Bringing indie instincts to Voicemails for Isabelle

0:00I'm Julia Swain. I'm on the Cinematography Podcast with voicemails for Isabel. I think the bus gave me the most anxiety. Again, we didn't want to do it on a stage. We wanted to drive through SF, see the hills, feel the hills, feel the daylight. We closed off the real driver. We left and we built an entire other steering wheel. It was genius because then she could just act and we never had to blue screen any of the bus. This is Cinepod, the Cinematography Podcast. a program about the art, craft, and philosophy of the moving image presented by Hot Rod Cameras. I'm your host, Alana Cody. Today on our show, I speak with Julia Swain, the cinematographer behind Netflix's Voicemails for Isabel, which landed in the streamer's top 10 globally.

0:51Julia returns to Cinepod after her earlier work on the indie feature The Dreadful. With Voicemails for Isabel, Julia reunited with director Leah McKendrick, who she worked with on the film Scrambled. The two women stepped up from a million-dollar budget to a 20-30 million-dollar studio production with Voicemails for Isabel. Today, we dive into how Julia shot the film's pivotal Golden Gate Bridge overlook scenes without using a stage. The team scouted the real Marin Headlands, built a 3D map of the exact sightline, then recreated the spot in a Vancouver park at night, using blue screen only where the bridge needed to be.

1:38How Julia pulled off shooting the most difficult scenes of the film, a real tour bus driving through San Francisco instead of faking it on the soundstage. why stepping up in budget didn't change how she and McKendrick actually work. Julia explains how the instincts built on tiny indie sets and knowing what to prioritize and when to pivot became the exact skill set that led them to move fast on a much bigger show. After the interview, stick around for our short ends, our pet obsessions of the week. But first, find out what's going on in the world of entertainment in our segment called Close Focus.

2:22Hi, Ben. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Great. So today I have an interview that I did with Julia Swain, who did a movie for Netflix called Voicemails for Isabel.

2:35Julia Swain: Oh, nice. I have not seen it. How is the movie? Well, it's not really your speed. It's a romantic comedy. I've been known to enjoy a nice rom-com. Really? Which ones? I don't know. The last good one was probably, I don't know, Sleepless in Seattle. I don't know. When Harry met Sally. I mean, listen, I'm not like typically a super huge fan of romantic comedies. I'll watch one occasionally. But this one was actually pretty good and it spent a long time on Netflix in their top 10. Oh, cool. And yeah, and it's really great. And we've talked to Julia before and this was her first like really bigger budget film that she's worked on.

3:15Julia Swain: Congratulations.

3:19Julia Swain: All right, well, let's get into our close focus topic. What's bubbling up in the world of entertainment this week? Well, it's something you brought up that I had kind of heard about called Infinity Vision. Infinity Vision. Yeah, Infinity Vision. So for people who haven't heard of Infinity Vision, you know, like I've heard of all these different projection formats. I used to be a projectionist. you know so you got your scope you got your flat you got things like IMAX you got things like Dolby what's Infinity Vision I have no idea Ben what is Infinity Vision Infinity Vision is kind of nothing Infinity Vision is is because in this December when when Doomsday the new Avengers movie comes out they were uh disney was unable to secure the correct number of imax screens or i think any imax screens because some other movies have uh preempted them and so to create a premium experience they invented infinity infinity vision they invented infinity vision and the whole point of infinity vision is it's not nothing it's not actually nothing but they're going to uh pre-existing nice theaters, I suppose probably like if you're a regal person, maybe RPX, if you're a Dolby or whatever, and they are, they're basically certifying these pre-existing premium screens as Infinity Vision screens because Doomsday wanted to get an IMAX release, but I believe it is the new Dune movie is preventing them from getting enough or any IMAX screens on opening weekend.

5:04Julia Swain: And I heard an interview with the CEO of IMAX, and he was saying that this does not show that Disney and IMAX are bitter rivals. In fact, there are a ton of Disney movies and Fox movies that are going to be released in IMAX coming up. But if you're paying any attention to the box office lately, an outrageously large percentage of the box office returns that we're getting for our outsized year this year are because of premium screens, specifically IMAX. So Disney said, well, we're just going to make a standard that we can kind of retrofit into any theater. And it's not like they're bringing in new speakers or new projectors or new lamps for the pre-existing projectors or anything else.

5:50Julia Swain: They're just saying. So it's just a markup. It's a markup. It's a certification. And it's probably a markup that already existed in the theater you're going to. So, for instance, if you are a Regal person and you go to RPX, which is Regal's kind of proprietary premium theater screening experience, there's already a markup there. What's the difference? Usually it's just a bigger screen, better sound. And also they do something that Regal, I mean, this has nothing to do with Infinity Vision, but Regal does something that is right out of William Castle. You know, the guy from the 1950s and 60s who made movies like The Tingler, where when he wanted the audience to jump, he had buzzers put into chairs.

6:31Julia Swain: Yeah. So in RPX, in The Regal, you can actually specify if you want to sit in that section. And like when an explosion happens on screen, your seat like shakes a little. I personally go for that. The first and only time I ever saw it, I didn't realize that was a thing. And I was like, the hell? And ever since then, if I go to my local Regal, I will not sit in that section if I go to an RPX screening. Because I find it to not be immersive. I know that they are trying to make it a more immersive experience. I find it to be distracting. Much like 4DX. And I know a lot of people love 40X, but 40X is like when your seat shakes and they spray water in your face and stuff.

7:20Oh, okay.

7:20Julia Swain: And I'm like, nothing makes me feel less. Captain EO or whatever. Yeah, but like every movie is like that. We took my son to see the Disney or the Pixar movie Elemental in that. And it's like, I feel like I'm about to be thrown out of the seat. Like, I feel like I'm in the James Bond ejector seat. And I'm not speaking ill. It's very popular. It's also a markup and people love it. I'm not one of the people who loves that. I'm okay sitting still. I'm okay just watching the movie without anything weird happening to my seat. Okay. But Infinity Vision, to be clear, I don't believe anything weird happens to your seat in Infinity Vision.

