Matt Ball on shooting in remote regions for Tucci in Italy

0:00Matt Ball: I'm Matt Ball and I'm on the Cinematography Podcast. I think the only real logistic challenge, certainly when we got into the more rural regions, and the lesser known regions, just takes hours to get anywhere. But we're a self-contained unit. We just all travel as one in the morning. Sometimes it'll be two, three hours to get to where we're shooting. I've got the best people who I work with. They are all genuinely good friends and we work together for each other and for the show. And that includes Stan and Lottie as well. They'll be chipping in, carrying and helping. Nobody stands alone with an ego.

0:38Matt Ball: No egos allowed. 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, Ilya Friedman. And today on our show, I speak with returning guest, Matt Ball. Matt is the DP behind both seasons of Tucci in Italy and just received an Emmy nomination for the show. Season two of Tucci in Italy is currently streaming on Disney +, Nat Geo, and Hulu. We dive into how the show featured lesser-traveled regions like Sardinia, Lamarque, and Rue Labruzzo to capture authentic regional culture. Running a lean, self-contained crew for shoots in remote and hard-to-reach locations, the production has a no-egos-allowed policy where everyone, including Stanley Tucci himself, pitches in to make the day work.

1:33Why, what you see on screen is pretty close to what actually happened on the day, with editing driven mostly by time constraints rather than reshaping the story. And a hint at the upcoming show, Tucci in Great Britain, exploring British food history, identity, and the influence of immigrant communities on the national cuisine. 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 a segment called Close Focus.

2:08All right, Ben, it's the time of the show where we talk about what's going on in the world of entertainment. What is going on this week? Well, it's an unfortunate news article you pointed me towards, but I've been kind of hearing ruminations about it on the various podcasts and stuff that I follow. And it was in the wake of Toy Story 5 being the biggest movie of the year, I believe. so far yeah uh billion dollars yeah disney decided to lay a bunch of people off as as a reward for uh really turning a profit uh disney uh laid a ton of people off and uh and specifically at pixar you'd say well moanda lost a bunch of money so wouldn't disney animation take the hit nope they also got a bonus from the state of california they got a 26 million dollar tax incentive and then 108 Pixar employees got let go.

3:03So, and this follows on the heels of 100 plus employees being let go in 2024. So it's like they continue to downsize what feels to me like one of the brightest spots of Disney's production right now. It's like, I mean, certainly, I feel like Pixar has a really good track record, certainly compared to some of the stuff that Disney's released recently. So Pixar had kind of a rough couple of years there, like in terms of making hits, I would say still pretty good movies. A lot of it was during the pandemic. And now they're they I mean, like, obviously with Toy Story, but even with Hoppers, a lot of people hated on Hoppers.

3:43I took my son to see it. He super enjoyed it. It was, you know, it's not necessarily a main course, but it's it's a fine movie. You know, I it doesn't say this explicitly in any of the stuff I've read about it, but I wonder and maybe you would know, does this have anything to do with artists being replaced by anything or like what's being downsized here? well Disney says they're you know the corporate speak in the variety article about it basically says they're just being responsive to these uh difficult times and they're streamlining operations and ensuring they can deliver world-class creativity and you know value this and value that it it's yes I think you're exactly right I think that if you're talking about uh the ability of AI to make people more efficient so you can have less people.

4:36It wouldn't surprise me if Disney decided to get rid of some people and just didn't want to say that. Well, and I mean, I don't know if this necessarily relates exactly to Disney, but I could probably pull up a similar article about what's going on in the gaming industry and massive layoffs around Xbox. And I don't know if he wants his name out there, but a good friend of mine who works at a very prominent gaming company who's done tons of concept art, like high, high, high-end concept artwork, just got his walking papers after 18 years at this company. And it was in the wake of a massive layoff.

