at the time but I knew of the brand red and so I'm like I don't know how to use a red camera I don't know how I'm gonna do this I was having this anxiety and he goes dude he goes it's still a fucking camera it's it has the same four settings man you're still gonna adjust the shutter speed the aperture the iso and the frame rate and that's it he's like you gotta relax dog you're going to use like if I gave you an IMAX camera it's still the same four settings and I was like wow you're so right I was so rattled about trying to get like think in my head like this next level of filmmaking I'm have to learn this new camera I don't know how to use the camera what lens is I don't know how to communicate with people who goes dude you're just gonna do the same way like you do your little a6500 it's still four settings and it made me take a big deep breath because I think a lot of people see what Zach's doing and they're like man my stuff doesn't look like Zach's nor should it probably at the level that you're at you know you think like man I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to get to that.

1:22:05But you just do it in very incremental stages and slowly, but surely you're going to get to the level that you want to get to. Yeah. By investing in yourself, by, you know, getting on sets and seeing how people roll by not being on your phone all the time. If you get the opportunity to be on a big set, like Danny said, it's like those little things are all going to add up. And then you will be at a level where you're like, wow, I'm gonna look back on five years ago and I'm a giggle at where I was at freaking out about not knowing how to operate a camera what's also interesting is he said the spec that i believe he did for new balance which was sick he is now getting paid like that spec got him a paid work was it adidas or nike i think it was adidas adidas and he said it was like in the exact format like the look felt and looked very similar because they based it off of the spec so not only did he have proof of concept to actually land them the work but the creative they actually loved it so much that they wanted to use that as a reference a hundred percent which is sick yeah they're like hey can we just buy that we'll run that back if had that happen it's a really cool feeling they're like can we just buy this you know make this thing happen i think the biggest thing that takes you from little rock to boulder to be a cinematographer is the pre-production yeah it's the plan because for the longest time we just pull up and you're not going to make the coolest stuff when you just pull up and he said that's the biggest difference between a videographer and a cinematographer videographer just shows up and captures and you're still thinking about angles and all that kind of stuff but there really is no planning that goes into it and videographers can still chef like that's not to say totally that's like yeah you're not you're not a creative person like you're still wicked creative you know it's just like a different it's a totally different ball game having a team of people that you have to rely on and you're less you're less um you know camera in hand and more like delegation plus frame and you guys were talking about how waiting is expensive oh my god which is why pre-production is so important waiting is so expensive and i think especially when you're the one paying everybody yeah when you're the one paying everybody it's super stressful.

1:24:16You're like, why are we not moving? Yeah. You know, what's interesting about what Zach is doing is he's not really trying to build a production company or an agency. He just wants to make really cool stuff. And it seems like he has formed really strong relationships with a lot of these agencies and production companies where people just come to him. They know he's super talented, a pleasure to work with, and they hire him and he doesn't have to work. He doesn't have to worry about any of the bullshit that comes with actually running the company. zach's a good dude and you can tell and that's that's why people want to hang around him like yeah you know you want to be surrounded with people that you can keep calling back because set days are long and i mean every time i hire someone it's an audition i don't i don't have i'm not obligated to bring anyone back yeah besides sharif that's true yeah and if it was up to you i did i might not even know i'm kidding but seriously we were literally joking about this the other day though i'm like bro every time you hire someone it's audition time and it continues to be audition time yeah because film sets are like sports teams there's a bazillion other people that are down to do that other job so if you're not a vibe and you're not a cool kind person and you're not good at what you do there's someone else there's a hundred other people that are down to you know to come on and do the thing yeah something that um hold on pause on set

1:25:40okay okay

1:25:47i don't think you got anything just wanted to be on camera oh dude shout out my dad what were you gonna say

1:25:57something land this plane dude here we go dude i'll land it land this plane for me dog something we did on this episode that we hadn't done in a very long time yes was actually breaking down a spot, which if you're an OG rock, you know we've done it a handful of times. And whenever we bust out the screen recording, pen and paper, that stuff you guys love. And I thought it was really cool to see the shoot that he did for Awkwafina in Morocco. Also, let's roast some work again. Yeah, yeah, we should roast some work. But hearing...