7:59Julia Swain: It's just, as far as I can tell, it's a slight certification. It's an upcharge that probably will be the same as whatever that screen's upcharge was. And more than anything, it's a marketing ploy. I mean so is it going to be shown in kind of like like Ilya likes to call it LIMAX screens no because I believe that when you say that something is playing in IMAX that includes the LIMAX screens so for for those of uh I mean there's only I think in the entire world I think there's only 41 true IMAX screens and I live in Los Angeles where I think we have two or three of them are in Los Angeles. The one Christopher Nolan prefers over all others in the whole world is at the Universal City Walk, a movie theater that I will do almost anything to not go to because I don't like the parking situation and I don't like being...

8:53Everybody hates going there.

8:55Julia Swain: But the theater itself is amazing. It's a beautiful theater and it is a true IMAX screen in that it's the exact, I'm not, I don't know, the exact height, exact width, and the audience is exactly lined up but like at most theaters where it'll say in IMAX IMAX has come through and re-engineered that screen but like when I saw the Odyssey for instance I thought I was seeing it in 70 millimeter IMAX I was not I was seeing it digital which became apparent immediately to me like if you're going to go see the Odyssey in IMAX what you're paying for is to see like the highest resolution version of it that you can get and I don't know I couldn't tell you what the resolution of digital IMAX projection is, but I'm guessing it's way below film, like IMAX film, because every frame of a 70 millimeter IMAX is, you know, because it's not just, we should say 65 millimeter, but everyone says 70 millimeter IMAX, it's like stretched sideways.

9:51Julia Swain: And so it's like the size of like a wallet size photograph. Every frame is just enormous. And I don't believe that there's a digital projector on the market that can even come close to that resolution. That being said, seeing the Odyssey in digital IMAX. Not bad. You get great sound. It was a beautiful picture. And it means that it's, you know, that it's a certified screen by IMAX. All right. Well, I don't think I'm going to be going to go see it in Infinity Vision if I see it at all. I'll definitely see it. And maybe I will consider Infinity Vision if it's not too much of a ridiculous markup.

10:27Julia Swain: All right. Well, let's get to the interview with Julia Swain.

10:34So I'm here now with Julia Swain, the DP of Voicemails for Isabel, which is currently on Netflix and was in the top 10 internationally. Welcome, Julia. It's good to have you back. Thanks for having me, Alana. I'm excited to be here again. Yeah. So tell me first a little bit about how you came to this project. Yeah, Leah McKendrick, the director, and I had done Scrambled. We met for that movie, We hit it off and then we made that in L.A., I think 2022, much smaller indie where she was starring in it as well. So we did that film that did really well. Went to South by, had a great theatrical release.

11:14And then her next movie ended up being Voicemails and we got to do that together. And it was a blast. Great. Yeah. I mean, how many years had passed between the two movies? It'd been a little while, right? Yeah, I guess only a couple. we went to South by in 23 had the theatrical in 23 and then a year around a little over a year ago voicemails got greenlit and we got to go do that in the summer of 25 great yeah tell me a little bit too because this is like a much bigger project you know like how did you already was it already sold to Netflix yeah my understanding is that so Leah had Leah's got a really cool career as a writer as well um previous to kind of her breaking into to directing features and from my understanding she had sold the script and it came back to her um and when it came back to her somehow netflix i can't speak for the whole story but somehow netflix and sony came together to make it um and so yeah it was significantly bigger than scrambled so there's a lot of like you know Leah and I had done I had only done like million dollar movies before and this was like a big uh jump which is exciting and it's something that as a director and a director of photography you a lot of people aspire to do to like step up and do a bigger kind of studio level thing so absolutely so what was the what was the budget on the movie I want to say production was like 20 million oh wow that's great yeah which is feels a bit different yeah yeah still have to move really fast still have to same game same games you're playing of like navigating but um you know now you've got a rigging crew to be able to leapfrog ahead and you're able to kind of utilize your time differently right i mean so yeah i was reading that um it was something like um it was pretty short turnaround and you know you had a limited amount of days and locations and yeah we think we originally had 38 to got to 35 um we had we shot 33 in Vancouver and two in San Francisco um I lovingly say this about Leah's scripts is they're really rich and full of characters and locations there's a lot to do in them there's montages um Leah loves a montage like there's a lot going on which makes the movies exciting like even scrambled which was much tinier um because this was somewhere between 20 and 30 um million dollars so scrambled was but it was the same thing of like having to move very quickly company move almost every day so there were moments in voicemails where it's like yeah it's a bounce board and a camera and we're just doing the walk and talk of west listening to a voicemail like you know it's sometimes you had to simplify And it wasn't all these like toys and other times you're shutting down a street and now you have cranes and you're able to, you know, do firework effects and things like that.

14:09So, yeah, that's great. Well, tell me a little bit about your experience working with the same director again. Did you guys have a shorthand that you kind of had developed and, you know, was it a little easier? and yeah so the great thing about scrambled was leo was starring in it and wrote it and directed it so and she's in every single scene of scrambled so if it's not her coverage i'm over her shoulder she's reading with the other actor um so we had to form a really intimate it was really intimate to make that movie because i was also operating every single thing besides like steadicam and there were a couple days of B camera.