5:12And I have to wonder, again, if this is certain efficiencies being found through certain technologies that, let's say, speed up the artistic process somehow. Yeah, it's interesting. Even if it isn't that, by not saying it out loud now, I think pretty much like you and me, everyone is assuming it. Everyone is making the assumption that that's really what's going on. So, yeah, especially it's palpable in this industry how much backlash there is to AI. So I think that there's no chance that any future layoffs that are coming are going to explicitly say that's what's going on. yeah i just wonder and you know like we talk about ai here more than i wish we did but uh with the runaway success of the odyssey you know which is you know one of the seriously probably going to be the biggest movie of the year or the top two three movies of the year uh i never see a story about it or hear anything about it where it's not mentioned that it was shot entirely in imax and they really you know they went as practical as they possibly could doing a little bit of digital touch-up here and there and doing some visual effects where they had to but even in the whirlpool sequence apparently Christopher Nolan hired jet skiers to ski in a circle to create a wake that could be the outside of the CGI whirlpool so that it blended better and and I feel like the audience is rewarding this a lot agreed oh and I and I also think that like the press is making a big deal about this this is all real and it could not possibly be more different from AI.

6:56Now, granted, you know, if, if you're working at Pixar and you're, you know, you have a human artist who designed a character and an AI that's doing some of the, some of the grunt work of in-betweening or iterations or whatever of the thing that the person made and you used to have a person doing it, I feel like it's a shame, but also would Pixar be stupid not to latch onto things that made the workflow more efficient for them? You know, I'm just going to go out and say right now that if you think that pixar has a bunch of in-betweeners working there already you're wrong because pixar that was kind of like the whole big push between with pixar back in 95 with toy story was how they could do more with less not having people to do all the in-betweens because that was kind of the goal of computer animation from to begin with yeah yeah so i mean i guess i'm just saying like i don't know about in-betweening but i'm just saying like if if it It is indeed grunt work that AI is picking up the, like, in other words, if it's not replacing a person, but it's replacing a repetitive process that sucks.

7:57Yeah. Data entry of some kind, but not like something that requires a big brain. on the one hand I feel like that's a bummer and it probably means that the the next Brad Bird you know who's 20 years old right now and is working as an intern or as a low-paying person at a place like Pixar now isn't going to work there and is going to go find another career doing something else and won't rise through those ranks but also could you blame Pixar for figuring out more efficient ways to accomplish what they're already accomplishing again I'm saying without replacing the human artists who are doing the real creation of the art itself.

8:32I think with the box office that they are generating and the incentives that they're having, it's a really bad look to be cutting from Pixar because I feel like Pixar pretty consistently, especially over the years of 95 to 2019, the crown jewel in the Disney crown. I mean, it really is the... Yeah, I don't know if they've made more money than Marvel for Disney, but I think that they've been more consistently succeeding. All right. So we shouldn't harp on all of the bad news of Pixar. We should get on to the interview this week with cinematographer Matt Ball. All right, let's do it.

9:16All right. I am joined once again by Matt Ball, director of photography of Tucci in Italy, season two. Welcome back to the Cinematography Podcast.

9:25Matt Ball: Thank you very much for having me. you know it was uh last year around a similar time that that we we chatted and um you actually in our interview you were saying you're not sure if it was actually like you know public knowledge or you could you could tell anyone yet but there was gonna be five more episodes which dropped and sure enough they did and they were wonderful i really enjoyed season two uh can can you tell me was did you go back and do five more episodes or were there always an extra five episodes in the can that that that then they just got released yeah they we shot them all um back to back and over across the summer well it over cost of about seven months yeah i i had i had a suspicion and the reason i bring that up is that it's now going to be even even longer for you to rack your brain to remember then the whole experience of doing this because we're going back to like 24 or something at this point maybe 23 how long ago was this yeah i think it was january 24 i I think, yeah, it must be January 24th through to July, the end of July, 2024.

10:30Matt Ball: So as I get older, things become much harder for me to remember as well. I was going to say, too, that it's a perfect, seamless match to Stanley Tucci doesn't look a day older. And it's like it flows in so naturally. And it's really interesting to me, too, because you got to go to some different places in Italy that are a little bit more off the beaten path. And you got to go to Sicily and Sardinia. I mean, it was like drilling down, I feel like, more into some of the still beautiful and amazing bits of Italy that are not the number one tourist destinations. Tell me about working. I felt like season one, you really played the hits.

11:13Season two, you're diving down more into culture and regional stuff. Can you talk at all a little bit about the experience between the destinations and your experience between the first leg and the second leg?