1:26:34hearing how he's like i would not trust bringing out my camera i'm renting all of it out there but they work different out there you know it's like we hope like it should be here in the morning it should be here in the morning was rich dude they're like yeah he's like the whole lighting package is like it's all gone right now are you trying out new phrases new words what did i just use what was the rich i just try to slip that in i've been using that one people have been liking that one that's rich you know what i mean try that that's the first time i've heard you say that no i've been using people have been liking rich yeah like that's rich where'd you learn that one from twitter oh i saw this young guy he's on twitter man i said that's dude fig thought he was just gonna drop a new word and just i think the rocks are gonna adopt it okay yeah dude that was rich anyways yeah dude crazy i also have you been in morocco no but it looks cool yeah i'd love to go where is morocco i think i know exactly where it's at i think it's in africa i think so too i think it is let me see yeah yeah yeah and the maghreb i'm probably pronouncing that wrong region of north africa i was right right on the top yep oh wow it's a big country it is right next to Algeria and right above the Western Sahara and below Spain and Portugal.

1:28:00Wow, we're just getting culture today. We're learning geography. It's incredible, but it was really cool. Out of the country, shoot has got to be nerve wracking like that, especially when you like new crew. The only, I believe the only person that was on the crew that he knew was his fiance, Sophia, who's the director. Yes. Which is nice to be able to be like, okay, you and me are coming in here. We're going to do the thing together and I'll have to just pull of them like i don't know anyone on the set also crazy that one of the scenes that they shot he thought it was daytime but it was nighttime or supposed to look like daytime or it was nighttime or something like that had to call it call it quick change this up and he goes so for you like they pulled a three-minute meeting it's like what the fuck do we do here yeah we got to figure this out and then it's also very interesting too how there were certain things that he pointed out that I would have not noticed or thought of at all because there were certain things with like the lightings or the lighting in the cafe shot.

1:29:04I didn't even notice the two lights in the back. And he's like, they look too much like lights. Or he goes, we had light pouring in in the opening shot from the left side, but it didn't really make sense because if you look in the back, the sun's actually on the right side. I go, bro. and he said it too in commercial world it does not matter make it look sick you just gotta make it look cool make it look great make it look cool yeah it was fun though I loved getting to break it down and hear about the lights and the color temperature and why he was at this white balance to give it that kind of teal and orange vibe it was a fun episode I will also say I think if you guys have never watched any of Zach's videos he really does have a special talent for teaching he's an educator So go check out his YouTube channel because the way that he breaks down videos that he's made, whether it's spec project or paid work, is some of the best on YouTube.

1:30:03And I think that if you guys are trying to take the leap up into the filmmaking high-end commercial work, he's one of the best people you can learn from on YouTube. I agree completely. This was 10 out of 10 episodes. Let us know if you guys want us to do more episodes like this. And I think we need to do another video roasting people's work because that shit is fun. Yeah, we're due. I think we're due for a Q &A and roasting people's work. One of those. Please let us know if you guys have been liking the more creative stuff because it has been so fun for us to dive back into the space. Dude, we're so back.

1:30:38Just a headfirst dive back into the space, man. Nice, dude. Yeah. I'm just looking at my photos to see what else I've been up to. Oh. What? Okay, I'll tell you something. Let me see what else I've been up to. So I got a new Jeep. I had a 2024 Jeep Wrangler. I got literally the same exact car, 2026 model, because I leased it. So I leased another one. But they kind of... I'm having some regrets, I think. Why? Which is not good, because three years is a long time to have regrets. I like the car. The only thing is the hybrid, it's not hybrid because they discontinued it because it was having trouble.

1:31:25Oh, that's not good. I think I should have gotten something with better gas mileage because it only gets like 20 miles, like 18 miles to the gallon. That's not sick. So not sick and gas is really expensive right now. And then a small thing that I didn't realize it didn't come with, just a small thing. Small thing, tell me. You know how on some cars, you just have to have the key in the pocket. Yes. And you can like double open the door and it opens it. This car doesn't have that. And the 2024 model does. So I feel like I got a newer model, but shittier car. Why are we regressing? We got to call Jeep, man.

