DP Doug Emmett on shooting the crime drama Furious

0:00I'm Doug Emmett and I'm the DP of Furious Unlucky. Those windows become mirrors and especially it's kind of like shooting in a big box of mirrors. And so the challenge was not only just figuring out the scene and shooting the scene and making it cinematic and making it work. But it was also like, it's so funny, it's like if the camera were the cam just a few inches left to right, there'd be a grip hanging out like having a sandwich just on the edge of the frame because the guy literally had nowhere to go. This is CinePod, the cinematography podcast, a program about the art, craft, and philosophy of the moving image presented by Hot Rod Cameras.

0:39I'm your host, Alana Cody. Today on our show, I speak with cinematographer Doug Emmett about shooting the Hulu crime thriller Furious. Doug is also the DP of the Apple TV show Lucky. Today we dive into how the Furious team rehearsed their lookbook pitches over Zoom before presenting to the studio. Every pitch got shorter and sharper and the department heads began production aligned on the tone of the show. How Emmett lit a 60th floor penthouse of floor-to-ceiling windows that became a tricky house of mirrors once darkness fell. Taped up light mats, low bounces, and black rags kept the reflections out of frame with no need to paint them out.

1:28How a cavernous queen's restaurant became a claustrophobic party scene. Emmett flooded the space with red light from old bulbs, mixed in cyan, and kept the camera tight on Alice because there weren't enough extras to shoot wide. How he shot the show's two protagonists, Alice and Catherine. Emmett held a consistent focal length, kept close-ups in the 60 to 100 millimeter range, and never went longer, so the audience stays inside the character's space. 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.

2:15so alana this is amazing kismet that we're doing this again because i think it was the last time you and i did this we we talked a little bit about uh the amazing uh disney-led uh technical innovation known as infinity vision do you remember what infinity vision was no i don't It's nothing. Infinity Vision is, they are handpicking already pretty good screens. So, for instance, at my local Regal, I believe they use the RPX screen. So it's already like IMAX is like, you know, you have to bring in a team of experts to engineer it. Infinity Vision is like, hey, you got XYZ projector and you got a decent screen and you got this kind of sound.

3:00We'll call it Infinity Vision and upcharge everybody for it. And and we got to see the rollout this past weekend of Infinity Vision. They put back into theaters the last Avengers movie and game and it made twenty five million dollars. It did. And then it looks like maybe Infinity Vision is going to be a thing because more. I think they said more than half of the theaters. It was gross. Thirteen point five million in Infinity Vision. So more than half of the people who went to see it paid the upcharge for a wholly invented, non-existent format. I mean, it's not like even RPX, which is Regal's thing, or Dolby.

3:45You know, there's a number of different ways you could see a movie. But Infinity Vision is just like hitchhiking onto a pre-existing premium screen of some kind. So I guess the upcharge is, you would have paid an upcharge no matter what. but now you're paying it for a thing that doesn't really exist. Yeah, but I guess enough people are bamboozled by that to want to go see it that way. I would love to see what people, like a comparison between someone who saw it in Infinity Vision versus somebody who didn't and see if anybody really can quantify or say if they saw a difference. I mean, look, if you're a big fan of Avengers and you want to see it in the theater and they're bringing it back and I guess in some screens they put in up to five minutes of new scenes.

4:34Yeah. Oh, no. And it was like, I think, six minutes of the new movie, The Doom. OK, Doomsday. Yeah. And, you know, like we're going to we're going to see the flex of this when Doomsday comes out. if Doomsday is as big of a hit as everyone is hoping because Endgame, I think, adjusting for inflation, I believe is still the second highest grossing movie of all time. Now it's the first again because it beat, after re-releasing it this weekend, it beat The Odyssey or was it Spider-Man now? Well, this year, Spider-Man by far. This was Spider-Man, yeah. Was the highest grossing, but now Avengers Endgame has knocked it out of the top once again.

5:13Oh, interesting. I had not seen that. Just because of the re-release, yes. I mean, I think on the one hand, it's like, hey, theaters, we like watching stuff that we could watch at home on the big screen. So maybe, you know, keep up the releasing. I mean, like, I know I talk about it all the time because I have a Regal pass. You know, Regal has been running a lot of library titles, but I know AMC does this. I know a lot of, you know, one-off mom and pop kind of theaters do this. But I feel like it's good business and it's also just like good as a film viewer to have lots of cool older titles that, you know, periodically show up and give you a reason to show up.

5:52I also feel like this is priming the pump. This is what they're doing. They're priming the pump for Avengers Doomsday, which is coming out this December. And I think they're counting on it being like as big as the Avengers movies pre-pandemic were. and that's a tall hill to climb, but maybe with the added made-up format of Infinity Vision, they will get there. I don't know. I guess we'll see. I mean, I guess we can't say superheroes are dead again because it still seems to be popular and popular again. Yeah, I mean, you know, superhero fatigue, I mean, like you can point to certain things that go superhero fatigue and I think in every case, if you look at the movie, you'll understand why people didn't show up for it even if it turned out to be pretty good.

6:39But I think that, I mean, this has been my argument over the last, whatever, five years when everyone's been telling me that movie theaters are dead, that people show up when there's something they really want to see. And so even this summer, Supergirl, people didn't want to see it. Spider-Man, people couldn't wait to see it. Two superhero movies, I don't really think you can compare them. They're very different movies. But, you know, we see who the audience showed up for. And I feel like maybe what's happening now is that the movie industry is recalibrating a little bit for what people will show up to see in the theater.

7:15And that's a good thing, right? Yeah, we went to go see Resident Evil on Friday night and it was packed. It's killer. I went and saw Primetime on Saturday night and it was packed. And Primetime is, I think it was A24's third biggest opening ever. you know, Robert Pattinson playing Chris Hansen from To Catch a Better. You know, it's funny. I never watched the show. I never watched the Chris Hansen show. I never did either. Yeah, but the movie's really good and really has a distinctive look and a distinctive feel. I'm very interested to see more stuff from that director, which we will get to when you can see everything comes out because he also co-directed that.

7:53Oh, right. So in the wake of this massive financial windfall for Disney, 25 million ain't nothing, uh disney what did disney do their third round of layoffs what the hell i know 300 people but it's mostly hr and tech people hr and tech yeah when i hear when i hear hr and tech people my first thought and i don't know if this is true is like oh did they replace them all with ai because i feel like some of those jobs could maybe possibly be sort of supplemented and then you don't need as many people because they're administrative? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. They don't specify. My big, my bigger question is that when AI replaces all of our jobs, who's, who's going to buy their AI products anymore?

8:44Because if there aren't any real jobs for regular people, where will the money come to keep the AI ship afloating along? I don't know. I think then we decided to upload our consciousness into the singularity as the people who worship AI believe. Yeah, that sounds like it would involve a lot of advertising. Anyway. On that happy note, hey, let's go ahead and get to your interview. Yeah, it's with Doug Emmett, who shot the series Furious on Hulu. Amazing.