11:26Matt Ball: A lot of the concept of a show is to try to avoid the tourist places. We went to the Veneto region, but we didn't go to Venice. We went outside. We went to Le Marche, which is a popular tourist destination for Italians. but I don't think many Americans or Brits go there at all. So it was fantastic to see all these kind of lesser known regions of Italy and get to be able to explore them and the people that are there. Was it logistically more challenging or were you guys so self-contained that it really didn't matter where you were? You could deal with any situations? I think the only real logistic challenge, certainly when we got into the more rural regions and the lesser-known regions like the first season we went to Abruzzo which is very sparsely populated and just takes hours to get anywhere.

12:25Matt Ball: So Sardinia is a massive island takes a long time to get anywhere so but we're a self-contained unit we just all travel as one in the morning sometimes it'll be two three hours to get to where we're shooting. We shoot there and then have to travel back for the day. So, you know, a lot of travel comes into it, but it's well planned out and well planned by the production team. It definitely seems like it. It seems like a, I mean, we talked about last time, I call these hosted documentaries. The hosted documentary format really requires you to get your host into a space, have them experience something and sort of be our guide, our eyes and ears, our boots on the ground, our person.

13:15But to sometimes do that, I know it can take like, you go to quite a small island in season two and you meet the king of the island, which is, It's a fascinating and enjoyable story. And I want to say that it seems like there's a ferry and it seems like there's other stuff that's involved. It's like I'm assuming for you guys to make your day, you're up early, you're packing gear, you're transporting everything on a ferry, you're probably no vehicles. It's like it is the unglamorous part of this type of work that I think really actually becomes, though, the hallmark of whether or not you guys can pull it off.

14:02Can you talk a little bit about any tips or tricks that you have for embarking on this type of this type of production, this type of excursion where you have unpredictable potentially scenarios?

14:16Matt Ball: I would say the number one thing is the team working with you. The guys in the camera department, the sound, everybody helps. And if we go somewhere, when we went to Tavallaro, the island with the king, we just take the bare minimum kit that we're going to need and we just go with that and everybody chips in and everybody carries something. that is the people I work with are probably the number one helpful thing to make that kind of thing work and we just get on and get it done the thing we don't there's never really any surprises sprung upon us so we have lots of meetings beforehand to say we're going to be doing this these are the challenges we may face like with the island And we couldn't take any cars there at all.

15:11Matt Ball: Well, I think we did get a boat over there. So we just get a small trolley if we can. We get as much gear as we need. And we minimise it, strip it back, don't take what we're not going to use. In the just-in-case scenario, we'll make do with what we've got. And we take the bare manure of things. But I've got the best people who I work with. They are all genuinely good friends. and you work together for each other and for the show. And that includes Stan and Lottie as well. They'll be chipping in, carrying and helping, and nobody stands alone with an ego. No egos allowed. How large is the crew?

15:59Do you have a hair and makeup wardrobe? Do you have grips and electrics? Is it just camera people, miscellaneous PAs, producers, coordinators? How many people, how big is an entourage that you're bringing around with?

16:13Matt Ball: The crew is, so we have in the camera department, myself and two operators with an AC and a second AC. The sound department is sadly a department of one. Wow. Stan doesn't have wardrobe or makeup. and then Lottie is our exec. Then we have a couple of producers and then a couple of execs from the BBC would come out for certain parts of the show. We'd have Italian fixers and production people and our drivers. And again, the drivers we had, they weren't just drivers either. They were amazing because they would help with the gear or they would chip in and everybody would help. so it seems like it's quite a large unit when you're trying to look small and discreet and moving through a town um yeah but everybody has a main job and there's no real hangers-on or anything we don't we don't get um people people who are there we've got to work you know people who are there to work yeah yes of course uh it still sounds like you you know for uh you for a two, three camera show, pretty lean, pretty lean for the amount of people who are making this happen.