14:49So we, we and I formed a really deep trust and understanding and shorthand. And I think going into voicemails, it was different because I wasn't operating. I operated a little bit, but you know, we had two cameras, two operators. Leah wasn't starring, she's a supporting, but she's not on camera every day. So we were able to step back and kind of orchestrate in a different way together. But I think the shorthand we developed, having been in tiny rooms with the camera just me and her you know surrounded by a great crew and producers of course that gave us a lot of just kind of superpower together to kind of not only move quickly but really prioritize together know that we got the shot and then when she was playing Brita we were able to tap back into that kind of shorthand of okay now you're on camera so this like new level of trust has been activated with like I've got you and you're on screen and kind of how do we um utilize now now on voicemails we had playback we had a video department right on scrambled we didn't have that um so how do we utilize the kind of what what are the what are the pieces of this bigger budget that we take advantage of in those moments where we have to move quickly and she's on camera she's not on camera um and kind of had and then when do we tap back into the more intimate kind of we're right there on set together thing yeah great yeah and so it sounds like you kind of still had to use that indie sensibility in the in the this movie as well for totally a lot of shots and things yeah yeah I think a lot of friends who had stepped up in budget were like it's the exact same thing you're going to do exactly what you do and it's definitely not fully true like there's obviously things you have to adapt to on the bigger budgets but there is a lot of truth in that it's exactly the same way you move how you prioritize because I think that's all what makes a great cinematographer too not just lighting and knowing how to walk into a room and make it look good or how to block actors but it's like how do you schedule how do you get smart about when to do certain scenes and how to pivot when you need to like that's a huge part of your job so So I think having done so many indies like Scrambled where you're flying gives you that ability to really like doing indies kind of became it kind of made me so great for this because I could tap back into this and know how to move so quickly and not used to all the rigging resources and all these toys.

17:24Like I know how to get I know how to get and like down and dirty and know what's important and how to move and things like that. Right. That's good. Yeah. So when you, for our voicemails for Isabel, did you, were you there right from the beginning with, did you guys have a lot of prep or not really? Or how did, how did that? Yeah. Well, it's funny. Leah and I walked in, I think we had eight or nine weeks of prep, which I've never had before. Right on an inty, you've got like two to four maybe. And we walked in like, oh my gosh, we have so much time. time and then we were like oh no this is not enough time like it just was not enough time it's never enough time um so it was very funny to think oh now we have two months of prep and we get to scout everything but it still was a lot to do so it it was not enough time but it was good it was good and we again we'd worked together before so we knew how to prioritize and our shot list was dialed in like everything was dialed in but of course like even if you're starting production this location is no longer available or we have to move locations because this day the way this day has to work with actor schedules we can't get to this other part of town in the time like your day is gone so we need to move that to somewhere in this area of town and um so you're able the more ahead you get you know and the better we were with each other knowing how to prioritize we could then kind of pivot together as we entered production and knew how to um like utilize our resources you guys shot in vancouver but then you had a couple days in like a couple other places for pit for establishing shots right yeah just san francisco and it was it wasn't just sort of establishes but it was that tour bus scene yeah which was like crazy so we did that whole scene in like less than a day um plus like lombard street and all the different pier 39 yeah like all the date all the little Chinatown like all the dates and establishers were in San Francisco what was it like shooting in Vancouver for San Francisco and Austin yeah it was actually pretty seamless I felt like locations they had a lot of ideas right off the bat because they knew what we're what was going to serve us logistically um for a shoot and things like that like Columbia Street is where we shot Wes running and um and also Jill on New Year's in the beginning she does the same run on the sidewalk to get to her parents house um and i felt like it was more of leah and i walking into certain rooms and figuring out are they were they right it didn't feel as much of like is this true to sf because i felt like the parks and stuff were kind of like queen elizabeth park is hippie hill um and i forget the other name of the park for the end but like we knew okay let's add the bridge in the back at the very end like things like that we knew how to kind of utilize We had a great VFX team too who could like add a little bit of magic here and there, clean things up.

20:15And like David Lamb Park is the marina. Like, and so obviously there were like Van City boats in the back that had to be like taken out, you know, like, so it wasn't, nothing felt like too difficult to kind of, you know, how do we make this kind of feel as true as possible as we can? Because we're obviously shooting in Vancouver for a reason to make it feel like SF and Austin. Sure. I lived in San Francisco. Oh, cool, cool. San Francisco is amazing. Shooting there was super fun. But so it was pretty funny to like see the locations. I'm like, okay, she is at the Marin Headlands looking over at the bridge and that isn't real.

20:56Totally, totally. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing. It's like we're in Vancouver, so you do your best with what you have. And obviously like people who live in Vancouver and see Vancouver and whatever. But yeah, and also that that lookout where she sits on the bench, like in real life, that thing is really ugly. Right. And so we're adding magic and trees and like we're trying to make it a little bit more. oh sure yeah and i was gonna yeah i wanted to ask you more about that scene and stuff like that um basically um also i was kind of like well first of all how it would take her a long time to get across the bridge she doesn't have a car totally but anyway i know i'm like yeah okay that's reality there's some magic in this movie of course tell me a little bit about creating that scene in particular because there's a lot of pivotal things that happen at that it's like her special spot where you know she totally really kind of likes to leave you know leave voicemails for her sister and um reflect and kind of decompress from her verbal job and and then she and Wes meet so totally yeah we had quite a bit of work to do there was a bunch of voicemails I think there's actually a voicemail that's not in the movie that we did so there's like a lot of scenes um with Jill alone but then there's obviously the pivotal moment where her and West meet in person for the first time.

22:16And so, yeah, it had to feel secluded. It had to feel, you know, we wanted it to feel a little bit magical. Leah didn't want to feel any street lights or any pollution. It was all going to be moonlight. There's a little bit of a warm glow that I added for like, if, you know, the bridge is kind of reflecting up at her with the lights and stuff, because there's all, you know, there's cars and things and the bridge has really great kind of sodium vapor lights at night that I threw in there. But yeah, we didn't want to, obviously shooting on location would have been impossible and obviously tourists and just like, there's no way the fog in SF, which apparently locals call Carl.