9:22With me now, I have Doug Emmett, one of the DPs of the crime thriller Furious on Hulu. And he is also the DP of the series Lucky on Apple TV. Thank you for being on the Cinematography Podcast. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. So first of all, what drew you to the project of Furious? Like, was there something in particular that attracted you to the script or how did you get involved? Yeah, I mean, very simply, I had always wanted to shoot a gritty crime drama in New York City. I hadn't had that opportunity. And the writer, Liz Merriweather, is known for writing really, really good television.

10:10And I knew that going to the project. And so all the stars aligned. We were looking for a cinematographer for the pilot episodes. And I met with Brian Kirk, the director, and we hit it off and began the process of prepping and shooting Furious in the summer of 2025. Great. So tell me a little bit about the look of the show. Did you have a lot of discussion with the director about what you wanted it to look like? We absolutely did. We started with similar concepts and with Liz's input, narrowed it down to a fairly dark show that still allowed room for some levity. as a common feature with her writings that even though you might be shooting a dark subject matter, there will always be moments of funny.

11:15And we had to make room for that as well. We wanted there to be some elements of neo-noir in the show, but still feel grounded in reality and very accessible, I think, for the subject matter, to do the subject matter justice. I didn't think, we didn't think, I should say, we didn't think that being overly theatrical would be sort of fair to the script and to the content of the show. So it was important that it feel very accessible and believable, that the world feel very authentic. Liz had gone to great lengths to work with FBI and police advisors and working with victims. And it was important that we paint a very, I think, authentic picture of what this world should and could feel like.

12:04And so my sensibility sometimes can tend to be a little bit theatrical. I love saturated lighting and I enjoy an opportunity to push the visuals when it makes sense. and Brian, our director Brian, his sensibility I think is purely in capturing the dramatic elements in a very cinematic approach. Whatever that might mean to you, I know cinematic is a pretty broad term, but Brian is such a good director and such a classic approach to his filmmaking, his style. I feel that Brian has been influenced by the greats of like many, many years of watching film and himself working in cinema. And so I found our process to be a happy marriage.

12:59And then Liz was there to kind of, again, remind us that if we went too dark, the show would be, I think, too sad. And we would forget that we could laugh at these moments, too. And so I really appreciate that input. We worked quite a bit in pre-production. And we did something on this show that I haven't been able to do in the past, which is often with a movie, you'll pitch to the studio and sometimes a TV show, too. You'll pitch to the studio your look, your look book, your ideas about cinematography. Generally, it's one big meeting with all the studio execs and your department heads are there.

13:39and it was a really good process for me to start with my initial concept. And as you can tell already, I think my ideas were verbose and I had to like kind of drill down. I was like talking too much. And we got to rehearse these pitches with Liz. And that is something we haven't done before is rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. I think we did like two or three Zoom calls internally in our office. and my pitch and I think everyone's pitches got shorter and more specific and defined. And it really helped all of us as a team of department heads hone in on the specific tone and the mood of the show, knowing what their references were and what their instincts were, really helped me kind of understand what my motivations would be as well.

14:30So we all kind of became this beautiful gel machine by the time, not only by the time we pitched the studio, but really by the time we started shooting. I mean, I think it was probably only a few days in Matooney. So that was an incredibly useful exercise. And I would love to be able to carry that forward. And I think I might recommend that to shows that I work on in the future is that we let's everybody pitch each other the concepts. And let's, you know, having this guiding lab was really useful to us too. Okay. Was she present on set a lot too when you guys were shooting? Liz was on set, but she was also still writing the show.

15:08So she would bounce back and forth. And when we shot, half of it was probably on stage. And so she was able to hop in and out. It was nice seeing Liz and Brian have different instincts, but both of them have really solid, thoughtful instincts, I think. And so that was a really nice, happy marriage, I think, between the two of them. And so that made my job really easy as well. I think that by the time we started shooting again, like I said, we had already had so many conversations that the work sort of seemed to just kind of flow out of us quite effortlessly, which I appreciated. And again, like I said, I'd always wanted to shoot a dark drama in the city.

15:50And we chose incredible locations. that we had. We had really like all the crew and equipment at our disposal that we needed. And I'll tell you, that's a far cry from shooting tiny, tiny indie films in New York and shooting student films in New York where I started not having to be as scrappy. It's pretty good. Pretty nice. Well, yeah. Tell me about the location. So you actually did shoot in New York and were there any challenges with that in particular? Yeah. I mean, it's so funny because everything's always a kind of a blessing and a curse for that city in terms of locations because like for instance let's use oliver charles he's the the first real victim that we meet um in episode one and two um katherine meets him at some fancy party that we shot in some law offices in downtown his apartment is on the 60th floor in a penthouse that has all floor to ceiling windows it is a massive space and And they quite literally owned the whole floor of this building, which I didn't know you could do that.

16:53But they had this entire apartment all to us. And you'd be amazed and shocked at how quickly all of those rooms filled up with equipment and people. And you start realizing that people, bodies, crew, gear, everything has to go somewhere. And when those rooms fill up, it just spills out into the open. And so when you're shooting in a space like this, whether it be day or night, I mean, those windows become mirrors. And especially it's kind of like shooting in a big box of mirrors. And so the challenge was not only just figuring out the scene and shooting the scene and making it cinematic and making it work.

17:36but it was also like it's so funny it's like if the camera were the cam you know just a few inches left or right there'd be a grit hanging out like having a sandwich just on the edge of frame because the guy literally had nowhere to go like and the same with all the lights and the gear and then or you pan on another direction and it would be the reflection of somebody a sound mixer or a person waiting to go dive in to do last looks and it was just it was so it's so challenging right like And not only that, you have to plan ahead. What equipment are you bringing up to light these scenes, especially if you're shooting the daytime scenes at this apartment?

18:13It's all windows, right? So everything's quite bright outside. And your exposure difference between interior and exterior is dramatic. It's as extreme as it possibly could be. Because mostly you're looking outside, it's just sky. And so you'd have to be really thoughtful about what equipment you can bring up. you're not going to be able to run to the truck and get something if you forgot it if the trucks are parked you know a mile down the street and you're 60 floors up and you have one elevator if you're lucky that you can get on it so we use nanlux lights i think they're called 2500s they're really powerful leds and and we might have been able to i think we probably had a small hMR that we're able to plug in everything's off the house power so i think we probably had like the the N18 lights that we could plug into a kitchen outlet or a daffin outlet and not trip a breaker.