1:32:05Dude. And here's the thing. I test drove the Kia Sportage. It was the only other car I... No, sorry. I test drove a Kia Sportage and I test drove a Bronco. I was under the impression that the Bronco was going to be slightly smoother of a ride than the Jeep. And it wasn't. It's not. So I said, okay, forget the Bronco, especially because it's slightly more expensive than the Jeep. The Kia Sportage would have been$100 cheaper a month to lease than the Jeep. I just couldn't get myself to get a Kia. Yeah, just something about the Kia. Something about it? Just doesn't yell that it's your car. but it drove really nice and the inside's really nice slightly smaller of a car but man i gotta be honest with you guys the jeep is cool it really is but man part of me is just having slight regret i'm still rocking the tesla grip truck and i really like not paying for gas i yeah but i beat this shit out of that car and someone also hit me and didn't leave a note and it was weeks recently nah this was like probably five months ago but i can't do without the car for the period of like i you need the car bro so this see dude they gotta make this easier they should be required to give you a loaner vehicle yes within a year i think is that crazy to say because here's the thing tesla's insurance sucks worst insurance on the market it's cheaper though see i don't pay that much for insurance but see this is where they get your ass okay they're like okay you need to put in the car you can get 45 bucks a day for a car what car to rent i know i know what car to rent is 45 yes bro so then i'm like yes okay so i'm gonna have to get the car fixed i'm gonna pay a thousand dollar deductible and then i'm gonna pay you a thousand bucks for this fucking car to yes for this bullshit rental car for a piece of shit rental car dude if something happens to your car i'm just like bro i'm just eating it's the most inconvenient no no that's what i'm saying i'm eating it i'm just looking every time i go to the passenger side i see this moron that's hit my car and i'm like i just wear it i'm like this is I'm just going to wear this.

1:34:08Yeah. But this is ridiculous. Yeah. It's just unreal. Also, Tesla's a piece of shit car. Genuinely, it's a piece of shit car. Can you believe Elon's a trillionaire? The car is a piece of shit, but I will say what I do like about it. One, zip. The thing is fast. The car itself is a piece of shit. It's falling apart. My steering wheel is peeling off. It's just peeling off. How long have you had the car? Not even a year. Or a little over a year, I think. A little over a year. Wait, what? No, I've had it for more than that. I've had it for two years because I was still at the Lakers. Did you? Wait, hold on, hold on.

1:34:40No, I was still at the Lakers when I got it. So two years. I've had it for two years. This is like the first ever version you got or you had one and then you upgraded? I had the Model 3 and then I upgraded to the Y because they had that promotion 0.9 % APR or something. So anyways, I upgraded to that one. Sorry, my headphones are coming in and out. I upgraded to that one. And then my passenger side window just one day stopped working. So I have to reach over. i mean this thing is falling apart it's just unreal but that's a it's a it's a tech car not a car car i see you know what i'm saying like the the computer situation vibe like it's great that's good stuff but the actual car itself is just falling apart like everything i'm just noticing little things just keep messing up the paint terrible paint you just touch the paint it scratches yeah it's horrible it's awful it's tough it's hard out here man to get a good car I think you know what I think I want to do I think I want a truck I genuinely bro I looked into I think I might dude I might trade this in in two years go with like a Ford Raptor oh something big I talked to this guy in my building he has a Ford Raptor I go hey how terrible is this drive that around LA he goes I love it it's great it's not that big of a problem for me he goes I don't really park on the street that much I'm like you know what I really don't park on the street that much either dude when I went to Ford because I test drove the Broncos Oh, okay.