22:57Well, also it's very windy at that spot. It's super windy, sound, getting down there, you know, getting all your gear. There's just, there's that's not even a question so we knew we had to recreate it um uh leah and i aren't uh you know stages can feel really people can make stages look great but i think one of her priorities was like also for the actors like let's not sit on a stage in these really intimate moments and like stare at a volume or stare at something oh so it wasn't a you didn't do a volume for that it was not a stage no so what we ended up the compromise ended up being a park at night it was actually queen elizabeth with a path it had a real path kind of looking like it's coming down like she came down into the spot um with trees that we then all we had to do was do blue screen for back toward the bridge and a couple coverage things and that was it so we're in the elements it's a night exterior and it's just supplementing blue where we had to and it was lit in such a way that I didn't have to really like light the blue screen a crazy amount like you would on a stage with like a ton of units like it ended up being really not as painful as you would think to do obviously production and 80s were like weather cover this is still kind of a risk because now we're doing this outside at night and it's a night shoot and whatever but I felt like it was great and it felt like a good kind of in between where again we're in the elements and we're just supplementing those angles and we mapped out um exactly where this bench would be in real life like we went to san francisco first went to battery spencer here's where it would be and then i like i scooted i scooted leah and chris our vfx soup kind of as stand-ins i was like okay we'd probably be here and this is how much of the bridge you would see and then we went to vancouver troubleshot a couple potential park locations and then recreated those angles at those locations to be like okay blue screen would be right here here's what you would see off the blue screen you know here's the camera height and we so we met we made a whole entire virtual or vfx did um 3d map of where our bench would be and you could go in and see how much of the bridge you would see and then we had a virtual viewfinder on the day with all their you know really kind of a rough mock-up of like and then you could walk around on at the park on our shoot and be like cool if we put it here we'd see this much that's neat yeah and it what it did was it eliminated a lot of post work like decisions like all of our decisions were made and so it was just about letting them go and put in our we shot tiles of the bridge in that spot in sf and they tied them all together and and then we judged in color and yeah it was a really seamless process that was really cool great yeah yeah yeah i mean i just thought you might have just done it on the volume or something but yeah it looked people definitely wanted that but we decided not to and I think it worked really well yeah um yeah definitely that's cool yeah probably save you some money too maybe yes maybe not I don't know okay I don't know really how much volume let's go for versus yeah I don't know I think it's uh it's probably I don't know because then you're paying for the stage and you've got a are you putting plates in live the thing with that was we didn't really have to dial in any the thing with the stage we didn't have to dial in any um plates beforehand like we could just have rough stuff with the blue screen on the at night and then just do our thing and judge it later because we knew exactly where it was going to be um i don't know we did what we did and it worked it worked i saw a review that was like they did it at the bridge and i was like mission accomplished yeah like well i look i think if i hadn't actually been someone who's from that area i probably wouldn't have known the difference yeah yeah i'm like i know these things yeah yeah but yeah you're right the fog is called carl and i live in the sunset district so it was always funny yes we had to plan around carl it's daily carl reports yeah and it's so funny because like um anywhere else in california if you live at the beach it's like awesome but i live two blocks from the beach and it's like the worst place to live oh no because of the fogginess because of the fog in the cold yeah so backing up a little bit what what were some of your um like visual influences because your background isn't really in like you haven't really done that much romantic comedy i mean have you done it yeah no no you're right i haven't realized that really uh yeah because i've done a lot of like horror I guess like dramedies but definitely not romance um yeah we definitely looked at you know part of the mission was like bringing back some nostalgia of rom-coms from like the 90s and 2000s like the warmth and you know I think there's a whole conversation right now about modern movies in general but rom-com specifically feeling colder or like a little bit more sterile and missing that warmth and contrast and like things kind of being flat nowadays so we definitely wanted to um you know bring back a bit of contrast and like or lean into it at least and like light them warmly like with tungsten when we could and um couldn't shoot on film that wasn't a discussion for this uh we had we shot digitally but um you know I tried to use a lot a soft light on faces and like kind of elements that you love from movies of that time we looked at Jerry Maguire we looked at The Holiday The Holiday is all portraits of people's faces like if you watch that movie it's all just beautiful shots of faces and characters and everyone's lit really beautifully and Chef was a big inspiration Chef was not only a kind of north star for me in terms of like aspect ratio they used you know Panavision anamorphic lenses that feel really soft and nostalgic as well but a lot of the food stuff is pretty and we knew we were going to do a lot of food work i really like that movie yeah yeah chef was great um so chef was one of the biggest north stars for us as well um but we you know nodding hill two three great two three nine rom-com um yeah lots of lots of fun rom-com watches so yeah for the so for the food stuff you kind of pretty much um did you have any other influences it was mostly just chef for the look mostly just chef yeah I didn't um there's definitely more in a deck that I made that I'm blanking on where maybe they came from but I I didn't want we didn't want to do the food too commercially like you you know what I mean like you wouldn't stop down and it's not this like beauty shot of a you know pastry necessarily I mean so so I mean it is but it's not like you're not presenting it to a customer it's like a different kind of method of thinking like you're doing it in a narrative sense that's still like beautiful and there's a bit of softness still it's not like razor sharp food work that you would see in like a commercial um it was still kind of really beautiful but yeah I was getting in Leah has formed a love of diopters where you throw a diopter in the map box and you can now kind of turns your lens into a macro of sorts and you can get really tight on things you get really close in on the food um so she'd be like get the diopter you know and we'd all we'd be in on the food and um tons of kumquats and uh pastries and um but which i don't remember too much of that actually being in the film though you know what i mean like a lot of it little you're you're right you're right i think we did a lot more than is in the film yeah um there were a couple food montages that didn't make it in the film actually yeah but we it was something we were conscious of like getting a lot of options like because the kumquats were kind of transitional for like getting back in and out of the kitchen um there was probably more pastries we shot obviously nick offerman with the one that he's like crowning and then he eats and everybody's cheering um things like that so we wanted to think about food and we also wanted to think about food in the sense of like being really frenetic with the camera and like having a lot of movement with like when she's making her breakfast burrito when she's cooking for her as opposed to when she's you know baking in the you know cutting kumquats it's very like static and not not exciting and like thinking about when is she making things for her and her passion versus when she's in his kitchen and it's not as exciting we have these two characters one of which only knows jill through the voicemails you know that she's leaving and she doesn't know who he is at all and then we're and then you know you establish them in these two different environments before they ever meet So talk to me a little bit about, you know, your how you wanted to establish them in their in their two different environments.