19:04We didn't use those too often because there's something that feels a little sourcy about bouncing into a ceiling and then letting it spread everywhere. It's sort of like not an ideal way of work. It takes place at night, mostly. A lot of it takes place at night. Some of it took place in the first thing is all at night. Night ends up being a little bit easier in that location. The electrician's were able to tape up, you can't drill in, but you could tape up flat LED light mat panels everywhere and then diffuse the light mats and then skirt them a little bit as well. And so everything's taped up there and then they run the cable out.

19:43You have to kind of pick a direction where you're in drop cable at some point. You might see it and you have to get on ladders and kind of move it around. And it's so funny. It's been a little while since I've had to worry about seeing what cables drop down in shots because it used to be that with like before leds and batteries you would have cables running all throughout your set but now everything runs off a battery power like um it's incredibly fast and easy to work this way everything's wireless and so it's like these funny little things that you have to you still have to think about every so often right um but those lights everything kind of lighting from the ceiling obviously solves a lot of your reflection issues if you have to frame a certain shot and tilt up and see a light, then the light could be pulled out if it had to be.

20:26That was how we found working in that space worked best, whether it was lighting from above or in the scenario of like Catherine and Oliver on the sofa together, the scene where he asked her to sign the NDA. We actually lit from below because again, if you put anything at eye level, your chances are you're going to see it in one of these windows. And we had shot that scene cross coverage. I think both because of performance, it would work really well for them, but also I think we were tied on time at that point. So cross-coverage made sense. But then again, where are you putting lights and not seeing reflections?

20:59So doing low bounces, a little low soft light worked really well. Also, eye lights tend to catch really nicely if you light from below. And then in the daytime, using those Nanlux lights, I started to find myself getting excited about using a really hard light that wasn't diffused and just smashing it into Catherine's face in the refuse scenarios in which we did that. We felt motivated enough by the sun outside and there's some examples where the sunlight is coming in. And again, we had pretty extreme ratio issues with the sunlight. And so hitting her with a hard light ended up being a fun creative solve.

21:31And she has beautiful skin and she could take that hard light. Not everyone can, but that worked out really nicely in that scenario, which I was happy to try that. Probably carry that on to the next show. It's fun. It's always a process of learning, right? Did you have to paint out anybody then in the nighttime reflection? I don't think so. So I think we just use a lot of big, like, you know, black rags everywhere. And in time there'd be a reflection, we'd just roll in a black rag. There wasn't a lot of VFX on the show, I think. It was actually, we were able to do it kind of old school. Very little VFX music.

22:06Yeah. Tell me about some of the influences that you did have for the show. Like, what did you, like, look at a lot of, like, references? there's always yeah there's always the moment where you first begin a project and you kind of throw a ton of references at the board and then you kind of see what sticks um you throw a lot of references um i would i would go to i would do shot deck i would go through my trove of images that i've got saved on my computer and and and you start to just whittle it down you know brian had his references luce had her references and and slowly we kind of hone in on on a few films and shows that we really enjoy but our big kind of touchstone was a taxi driver both for the texture the grit of that film stock the contrast how rich and deep those shadows were but also for how saturated some of the reds and the greens were and so we used a lot of red and green throughout the show also just for atmosphere then we noticed like that things always felt a little bit damp and rainy in that movie and wet and reflections at night were so beautiful and so we we kind of leaned into doing a lot of atmo at night whether it be smoke and haze in the streets or wet downs um and then even to to the point where like we painted walls with more reflective paint than we normally would because we really like the idea of being able to see the light sheen against the walls and say alice's apartment for instance we repainted alice's apartment and really kind of like very specific about how much reflection you can get on those walls.

23:43And then in Jane Campion's In the Cut is a really great example. Dionne Beebe's work is so special, I think, in that film. Thematically and tonally, I think, pretty similar to our show as well. If you've seen that movie, probably not, you haven't seen it in a while. It's been a while, but yeah. Yeah, we found that they did a really nice job with creating perspective and crafting people's perspective in that um there's a lot of reflections and there's a lot of like you know longer for it was four heuristic lensing and um and that was fun because really a lot of big discussion for our show was you know how do we how do we treat katherine's perspective and alice's perspective and are they the same are they different how do And we approached them in terms of photography and lensing.

24:34And I feel like we kind of arrived at the fact that we have two protagonists in the story. And I think we treated the approach to photographing them quite similarly. Because we're really very much seeing this world through their eyes. Yeah, it was interesting, too, because you probably had to be really careful sort of about, you know, some of the violent aspects of it. You know, how you were going to be treating that. But so did Liz become kind of a touchstone for that as well with how those scenes were going to be handled? There's different types of violence in the show. And yes, Liz is definitely, definitely involved in, rightfully so.

25:11I just found her opinion and her insights really helpful in terms of photography. And hearing her thoughts as a writer is going to really influence the way I photograph a scene. and it's so funny so Brian and I might have a have a different approach and and then hearing Liz's ideas we might mix it up and shake it up and go oh okay well we hadn't thought about that way but that makes sense and also just kind of knowing that she was charting out the rest of the season and we haven't read scripts for the rest of the season yet but knowing that she had sort of some more insight than we did it was helpful and I think that that again speaks to the collaboration of everybody involved what a lucky process for me to get to have you know all these great minds on set, these incredible actors.

25:56And just knowing that we could probably put the camera anywhere and you would get an incredible performance and you would probably get a pretty decent looking shot. But what was fun is that I could trust that working with the actors and working with Emmy and Lola and knowing that they could trust us and that we could design longer shots that would maybe have less editing and a little bit less of a safety net for them. And knowing how much they embraced that concept, too, was really nice. And so they gave us all permission to sort of be our most creative selves. Scoot McNary and Emmy have this incredible scene together.

26:32It's right after Danny and Alice have gone to her sister's engagement party. We shot this at an Indian restaurant. We lit it with red light. We had a ton of fun shooting that scene. It's a totally bizarre-looking space. And then it's kind of like a hard cut to them in the bathroom together, other sitting on the floor because danny has learned that that she was beaten in the shower by her ex and so she's not showering at this point and brian our director brian had said look i think this whole scene works just as a single shot you slowly push in and it's a long scene and there's not a lot of room to edit there um but you know for i think for two reasons i think we could have gone in and gotten coverage of them and shot it more traditionally but knowing that they could sustain the scene um in a two shot and seeing their physicality was really important i think seeing their closeness in that moment was really important on screen and so just doing really slow dolly shot and again like giving me the time to light it the way i would like to light it was really helpful because i think in a scene like that where you have just one frame the lighting is so important again there's not much safety net there you're going to be staring at this image for two minutes straight, you know, so you would.