17:36A friend of the show, a gentleman named Nick Sadler, told me a little story about his some shooting in Italy he did some years ago. He said that about halfway through his first day working there, he noticed that one of his camera assistants disappeared. And he was like, wow, what happened to Giancarlo? So he goes over and he talks to the assistant director and said, And, you know, Giancarlo seems to be missing. He's like, oh, no, no, Giancarlo's gone to lunch. He's like, oh, he's gone to lunch? He's gone to lunch without us? Like, what's going on? He said, yeah, yeah, you know, Giancarlo's at the restaurant right now.

18:09You know, he's supposed to be there. And he goes, he's supposed to be there. Why is he at the restaurant? And he goes, well, he's tasting the wine. You don't want to drink bad wine at lunch, right? And he goes, no, of course not. And he goes, but yeah, of course, Giancarlo's going to make sure we get the good wine. and he's talking to the owner and he's going to work it out for us. And then sure enough, he says, lunch comes around and they have incredible wine. Lunch is about two hours long. And then he thinks that it's time to go back to work when the assistant director tells him, oh, no, no, no, now we have coffee.

18:40And so then there was another half hour of coffee. Now, was your production also follow a similar flow? Did you ever have any experiences that seemed similar to this?

18:52Matt Ball: it would be um it is quite yeah quite similar sadly none of us got to go off beforehand to try the wine but the um quite especially when we'd be in restaurants um they just want to be hospitable to you so we were really fortunate we get lots of food cooked for us at the restaurant and working normally in the US or UK it's kind of a strict hour for lunch everything gets done and then you're back but in Italy it's you sit down you'll have some antipasti then you'll get some pasta then you'll get a main course then there'll be some coffee and like you're saying it's like two hours and you just you can't build your schedule around having a two-hour break in the middle of the day but you also don't want to be rude to the people who are hosting you and so you try and be as polite as you can and finish up because all the food's always fantastic So you do you on a personal level, you want to stay there and enjoy it.

19:51Matt Ball: But, you know, you've got to get back to work. So, yeah, I can definitely relate to the two hour lunch stories. Well, good. Yeah, I mean, let me tell you, it sounds like a very pleasurable way to work. I mean, at the very least in one of these episodes, if I recall correctly, there is a suckling pig, which I think took 12 hours to cook or something like that. And it just so happens, of course, that when your team shows up, they go through the whole process of putting the pig into the ground. But they're pulling out another one that they've made from 12 hours before. Can you talk at all about that experience?

20:28Because I can imagine if that wasn't well-coordinated too, none of this is going to line up or work. You're going to be putting stuff in and we're not coming back in 12 hours from now. So can you talk a little bit about just the logistics then of potentially waiting on food? Or did you ever have to wait on food for this show?

20:47Matt Ball: We have such good producers who would have been out previously to us going out to shoot and met the contributors and then continued a dialogue with them for what we would have needed to do. then and they're all Italian speakers um all the producers who went so they could really get that point of cross of what we needed rather than anything getting lost in translation um and make sure that what we what we needed on the day was set in place and we had there for us um again just people being good at their jobs you get it knowing what was needed and you're getting the job done I don't remember anything where we had to wait too long for anything.

21:35Matt Ball: I mean, there would be quite a lot of, we would go through and we would explain, especially for people who aren't used to being on camera, that they just want to help. And then in their enthusiasm to help, stuff might happen too quickly. We have to be like, it's better, it's better, just get people to wait for doing something. And then go back a few steps to get them to do it. but we try not to make people nervous we try not you would say to them you do whatever you normally do and we'll work around you unless you know it's the pig in the ground where we do have to have one early but if we're just if we're going into a restaurant or into somebody's house and seeing how they would make a particular meal we'd let them do what they will normally do and we'll work around them rather than us dictating to them what they should do.

22:25Matt Ball: And that makes it makes them more relaxed because they're used to doing what they normally do. And it means that we can get, we talk to them in advance about that and we get a good idea of what is going to happen at that point. Yeah, I wasn't so, I guess my, I didn't expect that anyone from the production side would not be an absolute pro and have their coordination lined up. But I guess my thinking was, you know, things happen sometimes and when, and restaurants are professionals as well too. But I guess I was just wondering if it was, if you guys ever found yourself waiting on food, so to speak, waiting on, I'm sorry, like, you know, pasta, pasta is going to be another 15 minutes or whatever it was, beyond, beyond what it was that you were planning on.