31:49yeah we talked about wes being very sort of powerful in his work environment um kind of him commanding the camera the camera looking up at him so he's feeling a little more powerful like when he's at the cubicle when he's walking down the hallway we're always a little bit below the eyeline um same when he's like there's a montage of him showing properties and making deals and things like that so very like slick camera like wes um and then talked about jill being a way more handheld and sort of real and just very like a little bit more chaotic in her life um as she's like figuring this out in san francisco um and then you know when they're listening when he's listening and she's talking like being really like closer than we've ever been on them and really um it was kind of about trying to help the audience understand and feel Wes falling for her.

32:45So like having these more intimate close-up moments when he's listening versus when she's talking and that connection's being made just through audio. How do we do that visually? So yeah, we talked a lot about who they are and their kind of inner lives and what they want and things like that and how that dictates kind of how we move. So then how did how did your camera and lens choices kind of play into that? You wanted you know you wanted there to be a softness when they were together but then you wanted them to also have a little bit more staticness when they're in their professional lives. Yeah there was definitely there's definitely like I would be lying if I said there wasn't an element of like leaning into what I know very well for this movie stepping up in budget and, you know, really wanting to do a really good job, as I always do, but really like trying to prove myself at this level too.

33:42I think the Alexa 35, I know, I shoot a lot of airy cameras for the most part, and it's just a camera that I know. I've got the range. I know how to push it. I know how to expose it really well. So definitely wanted the color space of the Alexa and everything like that I think lent itself to this kind of beautiful soft world um and then the tease from Panavision I just feel like and I did tests like I explored large format I explored uh the Venice I explored um all kinds of lenses at different houses and I just feel like I come back to them once in a while because I feel like they're not too sharp there are lenses that are so sharp and so corporate-y and I just like am so turned off by that and then then there were lenses on the other side that might be too funky and too distracting and too soft and too distorted and I wanted to find I wanted to use something in between that felt really beautiful works really well with skin tones but wasn't like too modern if that makes sense like it was this kind of this perfect in between right characteristics so yeah and the anamorphics help with the um portraiture elements yeah yeah totally i think the anamorphic too was kind of trying to stray away from um i don't know like there's a rolodex in my head of just like flatter spherical rom-coms and i didn't want to do that so i wanted to lean into anamorphic for this is that what they usually used for rom-coms like a more sphere no there's a there's a mix but i feel like in my head when i think of rom-coms and i see images from movies it's just 16 9 uh spherical and it's i don't know to me it wasn't as attractive for this and i think the lighting and voicemails is not it's it's very subtle and grounded and it's commercial but it's not we're not doing anything crazy in this movie and so I think anamorphic just kind of gives it a little bit more of a cinematic push and it feels a little bit more I don't know how to describe it I think it just kind of helps balance all of those elements and it just felt right I guess sure that's another thing is like Leah and I are just very intuitive and I think it's like about how it feels and even for scrambled I brought her in and showed her different like she was my stand-in because she played Nellie and I was like look look at 239, look at spherical, look at anamorphic, look at, and it was just kind of like, what does this movie feel like?

36:12And this one felt anamorphic. Okay, good. Well, what about the lighting then? I did notice one fun little trick that you did. Oh, what trick did you notice? There's a trick that no one has brought up. Oh, really? Oh, the transition when she's asleep and then it's daylight. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Was there another one? The one, yeah, Izzy's in the hospital and the dance lighting, the Robin lighting. is in her hospital bed right it's like pink and all of them so it felt so natural i guess i really felt they really felt so connected i didn't even think about it yeah that's cool that really worked yeah it was stealthy i guess um no it was great it was it was like she was really there within the dance yeah yeah it was like how do you connect them yeah totally yeah yeah when she wakes up um yeah I mean the lighting was all about for me there's nothing more interesting than the human face so it was all about you know really taking care of the human face and I love lighting softly on faces and having a little bit of wrap with the key light so that they it's very flattering and and beautiful definitely because of the bench being at night and Leah not Leah was very against streetlights.

37:31Moonlight had to be part of this movie. Moonlight was part of the language. So there's moonlight in other night exteriors. At the beer garden, on the street, there's even moonlight. So that was always part of the wedding. Yeah. So that was definitely going to be a thing. And yeah, I love color separation and mixing different things and trying to have really healthy images where you've got highlights and shadows and, you know, we've got a great, healthy range and um tried to light tungsten where we could obviously we were moving very quickly so sometimes it was like a lot of led does anything else have a lot of warmth you're right it does have a lot of warmth that you i didn't yeah with the i didn't know you would use tungsten but yeah that makes sense yeah yeah where we could but um yeah definitely prioritizing warm keys and even in Wes's office where the cubicle with Felix that was one location where I couldn't swap out any of the overheads or I decided not to because I needed the resources in some other location and they were warm so even that office is not cold you know and even his office is like just kind of daylighty and nice and you know everything we did we tried to make it really flattering and have some sort of warmth, even if it was a daylight scene.

38:53Well, that's very, very rom-com. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Your approach, it seems like, was that the two visual languages for Jill and then for Wes were different in the beginning, and then they come together. How did you figure, how did you kind of figure out how to meld the two once they finally met? yeah i think it was scene by scene as it always is maybe like when they're seated and she makes him the pot pie it's very quiet and observant and um there's definitely a couple angles where we're more with him and he's like moving his hands because he's nervous because he wants to tell her the truth but so there's a little bit more of subjectivity with him versus her in those moments um after the wedding when she runs out now we're handhelds what that scene for example we didn't do a wide.