27:52And it's a bathroom. And it's a bathroom. And it wasn't a set or was it a real? It was a set. I'm assuming it was a set. Yeah. Okay. So you did have some, at least could work with something built in to the. I mean, the funny thing is about like bathrooms and trying to light them to feel authentic is that you're not using like traditional stage lighting. You know, it's not like there's not like a soft box overhead. you almost end up lighting it the same way as if you were in a practical location. I think, you know, we probably drilled into the wall instead of clamping to the wall or something. But like other than that, it's pretty much I was lighting it the same way I would light a practical set.

28:31I use a very specific like dado light, which are small, focusable tungsten units. And so I was able to create a little bit of a spot of light on the ground that then motivated a little bit of a bounce. And so we then hid a light in the corner out of frame where it would softly kind of bounce back up into their faces. And then there was light coming from a window from behind them. I had established early on that that window would always have a very saturated yellow, orangey feel, which is really like kind of sustained us in that bathroom throughout because it allowed us to create some beautiful imagery.

29:03Yeah, it kind of looked like there was a streetlight outside of it or something, maybe. That was the idea. Yeah. Great thing about shooting in New York is that there's always light coming from somewhere. There's always, there's always like, you can always motivate, you can always find motivation for why there's light coming in. Yeah, I mean, you know, at night, if you're in an apartment, it's always bright. It's like, it's the brightest thing in the world is being in your city apartment at night. Yeah. Well, getting more into that particular scene, especially at the restaurant. I mean, the thing that I thought was interesting about it was the, it's like the space seemed large, but the way you shot it, it felt really claustrophobic.

29:43because of what she was going through. So tell me a little bit about how you were able to accomplish that. Yeah, that space was large. And in fact, we had many discussions about, like, first of all, we couldn't fill it with the amount of people that we needed to fill that entire space with. And it wouldn't have been necessary anyway. But, yeah, we had scouted for an event space for that scene. And there were traditional event spaces tend to not have a lot of texture. And I think they're probably designed that way because I don't think that they're, like, trying to, you know, I think the focus is on the event, right?

30:15So the focus is on whether it's a bride in a groom or if it's a work gathering, whatever it is. Well, I think people bring in their own, like, decorations. They bring in their decorations. It's always a real blank space. And so we did look around. We tried to find places with some character. You know, at one point, I think we were going to be on a rooftop with these big, like, garage doors that rolled up and a big glass ceiling in Brooklyn. And that would have been a good space, except we've got to shoot during the daytime. Like, it's just not going to work. We're not going to do an overnight in this space.

30:43It wouldn't have worked. So our location manager, Justin, found this Indian restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens. And we walked in, looked around, and we went, oh, my God, this place is so different than what we've been seeing. But not in a bad way. I think everyone kind of stood around. We're like, are we nuts for choosing this location? Like, does this make any sense that there's, like, just tapestries everywhere, texture up to wazoo? And you're like, chandeliers. and then Brian said to me he's like what if we did this whole scene with red light because at this point like you know red was starting to become a motif for us it was an uncomfortable location for Alice would remind her of her childhood being with her sister obviously we learned later in in the episodes why that relationship is so fraught and so it was going to be an uncomfortable couple of scenes to shoot and so initially the first concept was going in there and light everything with leds in the chandeliers you could use nyx bulbs those are going to be especially because they had to go through kind of already thick frosted glass those would not have been bright enough um for the scene we had to also rent like i don't know it's like 60 bulbs or something like that it would have been like astronomical cost for that and and then you have to hope that like you don't have any wireless interference or any or connection issues right so for more of a budgetary standpoint but also just i think purely just for like an exposure reason like we landed on using old red light bulbs which are now getting harder and harder to find and swapped them all out and then added more light and then we got there we filled the whole space with the hundred extras that we had or i mean we had and just as they're about to say we're all camera like all the breakers start popping at once and all the and i'm like oh my god of course like just the moment we brought everyone set and the electricians were great like they were able to go run to the box look at it like take it apart pop out old breakers rewire stuff it was like they were doing all the surgery on this box and um they got all the lights up and running you know we added a little bit of red here and there with with some vortex panels i think and and then later on what was really fun was shooting this scene i think what you were kind of alluding to is like where it felt a little more claustrophobic the scene with alice and danny kind of like on the outskirt of the party we shot with this um beautiful like cyan we used nix bulbs then in these mirrors this space had all these mirrors and glass and so we were able to use cyan lighting which was a character kind of a color that followed alice around throughout the season so that was a choice there and then mixed with the red light and there had been at one point in my references only god forgives and driver but yeah like only god forgives was was one of my initial early references it's again it was this neo-noir vibes and really saturated colored lighting and so every so often we find ourselves in an opportunity to do lighting like that which was really rewarding and so and i think like what you're picking up on is like we can only shoot so wide because we just didn't have the extras to fill the space but it was yeah a massive restaurant.

33:51Well, it really worked. I mean, because of how she was feeling and yet stayed pretty close on her a lot when when she was in, you know, the scenes, which she it pretty the camera pretty much followed her the whole time. You know, we did get a couple of wider shots, but not much. Well, the intensity of all these scenes is really to come from a close up as well. So, I mean, ultimately, that's where you kind of want to live. Yeah, these actors faces. I mean, that's like 90 % of the show. You just really want to be there and sense what they're feeling in that moment. Yeah. And then later, you know, one of the other episodes you shot, I think it was six.

34:24She finally meets Catherine in the shelter and they're in the shower. And then she doses her with the fentanyl. Did she have a body cam? Because then she falls over. It's like, you know. No, we use the Rialto for that stuff. OK. So when Alice is on the ground, that whole scene, we switch to a Rialto and handheld. that allowed us to start you know spun with the camera 90 degrees to the floor and really get the get the lens and get the equipment right on the ground with her and so um when she sat up we just we just timed it with her i mean the realta is a really great tool but the funny thing is like when you go handheld with that thing it feels the vibration of your just of your natural movement it's so much more like kind of emphasized because there's there's no weight and heft to the camera at that point that's why i like shooting handheld with a proper camera on your shoulder it looks so nice because there's a lot of the weight to kind of stabilize the camera make it more solid so there's a little bit of jitter in there and yeah it's fine i think it works in that scene it wouldn't necessarily work in every scene but i that's just one of those things you kind of have to be a little bit of aware of when you're shooting with the realto but um what an incredible tool like so it would not have would not have been possible to do that shot handheld i don't think very easily, I should say.

35:46Just allowing us to be really close with her that whole time, using a really wide lens, really close to her face. That was something that Destiny, our director for Episodes 5 and 6, was encouraging us to continue the evolution of the look of the show, was allowing us to start using different lenses, getting a little bit closer, mixing it up. As the show starts to become a bit more unhinged, and you get some of the more bizarre elements happening in the show, she found that we, you know, were justified, I think, in, in, in choosing some other angles and lenses that we hadn't prior been using. So that was fun.