23:10I know you're going to be there to shoot some of this food and to shoot some of the process. Because this is not being prepared necessarily just for camera, you guys are eating it. Did you guys do a lot of pickups on like, oh, you know, we didn't really get the flames hitting underneath the pan. Could you redo that? Was there much of like, I guess I really want to know like how the sausage is made here, literally when you're seeing how the sausage is made. Sometimes do you have to have people, you know, redo for camera?

23:43Matt Ball: If it's something really essential that we miss, we might get them to do it again. But we try to set up our shoot so that we have a wide shot of Stan and the contributor and the food is what I have. I kind of a triangle to put everything in one scene so we don't end up with a really choppy show of cutting twist list. then another camera will be on the contributor and the third camera will be on what the contributor is doing you're getting colorways of and that's third camera it normally gets most of the details the guy that does it a guy called Dave Minchin he's a very experienced food cameraman and so he kind and he also speaks fluent Italian so that's really useful and he knows if you haven't done a lot of food problems before he knows what to expect next and how everything is going to work so we tend I don't think we've had to go back and ask people to do things too many times and again that's another thing we try to do is is not to stop people not go back and get stuff done again we try to make it you be two kind of observers of it rather than saying oh we didn't quite get that but we didn't quite get this.

24:55Matt Ball: A lot of the time Dave would go into the kitchen beforehand and shoot stuff that they're making for us if you'd like b-roll in the kitchen of the food they're going to make which we can also use then that comes out to Stan and the contributor they sit down and talk but they can cut in of what Dave has shot in the kitchen but we don't have to really ask people to do anything again. We certainly try not to. The idea is to not get people to do... Sometimes we might make mistakes and we have to get them to do it again. But not for an editorial point of view. Only for a technical point of view we might get them to do it again.

25:42I find that with these hosted documentary style shows, and I've worked on some way, way, way back when before I hung up my light meter many, many years ago, producers tend to really be the ones driving the show for the story, you know, how the story is going to unfold, how, you know, where the audience is going to be intrigued or feel empathy or whatnot. It's a little bit different than visually how movies get constructed in more narrative productions where the DP has a lot of input on where important beats are, where important moments are. And of course, you know, the editor plays a huge role in television as well.

26:25I'm curious for the way that you work, because there's so many great moments that feel really well captured in Tucci and Italy in particular, where there are these great emotions that everyone is sort of like on the same moment and you have these fantastic reactions. And I guess I'm, I'm curious when you see the edit of the show, how much of it does it feel like it's the day and how much does it feel like it was created in post-production or created by story producers? Does it really feel truthful to how the day played out? Or does it feel like this is a, a real, you know, concise, short version of it?

27:08How, because you capture so much stuff. When you're doing a show like this, your camera's rolling a lot. You're capturing a lot of the details, a lot of the macro portion of the show. How much when you see the final 28 minutes or whatever it turns out to be, how much of that feels like just a condensing of the day and how much of it feels like a construction of a day that wasn't quite really what happened?

27:32Matt Ball: I would say that what you see is pretty much how it goes on the day. Things that are cut pretty much strictly cut for time because we could be with somebody for a couple of hours and that's going to be a 10-minute part of the show. But there's the story arc of it and all those great moments. So many of those are driven by Stan because he really has an understanding of how to get the story out of somebody. And that might be chatting to them about something completely different for 20 minutes and then bringing them around to what we need them to talk about, but so it's in a relaxed way. Then he's kind of, all of his reactions and his looks to camera, they're all genuine things that happened there and then.

28:24Matt Ball: There's no, I mean, obviously the editors do a fantastic job of taking that two hours and putting it into the 10 minutes, what we need to do. But I would say that mostly it feels like that's what happened on the day. When I watch the shows back now, I see it and it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that. That's how I see the day happened. I don't see a load of stuff. There's nothing that we've shot that has been dropped as far as I can see from the show stuff. Just general editing. We don't cut anything too much. We use pretty much everything we shoot. Do you have a particularly memorable experience from season two in particular?