39:46A wide did not serve us. It was like, we are, all we want to do is be here. There's no reason to ever be wide. So we didn't do it. And I think, again, speaking to just Leah and I knowing what to do, it's like leaning, not being afraid of those instincts of like, we're not going to get this because we're literally not, we don't need it. Even though anybody would tell you what you should get your wide now, or you should be a sub-establisher of the two of them on this path. So things like that, really leaning into like, what is the scene? What is the energy of the scene um and how to do that the dates uh like pier 39 it's handheld it's kinetic it's you know it's like very fun you know and then like chinatown is steadicam which is also fun through the little shop and kind of guy you know guiding them through and so yeah i think wes's camera language definitely loosens up when he's having fun with jill and when he's falling in love with jill and you know and then he's on the bench with brita and it's like we're sad and we're static again and he's now he's got a beard and you know what I mean like so yeah it's definitely it's definitely like a fun evolution there's the one scene you said you were that we kind of touched on a little bit before about the bus in San Francisco the tour bus yeah so was that like the most challenge do you think that was the most challenging day and scene to shoot yes I think walk me through it a little bit tell tell me about that yeah it was originally a tie between between the overlook and the bus but I think the bus wins I think the bus gave me the most anxiety only because again we didn't want to do it on a stage we wanted to drive through SF see the hills feel the hills feel the daylight be moving the bus was challenging but exciting it was the other part about it is it's a tiny it's a bus so it's like getting on and off changing camera angles everything was going to be really time consuming um i decided not to go handheld because there's no way your bodies would absorb all the bumps and everything you would notice a lot more and i was explaining this to someone too i feel like sometimes what if i was going to be handheld i was operating an sf2 i was a camera if if i could put the cameras on vibration plates on fluid heads in that bus to avoid a bunch of this and have a little bit more control the secret that I or the power that I gained was now I could look off and see where I was instead of instead of trying to balance and kind of peek because I was in charge of where we were driving and where we were going and I decided the paths and because all I had was the sun I didn't rig that bus there was no time to do that so what I gained from doing that approach not only just the stability of the camera there's definitely a couple bumps in the movie you see and even And Nick is like reacting to the bumps.

42:33But now I could really see where I was and communicate if I needed to turn and pay attention to what was happening a little bit more. So, yeah, it was them getting on. There's dialogue before it moves. There's four pages of it moving with Walter. He gets off. Where does he get off? How do we shoot him getting off? And then Wes takes over all of his stuff. And then we had the bus driver and a fun Easter egg about the bus driver is that the bus was from the UK. It was this really noisy, vibrating, gas-powered bus from the UK that they had brought in from the tour company that we're all familiar with.

43:10They do tours all around the world. So the driver's side was actually on the right. What we ended up doing to avoid green screening the bus driver, because initially you'd be like, we'll probably do that green screen so she can like safely, she doesn't have to drive and act. Was the actor was also really the bus driver? No. So what we did was we closed off the real driver. We left and we built an entire other steering wheel on the American side. And then she could. I know it was genius because then she could just. Actually worked better for you then to have the driving on the other side. Exactly.

43:49Exactly. So then we had a precision driver, like an actual driver who could just talk and take us safely and she could just act. And we never had to blue screen any of the bus. Wow. We could shoot her really moving. That was perfect. Normally, you know, you do like the whole bus on the stage, you know, wouldn't be a real bus. It would be, you know. So, yeah, that's that's pretty cool that you actually. Yeah, it's all real. Yeah, totally. Yeah. yeah so did you guys i mean you but you didn't actually do a real like route actual route through i mean there was cuts and things so it looked like it was yeah if you like chopped up yeah yeah yeah yeah we planned we took off from golden gate park we shot in sequence um yeah so we had a plan the plan i'm sure we diverted from it a couple times so it's not perfectly in sequence um but we tried we shot the whole day in sequence so we ended at union square and where they get off and um they kiss and um yeah so we but part of the scouting was me trying to plan for sun direction what time do we get to this point on our way to union square things like that so that no one's like front lid or kind of you know sun's not screwing us yeah wow that's great it turned out really great thanks yeah so um I mean so yeah was it just fortuitous that you had this that that you had that bus with the driving on the other side so we looked at you were able to play on it okay well we looked at a couple that interior was the most interesting to Leah too like it had a cool checkered floor it had red seats um it was it was just visually better and then of course ironically is how life works the bus you want is the driving's on the wrong side so then we had to be like okay how do we make this bus work let's build a whole another driver's seat with a steering wheel and then which i think like i said i think that was better totally totally yeah that's cool i like that yeah and then we did the garage the real garage tour apartment is in sf and then we rebuilt the garage on stage in vancouver and then we you know I live my place because it's exactly like that you entered through the damn garage because it was a granny apartment it's like well that's true exactly yeah very real so yes yeah I thought that was funny for so when you were prepping for the volume of setup how were you able to get through it without feeling too rushed or you know pressured or was it just the amount of planning and prep that you were able to do yeah I'm everyone that's that I've shot for knows that I'm extremely OCD.

46:38And like my shot lists are very beautiful and they're in shooting order and there's a tab for every single day and any HOD can understand what we're doing. Now we can throw it out the window on the day. There's definitely moments where we're like, screw that. Let's do this. Like we feel differently now that we're watching the rehearsal or whatever. Did you ever do that? Totally, totally. So I just, I just like to come in with a plan I've gotten all Leah's thoughts um like I'm with Leah and I I'm the one who's hands-on with the shot list like form formatting it and making sure everybody understands it and giving access to everybody but I'm taking all of Leah's ideas like she's like I gotta be close up in this moment I've gotta be I want her to feel small here like let's get a wide let's you know I'm I'm kind of transcribing all those things and we're overheading and planning like the kitchen stuff all the flanair kitchen stuff was like had to be so specific because we only had three days in that kitchen and there are so there's so much that's not even in the movie that we did in that kitchen so we had mountains of scenes to get done in three days and that was on location it wasn't a stage so that was tough um so we get as specific as we can and then there was definitely things where we're like nope let's now we're seeing this differently let's go here um let's not go by that so yeah I think it's just like again dialing in communicating everything together of like what's important and then you're able to really tackle it and and I look to Leah if she's like I only need this one thing actually because we know we need to move on then great and now we can continue our day um so yeah I read that it was like you had to go through a lot of hoops or I guess Leah did with getting the Robin song, which was like pretty key to the whole movie.