36:21That was a nice part of the evolution. Well, and then in the beginning, when she sees Catherine, it's like in the mirror. So, um, I know that, yeah. So I know that there's a lot in the show about kind of what people appear to be versus what they actually are and what they're trying to present to the world, especially for Alice, you know of who what really what her past is versus what she's trying to look like a professional fbi agent you know and that's why those mirrors are important in the show i mean she has in the first episode we break this mirror that's hanging up on her wall that stays there the whole time and it stays there the whole time this fragmented fucked up mirror and it's awesome and it's so great that that we see that again when marshall comes to her apartment in episode five you know It's pretty much his background for first, you know, few setups in that scene.

37:14But the mirror was so fun. The mirror, I'm glad you mentioned that, in this women's shelter was something that we brought in. When Dusty and I scattered these locations, we found that that would be a really nice looking lobby. And we started discussing, well, how is she going to see Catherine? It may have been written into the script that she caught her in reflection. I can't recall now. But either way, there was no mirror on that wall and the art department came in and gave us that mirror. What was great was that it was not just a purely flat, perfect piece of glass, but that it had this kind of warped, undulating textured glass that made that reflection feel so warped, which was so perfect for that scene.

37:54And what was so fun about ending in episode five entirely in Alice's perspective, and not only do we see Catherine from her POV, but then Alice enters her own POV at the very end. And so how fun a motif or metaphor for then being able to transition from episode five to the very top of six, where now we are entirely in Catherine's perspective. And now we are in Catherine's story. And so we made that switch between those two episodes. And I thought that worked so seamlessly and so fun to then see Alice arrive in Catherine's story out of focus. And not until she sits down, she's out of focus. And we really made this concerted effort that we were only going to pull focus to Alice when she fully spins around and is addressing Catherine at that moment.

38:48So we were really specific about when and how we would focus on characters and what lenses we would use. And we used these prism FX filters on Catherine's face in the very beginning. And these filters are handheld. They have kind of like a handle. And it's a big piece of glass that is designed to create multiple images. It kind of splits and shifts your image. And so we were able to kind of move that subtly back and forth in front of Catherine's face. And so every so often, I mean, you have to really watch for it. Like, it's there. But we wanted it to be subtle because the effect ends up becoming almost a bit subconscious.

39:22is what will happen is like you'll see a bit of an eyeball start to like double or stretch lips start to you know bits and pieces of the face start to move in in duplicate in weird ways and if you're watching for it you'll see it but if you don't see it that's probably even better because i think you're just like you're feeling and so it's a good another example of like not having to use vfx to um you know convey the state that she was in well and then kind of like i was wondering when for creative sort of the gritty look did how much of that did you do kind of in camera with did with filters versus was there stuff in the di that you added later how how did how did that go yeah so i worked with steven bodner at picture shop and we were in the early stages of pre-production trying to figure out what the lut and the look of the show would be like we knew we would want something that was quite contrasty and weren't afraid of having color in the show and yeah i wanted something that felt filmic and cinematic and and is often the case you know working with a colorist they'll have certain luts for these cameras whether it be an alexa camera or venice camera or what have you like that will you know look like a 35 millimeter negative stock or maybe a negative stock with a print emulation on top of it and they can give you that lot and so i knew we would start there we didn't have a we didn't have a dit on set so it was really important to me that we have like just a few LUTs.

40:48I don't want to get like lost in the sauce with having lots of different LUTs for different locations or times a day. It's really important to like keep track of. You got to have like less variables, you know what I mean? Like, because if you have too many LUTs, then like you're kind of chasing your tail in a way. So I would have a low, a medium and a high contrast LUT. So I'm using the low contrast, for instance, maybe in this, you know, penthouse apartment where I can't control the highlights and the shadow contrast and so i might use low there when you're shooting in new york city you actually kind of want a high contrast light in the city at night because you might have so much stray errant light that could be hard to control that sometimes it's nice to have the ability to eliminate some stray light by using kind of like a lot that has richer deeper blacks and you can iris down a little bit and eliminate stray light and i found that useful in a handful of scenarios, but it was really useful.

41:41Mostly I just stuck with the medium lot. And then later on, Stephen added grain, just did phenomenal work on the show. It was unbelievable. I literally never had this experience where because he was already able to spend some time on the show before I got to the DI, I spent four hours grading these shows, and that was it. I didn't spend more than four hours on a single episode. I would do two episodes in one sitting. But that's a real testament to to how fast Stephen works. I also like just to, he had time in advance to look at it and go through and do it all. But my point is, I guess I, you know, I loved all of his choices.

42:18And so that was a really, and that was the first time working with him. So I look forward to working with Stephen again. For Furious, will you split it with another DP? Brian Lennon. Talk a little bit about that. Like you, so you did one in episodes one and two. And then, so did you have a lot of time meeting with Brian to discuss the look further. Brian and I, I'll say that, yeah, Brian and I did not have like a tremendous amount of time because I think by the time he started prepping his episodes, I was already deep into shooting. And that left us a little bit of time on weekends to talk. But mostly what I found was really helpful was just keeping a long running journal on my phone in the notes app, just writing down what I was doing in terms of lighting.

43:03And then there would be like two sections. There was always like lighting notes in terms of especially what we were doing on stage because there's just so many lights on stage. And sometimes it's hard to call back a previous cue or sometimes a cue gets lost and you have to kind of rebuild it. And so I thought it was pretty helpful if I could just kind of keep notes in terms of what I was doing lighting wise on these different things. There's the FBI office was on stage, Alice's apartment, Alden's apartment, his mom's house, you know, was on stage. There's a handful of other locations, but those are the ones we kept going back to.

43:40And then similarly, I would keep a whole list for lenses because we had modified these G-series lenses. We had T-series that then we were also able to defocus and detune, especially kind of like around the edges of the lenses. the t-series allow you to soften the top and bottom as you create more like an oful focus but what happens is that these lenses don't all kind of uniformly get modified and and some of them have their own kind of peculiarities and so we i found that by just keeping notes for brian and saying hey these are the lenses i've been using and for these reasons obviously do whatever you want to do but i'm i'm trying to like trying to kind of smooth it for him as much as possible because he was just going to have to dive right in and not have as much prep time as I had had.