1:35:58They were trying to get you to buy a truck? Well, I asked him, I was like, what's the deal with the truck? I was like, what could I get for a comparable lease price? Okay. And he showed me the bitchiest truck. So small. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I was like, the bed truck's like this big. Well, that's why I was thinking about a truck because I'm always transporting stuff. So I'm like, that could be in my car. Yeah. If I got a little truck that I can - What does a Ford Raptor go for? I think you can get one for like$75 or something. okay i think i could be totally wrong do you like this is funny do you like owning a car versus leasing okay now cars let's get this straight cars are liability not an asset but in this weird thing in my head right when i pay off the car yeah it's in some form some sort of an asset because then i can let's say it doesn't go to zero that's what i'm saying exactly so like i am aware that if you asked a financial person oh this is a liability not an asset i get that but by the time I'm done in three or four years paying it off, it is an asset to me because I'm like, okay, I have$25 ,000 of this metal thing sitting here that I can trade in, right?

1:37:01So when I sold my, like when I sell my Tesla in a year, because I'm not going to keep it probably, I'll probably get like$25 ,000 for it or$20K, let's call it. So like I'll have that to put down towards my new car, but I hate having a car payment. That drives me nuts. I hate having a car payment. So I'm like, do I just keep the Tesla for a few more years, beat it to shit? have like 10 ,000 or something or whatever. I don't know, whatever it'll be worth at that time. And then go and get a car. You know what I'm saying? See, I always... The leasing makes sense to me because then they take care of all your problems.

1:37:38We should do... The Rocks need to weigh in on this debate. We talked about this. So I've leased a car since I first got a car. I'm a little salty that... I'm a little salty though that... I didn't want to go drop$3 ,500 to put down. My lease was up. I had to get a new car. See, that's where they get you. If you just were saying, oh, it's$500 a month or$400, whatever that thing is, that makes sense to me. It's the fact that you pay them, but that's the only way they make money. But technically, to lease a car, you don't actually have to put any money down, but up the monthly. But to buy a car, the monthly is always more expensive.

1:38:22yes see that's annoying because you pay what like 800 bucks a month i pay a shit ton for that car i think it's that and i put like my monthly i think i put 20 down and it's still like 750 bucks or something a month which is ridiculous my monthly for the jeep is 500 even flat so i put 3500 down and it's 500 a month if i was to have gone and bought the jeep i still probably would have had to put the same amount down or maybe even a little bit more but it would have been like a seven or eight hundred dollar a month thing and i'm like bro and i'm like part of me thinks about you where it's you almost you you take the l yes on like the first time you buy it but then if you let's see now exactly now i'm gonna i like own these cars like i've always owned my first my own my first car so it's like okay then i had i think when i sold it 10 grand or something to put towards the tesla and then i put a little bit more cash down but i don't know Owning a car sucks.

1:39:17It sucks. But now I'm also in the mindset of in three years, I know I'll get a new car. See, that's nice. That's nice to know. So I think I'm team lease, honestly. You're team lease? I'm curious what the rocks are. Team lease, team buy. The best thing to do, you just need to be rich. Buy it outright. That's what you've got to do. You think? Yes. When you're done. Being rich is definitely better. But I think this is the play. I don't think you ever buy a new car. Sure. I think you get a car that's one year certified pre-owned. So you get the warranty with the dealership. Because these guys are trying to fuck you.

1:39:53All the car guys, they suck, man. They're trying to get your ass. You know what I'm saying? I forgot to share this. If you're a car guy, we still love you. But I think they're trying to get you, man. Dude, I felt like a celebrity because I got recognized at the Ford dealership. No, you didn't. I swear, but I'm blanking on his name. For the pod? Yeah, for the pod. away yeah one of the rocks works for ford yes okay but i bet he's a good guy the rest of them man is trying to get you yeah he was he was dope that's actually so sick i'm dude he definitely he's a part-time creative he's gonna quit we can't we can't maybe we can't say his name because he's gonna quit his job he's gonna be full-time creative dude okay so i was beating myself up because i wanted to i should have got his number honestly i might go back you should and go yo because he was like i was trying to do his sale he sells yeah uh maybe he's in marketing i think he's like trying to get to the sales okay i don't know but he was telling me how he used to do like the freelance stuff and he still kind of does it but he he got a job the move is to get a year csc dude you drive it off the lot five grand gone it's i'm never buying a new car again sure i'm gonna go one year unless it's just like really not making a dent yeah let's just no dents yeah right then it's then it's fine then i'll go buy it in cash and be done with it which that's what That's what we need to get to.