48:26Yes, the Robin song was, I think in the first draft, like seven years ago of this movie. There's another great thing about Leah's scripts. The soundtrack is in the script. Right. Oh, okay. Marjorie was in the script. Like it's, she's so well thought with all the music, which is amazing. But I think we got Greenland and we went into prep and we didn't have permission for the Robin song. So we, I think we like made a deck and explained and I definitely helped like kind of just, you know, collecting images and like communicating what is the movie about? Here's why this song is important and things like that.

49:02And then Leah went into battle and got it. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah, I feel like the song is, I mean, it's always been epic and beloved, but I feel like it's definitely had a resurgence of love for that song since her movie. Do you find it different working with women directors? You've worked with several, you know, as compared to like, or more of a women-oriented crew rather than, you know, just, you know, mostly with men. Because you worked with Leah before, and then you worked with Natasha Kermani on a few things too. So is there, do you find there's like a difference at all?

49:44Or what do you think? I don't between men and women I don't think so I feel like every all the directors I work with are really um they're just all great humans and I think they all really have strong visions and at the same time I feel super empowered to walk on a set with them and go into battle with them and elevate the ideas and make them think even deeper and question things you know what I mean like bring a new perspective um I don't know I don't think so I think like Leah specifically really knows what she wants she's such a great leader and um like I trust Leah with my life and I like want to do nothing but support what she wants um so yeah I feel like they're all I feel really lucky like I really truly can say like I only really work with excellent directors which is the goal yeah i mean i just it's cool that you've gotten the opportunity to work with several women directors too you know yeah as a totally dp i mean i feel like a lot of female dps they kind of only get the opportunity to work with men mostly it seems like totally and also i think i think i haven't this i feel like this hasn't been talked about enough with this movie is like they let a female director and cinematographer step up budget wise like to go from a million to 30 million is not a small step and I think you know for years to her and I have been trying to do that but you know and we're always going to do indies we're always the budget doesn't matter but to be able to be given that opportunity I have not had that until now and I've tried and directors have women directors have tried we tried to step up but studios wouldn't let us and And I think it's such a cool thing that Netflix was like, yeah, this is the team.

51:35And then we killed it. We smashed it. Yeah, absolutely. I know. It's really impressive. Yeah. So that's been great. I love it. It's a great movie. It looks great. You did a great job. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for being on the Cinematography Podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me.

51:56So that was Julia Swain. Thanks so much for coming on and talking to me about voicemails for Isabel. and uh ben yeah you got to talk to her about before about the dreadful yeah the dreadful

52:05Julia Swain: is really cool and uh yeah she's she's awesome

52:11then it's time for our short ends i guess i'm going first you're going first because because

52:17Julia Swain: yeah because uh it's not that you're the guest it's just that you don't you don't do these all the time so okay so my short end this week is my daughter and i uh started watching glee because she's never seen Glee. So that I have that in common with her. I've never seen Glee anyway. Oh, it's hilarious. It's very funny. Well, we had watched Best in Show after not having seen it in a really long time. And then I was like, you know what else Jane Lynch is in? This really fun show called Glee. So that's been pretty fun. We've gotten through several episodes. So where's it streaming? I think it's on Hulu.

52:54Julia Swain: It's so weird to think about TV from that time because it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. And yet that was like a time where a season of television was 22 to 24 episodes. And it was just a different ecosystem. I'd have to check what year because we're starting from year one. And I mean, this is before I had kids. So let's see. It was 2009. Whoa. And it ran for six seasons for 121 episodes. It was until March of 2015. Amazing. Well, I can't say that I watched it for that long, but it's been fun to go back and revisit and hear some of those songs. And it's a pretty good show. Ryan Murphy.

53:38Julia Swain: I didn't realize that was Ryan Murphy. I guess I did and I forgot. Yeah. How far he's come to from from Glee to Monster Ed Gein. Yeah, I know. I just thought it was funny since you we just put that out last week. Yeah. And the upcoming Monster Lizzie Borden. Yeah. Monster Lizzie Borden is actually coming out real soon. If you're interested in watching Glee at all, it might be worth re-watching. It's kind of a fun time. Very, you know, nice getaway entertainment for your vacation for your brain. My short end is sometimes I'm like, YouTube, your algorithm is me, figured out. And it is a channel called How I Filmed This.

54:17Julia Swain: It's presented by Rachel Tullale. I think I'm saying her name right. She is a very experienced director who's been around for a long, long, long time. The first thing I remember that she directed was Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare, the Nightmare on Elm Street movie, which I believe was like 91 or 92. She also directed Tank Girl, if you remember Tank Girl. But she's become a very prolific TV director, and she's directed Good Omens, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Band of Gold, Quantum Leap, the newer Quantum Leap. And she does these deep dive videos. She herself is doing them, and she does these deep dive videos where she shows you the whole store.

55:00Julia Swain: She shows you what the idea was, how they came up with it, how they executed it, how she planned for it. She had an episode that dropped just a few days ago that is called How, parentheses, Not to Film in Cars. And it's her talking about doing car shots. And she goes through filming on a flatbed, filming with rear screen projection, filming with green screen, filming on a volume. and all the ways that she's done it. And she just kind of walks you through as a director, her entire thought process when she's doing this stuff. She shows you her actual notes or the diagrams or the previs or whatever it was they used to get to where they got.