44:25So that was helpful. And then, you know, there's more of the theoretical choices that we were making for characters, for lensing, for camera movement. You know, that becomes more of a personal choice for Brian and for his directors. So it was so pleasant to see what he and his directors cooked up because he did a great job. And I thought his sensibilities are similar to mine, but also I saw him making choices that I hadn't thought to make. or has a he had some ways of exposing faces and lighting people that I wouldn't necessarily have done and it works so well in the show and it's so beautiful and I there's like a version of the show where you know if he had shot the entire thing it would have and I think these are subtle differences but like he and I would definitely it's so fun to see someone run with the concept and then put their own spin on it and I thought it was it was great the work is great I just watched episode seven recently and i was blown away i was just so blown away not only by the episode might be my favorite episode um but also just really really impressed with the look and yeah so that was that's that was a nice relationship and uh but yeah but once we started shooting like he and i didn't have like a ton of um you know conversations beyond that you know a little bit of stuff here and there and i intentionally i'll tell you this i intentionally did not read the scripts for seven and eight so i wanted to be surprised as i was the other night i want to be surprised and see how there's i wanted to have the experience of being a viewer at home on my sofa watching it with my wife and like truly being shocked and mostly just because i've been loving the show so much yeah and well i've only seen it in real time myself so i didn't get an advanced screener so i was like i'll just watch it yeah yeah so you're all caught up and you're probably waiting what's gonna happen what's gonna happen so in the show there's many car sequences which i know presents a really unique challenge mostly people sitting in cars at least in my episodes um it was mostly people sitting in cars and then the one i i there were two car scenes and one of them i actually missed for the day because i had covid and i had to sit out the last day of my block and that was all shot on green screen.

46:40We had shot the plates for the car scene previously at a location that we weren't going to get to go back to. And we're, I think what it was, the story was that we were probably running out of light. And I think we're like, oh, we don't have enough time to shoot this entire scene at the mansion in Connecticut, Jay Easton's mansion. We don't have enough time to shoot all the stuff we have to shoot and then also get into a car and then shoot a whole scene inside of a car. And, you know, with a good smart producing and good ad what what can be pushed you know well people sitting in a car can be pushed and you can shoot some quick plates and put it on green screen and that's what um that's what we did my friend paul yee's a talented cinematographer came in to fill in for me when i was out and he was one of those scenes he shot was the green screen stuff um and then later i definitely been watching obviously we've been seeing a lot of some car driving stuff that looks like to me it definitely looks like you know a healthy dose of rear screen led projection that's what it seems like to me it's so funny i actually don't even know because that never came up on my episodes and and leds are funny because like either they work really well or sometimes they just like don't work very well and so if in ever if you're ever in doubt as a cinematographer and you're on set and you're and you can see it in real time with your eyes if you're like man this is just like not looking totally right for whatever reason sometimes it's like a motion issue sometimes it's like a perspective issue if like if you're really like i've had this before Like if it's really not working, you got to just make it green, just make it green.

48:08And you have to like kick that can down the road. And obviously like nobody wants to spend a ton of money to have LED rear screen projection brought in only then to just make it green screen. That's obviously like last case scenario, but you, at least you always have that in your back pocket. But yeah, I was curious just because it presents, it's really hard. I mean, it's, it's a, it can be a really unique challenge, you know, especially if you do a lot of like car stuff. Yeah, it can be really hard. It can be really hard. I mean, the thing that really helps is not just relying on the panels to create what you would call interactive lighting, but then additionally adding more like adding some lens flares or some pops into the lens from passing cars.

48:47Say if it's at night, you can flare the lens quite easily. Even in the daytime, pieces of chrome reflect sunlight and skip around, and so you get these kind of fun apparitions. And so trying to replicate moving light as much as possible. I mean, if you sit in a car and you watch, like there's just lights bouncing around all the time. It's coming from all angles. So I try and do that a lot. I try and change the color temperature quite a bit as well. So like you might like set up a couple of softer lights, but then pulsing them, changing the color temp as you go, just trying to create inconsistency, I find is something that helps a lot sell that effect.

49:21And then, yeah, then like having some shallow depth of field is useful. I also find that like not doing shots that would be impossible to get practically. If you're trying to sell the realism of driving, like then trying to still like mount the camera to the car, or if you're not going to mount it physically, then at least like putting it somewhere where it could be or where you would be used to seeing it mounted is quite helpful too. It's just a general kind of approach. but i had a lot of fun shooting that one car scene um in episode one we were we were on these really really long dolly really long lenses on these dolly tracks that were pushing in which was not a shot not that was not an approach i'd done before it was with alice and nora right oh nora okay it was like alice and nora they were sitting under a bridge an overpass or a bridge and uh or a freeway and and it was just it was so effective to just be slowly pushing in um that entire time but we we kind of arrived at using longer lenses because we knew we wanted to end quite close and it just it just looked a whole lot better i mean you couldn't use a wider lens and so that's how we kind of arrived at doing these shots um and intercutting back and forth it worked really nicely and then while you're doing the a camera doing a dolly shot you can always put the b camera in the back seat and shoot a french over and you can do it at the same time not seeing any of the lighting that you're using so that was pretty effective using two cameras lighting it and then just being to like to do it quite efficiently great yeah i think i think it all looked pretty good so that was good at least you don't have to deal with a moving car and yours in particular thank god yeah yeah and then yeah speaking of kind of the lenses and stuff for alice you know you had to keep the subjectivity on her so you know what were some of the choices that you were making with with the lensing that you used for that you know the the core approach to to shooting both those characters alice and katherine was like generally finding is a focal length that we would keep consistent throughout the show for their close-ups and their medium shots that would often be a lens that would allow us to be a little bit closer to them versus anyone else in the show and so you often see you know over the shoulder shot over the shoulder of Alice onto say Danny or onto Nora, whereas with Alice, sometimes her close-ups would be quite clean.

51:39And so you really feel you're, you're, you're much more present and in her space when you're shooting her close-ups versus anyone else's close-ups. So you're really seeing it from her perspective, but we use the 16 millimeter T-series quite often. They allow for really good close focus, just geometrically or structurally that lens has a really, has a kind of a perfect field of view for a close-up because it's you're still quite close on the character and so you feel that proximity and it does something especially with like emmy has these beautiful big eyes like everything just becomes feels very like pronounced and heightened without being warpy if you think you go any wider than a 60 millimeter it starts to feel a bit warping a little bit bizarre i think when we were in the shower scene um in episode six i think we were probably using a 28 millimeter which is the widest focal length that we had on that anamorphic set and and that was quite dramatic you know so just to give you kind of a frame of reference but um 60 millimeter to 75 millimeter look rate and then and then when this occasionally when you're doing really nice tight close-ups like 100 millimeter is really really nice too but beyond 100 it starts to keep flattened out um you flatten it out too much and you sort of it doesn't feel like you're in the space anymore more of the characters.

53:00So I would never typically shoot longer than 100 when I'm shooting closeups. And so it's really in that 60 to 100 millimeter range that we were finding is working quite effectively. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in film. Yeah, I mean, it really goes back to when I was like, eight or nine, 10 years old. My mom had been an amateur photographer most of her life, and she had traveled the world working for a company called Semester at Sea. She found herself in far off places with a camera. She had a passion for photography. And so I was pretty young when she busted out all of her old camera gear from the 70s and started to teach me how to shoot, you know, film negative.