1:41:10We're not there yet. I need to get there. I need to get there. But I think the move is one year fucking thing. That's the move. Another thing that is nice and cool about the lease is you're always leasing the newest year. See, that's a nice thing. Yeah. That is a nice thing. This is a 10-minute side tangent debate, but I think we're in the after party. We're a few drinks deep. Yeah, that's - You know, we're at the after party. We're dancing. We're BSing. We're jerking. What are we? We're dug in. Dug in, dude. Doing the dug in. But yeah, but that's where I stand with that. Anything else you want to talk about on today's after party?

1:41:47I went back to the corded headphones because I kept losing my AirPods and I'm done giving Apple money. Oh, I was wondering why you did that. I thought you didn't want to get... When we went to New York, I left them at that hotel and it was... Oh. That hotel sucked. Never stay at the Holiday Inn near the airport. That hotel sucked. Oh, when we got stuck in the storm? Yes, I left them there and I literally... That was a trip. I'm just done giving Apple money for bullshit. I thought you went, wait, hold on. I thought you went to the courted thing because all the football players. Yeah, no, I mean, yes.

1:42:20I think that not supposed to have the phone near my pants area either. I heard, I'm supposed to be back pocket. I heard a lot of EMF shit going on with these phones. You're not supposed to have this thing near where you sleep either. There's a lot of studies that are coming out. I'm a sheep, dude. I'm just listening to whatever Huberman says, but that's what I've heard. And the EMF thing in the ear is supposed to be bad. I always listen to my shit at full, like full blast as well. I don't think you got to worry about the phone being near the... I swear to God. No, no, they did. They've done studies.

1:42:46You particularly. I think you're good, dude. I think you're fucked either way. Dude, unreal. Yeah, it's so interesting though, because I've been ripping the corded headphones. I like it more. The only thing, dude, only thing. You don't got to... Let me tell you something. This is a safe space. You don't got to lie. Let me tell you something about these corded headphones, okay? my cabinets at home have this little thing that comes out like a little handle okay i'll be walking around if i'm not wearing a shirt and i'll turn to the left and i mean just yanks out of your ear and it's so humbling i'm like oh oh that hurts yeah yeah so that's the only drawback that i didn't have that issue with the other ones before on the topic of headphones and i'm curious to hear the rocks opinion on this okay so i went to the gym today okay and you weren't there which is interesting because we were supposed to go together i was tired but i lost my train of thought i was kidding headphones so i had uh i worked out with apple air air max uh air pod max those are a piece of shit but over the ear product they've ever made those things are made they hurt they're here your ears they're they're uh they're not great but i so i don't i don't think i don't think working out with like these kinds of headphones are the move too sweaty well they're just they fall they they fall off on certain exercises the the sound quality in the sony mx5s mx4s is the best quality of headphone but the these are also very comfortable to wear for an extended period of time i love wearing these on flights yes but i don't like it if you have the neck pillow.

1:44:23See, that's why I've been going back to the corded ones. But if you have a baby crying next to you, you got to bust these out. So I bring them for safety. You know what I mean? It's a give and take. It's a push and it's a pull, but I'll tell you what. And so is life. So is life. And the corded headphones are good for the gym. As long as you put them under your shirt, you don't put them under your shirt. Bad news, getting caught on stuff. See, I still think AirPods are best for the gym. I just, you know what? I'm done giving it. I was on, this was AirPods number four in my phone. I'm done giving them money.

1:44:54I just cannot do it. Dude, we weren't recording audio. I know you're lying. I got you. Anyways. Yeah, that's where we end this one. Also, Ayo, if you're into filmmaking, want to be level up as a videographer, you should check out our new Instagram. It's called the Dream Client Accelerator. And it also just happens to be the name of our cohort that we do a couple times a year. But you should go check it out because we're giving out some banger tips every single week. Yeah. We'll link it down below. All right. All right. See you guys all next week. Peace.