55:44Julia Swain: And it's just, I'll go like a lot of times I'll say like, oh, it's a YouTube video, but it's 30 minutes long. Oh God. Well, I'll just watch a minute of it. And this isn't her, this is like anything on YouTube. And then with her, it's like, I'll start watching it. And I'm like in wrapped for 30 minutes while she talks about car shots. And, you know, maybe it's just me, but she even talks about poor man's process in that video. Like she she she runs the gamut. And I think if you're interested in how stuff how stuff gets done in the real world on real TV shows and movies and and whatnot, she's she's great.

56:20Julia Swain: She's Frank. She's she's very, very interesting and very thoughtful about what she does. And it's just interesting to hear about. The first one I watched from her was in Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare. They ended that movie with a giant 3D section. And it was her talking about, you know, in the early 90s shooting with the rather difficult to work with 3D cameras and how she planned, how she figured out how to shoot with it, how she planned the shoot. and it's all very interesting. I think she's a really fascinating person and anyone who likes what we talk about on this podcast would probably eat up everything that she has to say.

56:58Great. Yeah, I mean, I think they've gotten a lot better at shooting car shots these days, especially because, you know, cameras are smaller. You can do a lot more.

57:07Julia Swain: Car shots and, you know, I think volume shooting helps, but to me, it's one of those things where it's like, Every time I'm not talking about any of her movies or TV shows or whatever in particular, but it's like anything, any movie or TV show that has car stuff. There's there's like they can do anything on a green screen except sell that someone's in a car. And maybe it's because we just spend so much of our lives in cars. So we know what it looks like. Have you watched Pluribus? Yeah. We had Marshall Adams on and he actually made a mini volume stage for the segments at the very first episode of Pluribus where she's driving the truck.

57:49He basically made a tiny little volume on the windshield of.

57:54Julia Swain: Oh, interesting. Yeah. So he's projecting the scenery in on the, you know, I mean, it's. Well, she talks about that, too. She talks about like doing I think it was when she did Sherlock. so volume stages didn't exist yet but they could do pretty exciting stuff with rear screen and um or just projection and she was talking about how they would you know have a curved background or whatever how how they how they would handle kind of the physical challenge of pulling it off including making one for reflections but i still feel like even with those there's something about the balance of light inside the car and out that almost never looks right.

58:35Julia Swain: And again, I'm not saying her, I'm saying everyone. Like I'll go see an Avengers movie and I'm like, why is it that they can like build an entire universe and have a Pegasus and all kinds of other crap going on and they can't give me a believable car shot? You know, it's just a very elusive thing to get right. And she talks about like, well, you know, if you put your car on a flatbed, it looks great, but it limits how much coverage you can get and it limits how much you can direct because you're not going to be in the car with them probably and so you're going to be on a calm and you know when every direction that you give the actors you're giving everyone's hearing it and you might not want everyone to hear it and it's you know it's just an onerous challenge and actually just now with the interview that we did um it was uh julia swain had to shoot uh on a bus the tour bus going around san francisco and they chose to do it all real i feel like that would actually work better than a car because if your bus is bigger yeah and uh yeah exactly and you know the problem with a car is if you're going to do a real car you have to be up on some kind of a towing platform so they make these ultra low platforms but then someone has to be pulling it and the car is teeny tiny inside but in a bus i imagine uh a small skeleton crew you're not going to get the whole crew in there but a skeleton crew can hide in a bus and um and so you can have the director and the DP in there with a monitor and they could just be ducking down when you're actually driving.

1:00:01Julia Swain: And I bet it looks a thousand zillion gajillion times better than anything you would get on a stage. I guess that's that'll do it. All right. So where where can people find you if they want to bug you and ask you more questions? Well, people can find me at growwithgreentree.com, which is my website for my marketing company, which I do a little bit of stuff here and there. I've done Ben's been doing a lot of stuff for our environmental groups and social media marketing. Oh, excellent. So that's where you can find me. Where can we find you, Ben? You can find me at BenRock.com. And last week I talked a little bit about how I just redone my website.

1:00:39Julia Swain: And I'm using Squarespace, by the way. And there were some functionalities I couldn't get it to work that are part of Squarespace. And I realized it's because I was on Squarespace 7.0 and I had to upgrade my site to 7.1, which led me into a complete vision quest and a redo of my entire website from top to bottom. So if you're bored, feel free to go to benrock.com. And the good news is like Squarespace 7.1 gives you way more control over your design, like way, way, way more. I would encourage anyone to go check it out and let me know what you think. But I had to kind of rebuild the whole thing.

1:01:13Julia Swain: It took me about one day to just from scratch rebuild the entire website. Some of the pages ported over kind of, but then a lot of stuff had to be reformatted and changed around and super annoying. All right. So Alana, who do we have to thank? Can you thank yourself? Sure. I'll give myself a pat on the back. So we got to thank you for producing and editing. We have some great interviews coming up and a very exciting one that's happening a week from tomorrow, I might add. Very, very exciting. and who else should we thank well I guess should we thank Ilya even though he's not here yeah screw that guy no we should thank Ilya for being Hot Rod Cameras the sponsor of the show yes so thanks to Ilya thanks to Hot Rod Cameras and thanks to Kaze Alitrachi for composing all the music on the show and you can go and find Kaze at musicbykaze.com or at Kays' YouTube channel where you can watch Kays repair synthesizers, correct?

1:02:23Julia Swain: Kays fixes synthesizers and Kays also has a business fixing synthesizers. Say that five times fast. And that is Kayslabs.com. Great, that's it. Did you want to take us out then? Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in. This has been CinePod, the cinematography podcast presented by Hot Rod Cameras. Find your next camera, lens, or accessory at hotrodcameras.com. Watch and subscribe to our show on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow and interact with us on Instagram, threads, Facebook, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn. But not X. Don't do that. Thanks for tuning in.