53:37And we developed it at home and we had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun learning about the equipment. I think I was, as a young boy, I was really curious about the technology as well, like how it worked and feeling the weight of the camera in my hands and then getting to see these images develop. That was a passion, I think, for photography. It was really born around that time. And then finding my way into filmmaking, I went to NYU undergrad. and it was in college that it was only once I got there that I realized like, oh, people could really make a career out of this. I should really double down on this and say like, this is something I'm going to do now the rest of my life.

54:21And I got very serious about shooting. It seemed like every weekend I would go out in crew for upperclassmen film shoots and student film. And then I would myself start shooting and took every opportunity I possibly could. And so So, you know, I think while I had peers and classmates, you know, partying on weekends and going out and staying out late on Friday nights, I was, you know, waking up Saturday morning at 4 a.m. to go drive to the far reaches of New England or along the eastern coast to like go shoot a student film. And I was obsessed with it. And we would do these crazy long days. Like I thought it was normal to work an 18 hour day, but I was just working for some masochists in film school.

55:04and it was such a great way to meet people and form these lifelong bonds um my closest friends here in la are still my closest friends that i met when i was 18 years old at nyu and so we and we still work together it's amazing we're so lucky to make these friendships back then and so my my passion for filmmaking is one for you know in terms of photography i love photography and i love cinematography and storytelling with a camera but then i also really love the just the active and the nature of being on set. I feel at home on set. I love the relationships I make on set. I love being social on set.

55:40It is very much like a holistic experience for me in that way. And then I started doing indie films in New York. I was young. I think I was 23 when I shot my first feature film. Jodie Lee Leipz, incredible cinematographer, was not able to do a project. Someone had approached him to do a feature, and he put my name in the hat. And so I credit Jodie with that, And I got to work with some really wonderful photographers. Bradford Young was a mentor of mine. I was, yeah, I was like 20 years old, camera operating on some short films of his. I camera operated the Pariah short before he went off and made the feature.

56:16And my friend TJ gaffed the feature for him. Like, so it was a cool, it was a cool crop of filmmakers. Antonio Campos and I were classmates. I was just watching his show, The Beast in Me, like incredible. It's so, it's so, it's so fun watching all of my classmates And so I could really have exciting careers. And so I got into indie filmmaking early on and realized that I think I had to make a choice. Or I felt I had to make a choice whether I was going to pursue more of a commercial aspect of cinematography and filmmaking. Or if I was really going to pursue a narrative career. I saw the narrative career being one of more longevity and allowing me to develop a voice over time.

56:56and not having to necessarily just like be hot and like be in demand all the time like that the idea that you're constantly trying to have like promote and sell yourself for commercials is not necessarily the same thing that's happening in the narrative world and so what's nice is like that you know you look at some filmmakers they're working into their mid late 70s still you see that a lot with cinematographers in the film tv space so that attracted me and appealed to me and and And so I got into doing more TV by the time I got into California. I started doing more television. And I think I kind of transitioned into television when, like, everybody else was kind of doing that as well in terms of, like, these, like, more, like, premium streamers and everything.

57:38So I'm still trying to shoot feature films, like, oddly or sadly enough, like, they're harder to get made these days. We're just seeing a lot of movies, like, come together and fall apart. We've all been victim of that at some point. And more recently, I'm seeing that happening a lot. And so I'm finding that TV can be more of a trusted space right now, at least. And then hopefully, hopefully we'll find more feature films being made and supported. But I have a family. I have a house. I have bills to pay. I'm finding like, it's really a safe, safe situation to sign on to a TV show, whereas like, you know, you might go and chase an indie film for months and months and months, and then it just never materializes.

58:18And that can be quite heartbreaking as well. So that's the long short of it. Cool. Yeah. Well, it sounds like a great path and it's worked out. That's good. So far, so good. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Cinematography Podcast. Thank you. This was a lot of fun.

58:37So that was Doug Emmett. Thanks for coming on the show and talking to me about Furious. It was a really good series on Hulu. Excellent.

58:50So now it's time for our patent pending segment called Short Ends, where we talk about our pet obsession of the week. Alana, what is your obsession this week? Well, the new season of Slow Horses just started and I have been really into it. I love it. I think it's season six. And yeah, it's a great show. I love it. It's been great so far. Some people didn't really like season five. They thought it was a little slow, but I actually still loved it. And now with season six, it's people are getting killed off who are part of the slow horses and they're look like they're getting disbanded. And so there's all kinds of intrigue going on.

59:32And it's it's been really great. And as I was saying, Gary Oldman's character is just great. He he every line is gold that he says. And it's that guy doesn't miss. He's one of the best actors ever to do it. Yeah, his character is Jackson Lamb, and it's just every line. It's like a throwaway, and it's just hilarious. I feel like actors of that caliber will find something in every line to make it interesting and meaty without even feeling showy. They just get so used to really looking at that script and really analyzing it. you know he's I I uh I went back recently and watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead I don't know the last time you saw that it's him and Tim Roth oh wow and I don't think I've seen that since I was like a teenager yeah written and directed by Tom Stoppard and uh and even then you know back then uh when he was kind of a newer thing you know not that long after things like Sid and Nancy he you could just see that this guy just was like intensely brimming with the most acting talent he's so great yeah well this character it's like you i know you haven't seen the show but yeah it's like it's seems like he's not really acting at all he's just inhabiting this character who um is seems like a lazy slob but he's really actually really smart so they're like a spinoff uh flunky group from mi5 that has uh been put into the backwater because they're kind of like they're the fuck ups in the organization.

1:01:08So I need to get caught up on slow horses. I started watching season one and I just and I just never got through it. Not because of it. Not because it wasn't good. All these people are terrible, flawed characters and the worst spies. So but at the same time, I mean, it's not slapstick. You know, they are anyway. way. And they actually end up being good at their jobs when it comes down to it. Yeah. Yeah. Slow horses, check it out, new season for those who are into it. All right. So I have two things that I can't wait to tell people about. Number one, this is going to sound a little self-serving and it is a little, but it also isn't a lot.

1:01:51At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum in Los Angeles. They have a new exhibition called The Horror Show. And if you even kind of like horror movies, you should fly to LA to see it. It's one of the best exhibitions of its kind I've ever seen. And I've seen several exhibitions at that museum. And maybe obviously because I'm a massive horror fan, I love it. First off, I have a piece in this, if you can believe it. Somebody thought I did something interesting enough to go in a museum. It is one of the screen used stick men from the Blair Witch Project. They have it in a little frame.

1:02:28But more importantly, a thing I didn't do for the Blair Witch Project, they set up an old 1990s computer with the original Blair Witch website. If you're around back then, we had like one of the first marketing websites for a movie and you can you can click around and you can go through the whole website and see everything that we originally had put up on the web, which makes me think someone should make a museum of 1990s internet where you go there and it's just old computers. I think people would go. I mean, that would be interesting, actually. Yeah, because it's weird. Because it doesn't already exist.

1:02:58You don't think of how different Google looks today versus the way it looked back then, because they changed these things in baby steps. But this exhibition is fucking amazing. It has the original, Bela Lugosi's original cape from Dracula. It has a xenomorph from Alien. It has Elsa's wig from Bride of Frankenstein. I'm wearing a Bride of Frankenstein shirt. Oh, you sure are. Holy shit. They've got stuff from things like The Stuff, and the substance they have the original mask from the phantom of the paradise and also like jason vorhees mask yada yada yada like every single you turn every corner and it's like i don't know that i've ever seen an exhibit like this they have the the changeo head from american and werewolf in london they don't have the wolf on it it's the the inside guts so it's like the the plaster and dowels and springs and cables that made his snout kind of grow out of his face They have storyboards.

1:03:52They have original drawings that were in an early edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Everywhere you go in this exhibit, like you could spend five hours here just looking around at all this stuff. And it's well lit and it's got a great and I say well lit. I mean, it's moody and it's got just an amazing atmosphere and it's absolutely incredible. So that's part one of my short end. Check it out. But if you're. And they have also from Midsommar, they have the dress. They have the dress. They have stuff from all kinds of newer movies. Like if you go online, you'll see it. They've got a Freddy Krueger glove.

1:04:29They've got the Hannibal Lecter mask that he's wheeled into when he's strapped down to the dolly. Like they've got all kinds of great stuff. That's maybe a little self-serving, but not really because I don't get a kickback or anything. I'm utterly humbled that I was even, you know, that's something I made the cut. And the Academy Museum is worth visiting no matter what. It's a great place. It's great. And also go to a screening there. They have one of the best theaters in all of Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is a city full of great theaters. So my second thing that I've just been dying to plug for the last couple of weeks is an app I found called Paradiso.

1:05:05And Paradiso is an app that helps you find screenings near you. And you can basically tell it what you're looking for. I'm going to open it up right here. So you can find classic screenings. if you have letterboxd, you can connect it to letterboxd for your watch list. But like, there's a tab for, you know, what's movies today, now, classics, favorite cinemas, new movies, 35 or 70 millimeter screenings, and collections. And so like, I can look on here right now, as I'm, you know, it's September 29. And Terminator 2 Judgment Day, Ghost in a Shell, the animated Ghost in a Shell, The Virgin Suicides, The Birdcage, Mean Girls, Destroy All Monsters, Murder by Death, Minnie and Moskowitz, Mad Max 2, Highlander, et cetera, et cetera.

1:05:49I could keep going. Those are all playing. Now, granted, I'm in Los Angeles, so we also have a lot of retrospective theaters and regular theaters that do retrospective screenings. But wherever you are, it'll help you find those movies that are playing in a theater near you. And it's a free app, and it's really cool. So it's called Paradiso. Check it out. Nice. That is cool. yeah i mean i think a lot of big cities do have uh i think people might be surprised they'd find all kinds of stuff well even like i mean i'm from orlando florida and i worked at the nz and theater for years and that's an art house uh cinema and they do tons of retrospective screenings and you know orlando florida maybe not known for uh for having a kajillion movie theaters you know i mean we've got i think a normal number of movie theaters in orlando but they're you know the nz isn't the only place that does that, you know, and and also, you know, they have, you know, all the major chains and when the major chains are doing retrospective screenings or they have 35 or 70 millimeter screenings, they'll they'll pop up.

1:06:51And most cities have at least one art house slash retrospective, whatever, you know, theater or small theater complex or whatever. You know, it's not it's not only the big cities, hopefully. Portland has the Hollywood theater. yeah I think I've been there actually I think I saw it's a super cool movie house they play lots of old old stuff all the time there's always festivals going on like showing silent films there's like Buster Keaton yeah things and all kinds of stuff I went with my sister who's actually a filmmaker she makes stop-motion film oh that's cool I didn't know that how did I not know that your sister made stop-motion she's a completely independent filmmaker she's an artist and so she just sort of fell into stop motion was part of her art she does a lot of stop motion uh for music videos for oh very cool bands yeah it's very cool so we have a website her name is uh violet crabtree and her website is violetcrabtree.com and her feature film that took her 10 years to make is stop motion and it's called wild fur and so it's a mix of stop motion and live action oh wow I'm looking at her website right now.

1:08:01It looks great. Yeah, she's great. She's worked on this for a long time. I can't believe you've never told me about this. I love stop motion. I think it's really cool. If you check out her Instagram, you can also see some of her other work, which is a lot of like stop motion music videos and stuff. It's very, very cool. Very handmade. That's her whole thing. That's really cool. Yeah, we went to a stop motion animation festival that was at the Hollywood Theater. stop motion shorts because they're actually trying to open a stop motion museum in portland oh that's really cool very cool well because it's sort of a hub for yeah for stop motion yeah the company that did like coralline and stuff is up there right leica as well as the company that did pinocchio shadow machine oh very cool all right so ben uh that about does it for the show where can people find you?

1:08:51You can find me at benrock.com. Come check it out. I've put basically everything I've ever made that I want people to see is on there somewhere. So come check it out. Sounds good. Where can people find you, Alana? Well, you can find me at Green Tree Creative, and the website is growwithgreentree.com. And yes, it does need some updating. So I should probably take some tips from you and Ilya on that. If you're interested in starting a podcast or interested in some marketing, I can help you out with that. That's cool. Yeah, you have many, many years of experience at both. So I have. And yeah, we both recently helped our friend Janelle launch her podcast.

1:09:30Oh, that's true. That's true. I might be editing it. I might have edited it yesterday. I helped her get all set up for publishing. Let's see. Who else should we thank? Well, we got to thank you first and foremost. You're the one who did the interview. You booked the interview and now you're going to edit yourself, which is like my least favorite thing to do on earth is edit myself. We got to thank you for being our producer slash editor. And then we also got to thank Kaze Alitrakshi for composing all the music that you hear on the podcast. You can check out Kaze's website at musicbykaze.com. That's K-A-Y-S.

1:10:04Hire Kaze to compose a score for you. Or if you have a synthesizer needs fixing, go to Kaze Labs. Kaze will charge you money to get your synthesizer fixed. Should we thank Ilya too? Oh, we should definitely thank Ilya. who didn't do anything on this episode whatsoever, but his company, Hot Rod Cameras, is the sponsor of the show. You've both done some interviews recently over at Hot Rod Cameras' brick and mortar store. Oh, yeah, yeah. We did one in person with a very interesting guest coming up. Can't wait to share that one. Very, very cool. Hey, Alana, you ready to take us out? Sure. Thanks for tuning in.

1:10:38This 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 not x don't do that thanks for tuning in