29:09I know you guys start off in Naples, you end up in Veneto. In between there, you go to Sardinia and Sicily and you spend time on the Adriatic. Was there a spot there in particular that was most memorable or most interesting story from season two?

29:28Matt Ball: Sicily going up Mount Etna for the cold open that was fantastic and it was so windy I mean the wind was just howling you have to shout over the wind to make yourself heard and looking at our sound recordist expecting to see just the blood draining through his face but you listen back to it there's hardly any wind at all, he's done such a good job that was fantastic Naples amazing because it's a bonkers city I think we were there for four days and I think it takes you three days to get used to it certainly the speed of how it goes but that was fantastic it was all fantastic La Marque was amazing I loved La Marque one of the last things we shot there was a restaurant called Amelia on the beach and it was just beautiful it was so lovely and you get that lovely kind of reflected soft light off the sea and everything was bad it was just fantastic and you stop and you look around you think yeah I you know I hazard to call this work because it is so yeah I'm very very fortunate to do that for a job there's lots of memories like that where you kind of have to check yourself and think, you know, how lucky am I to have ended up here?

30:55Well, I think that that amount of gratitude is super important. And, you know, if season two goes like season one, any chances of a season three of Tucci in Italy? I know that you guys didn't get it in the can with the others, but yeah, any chance you guys are getting to go out and do this again?

31:13Matt Ball: We've just started, I think it was just announced, you know, maybe a week or so So we just started a new Tucci Inn show, which is going to be Tucci in Great Britain, which is going to be super nice to me because I live in the UK. Yeah, your commute will be so much better. Yeah. Yeah. In places, maybe. In places. But we're doing that to explore kind of British food and British identity. Because Stan lives in the UK. He lives in London. He's lived here for many years. I'm not sure exactly how many years. And his wife is British. Um, British food gets a bad reputation and we're going to prove that it's undeserved because some of the best food in the world is British.

31:58Oh my God. I would, I was just there in February for the BSC show and I ate so incredibly well, like really, really well. And, uh, yes, I think that, uh, maybe traditional, traditionally British food that was exported to the rest of the world, it gets a bad rap, but man, you got some, uh, do you have a, do british food of some sort that that that you like that you think that most of the world just doesn't

32:22Matt Ball: understand and hasn't ever tried gosh i mean there are a lot of foods that the rest of the world hasn't tried and maybe some of them for good reason but there's lots that i think the reputation of british food i think it comes from a kind of post-war rationing when brin didn't have any money we didn't have and we don't certainly don't have the climate to grow you know amazing tomatoes all year round or anything so we made do with what we could but now we've got so many young inventive chefs coming along making some good things but i am a traditionalist for a sunday roast you know roast beef yorkshire puddings roast potatoes and yeah that's uh that's one of my favorites in the winter a really good sunday roast and then sat down by the fire with a bottle of red wine and maybe a snooze who knows that's uh that that's uh that's that's what we work for that's the reward for everything sunday roast is amazing and also i was uh supply surprised actually to find that chicken tikka masala it is the like official official like you know uh like meal of uh of london it's like it is like it is a it is truly a a british invention it's inspired by indian cuisine and whatnot.

33:41But I mean, I have had such incredible, I would say, Indian inspired flavors and delicious food inside of London in unexpected places. Do you guys delve into any of this, if you can say, in your new show?

33:57Matt Ball: Yeah, we do. We look quite a lot at the history of British food from its kind of, perhaps, from its history, from the history of the British Empire, and it's kind of passed how I think many nations export their food culture and Britain through its empire has, how do you use the word, imported its food culture. Because of, we have, I mean, if you go not just into London, but if you go into Manchester, Birmingham, any major city, you can get food from any part of the world and it will be good and it will be authentic it won't be a British version of Indian food like chicken tikka masala you can go and get the genuine article cooked by a family that may be second or third generation immigrants and bringing that culture and those ingredients and the knowledge to make that I mean you I walked down the old Kent road last year and if you closed your eyes I mean you could have been in Ethiopia it's amazing it's fantastic it's a it's a it's a joy to have the kind of food and culture that we have in this country which gets very much certainly currently gets very much misrepresented in the press of um or in the media but it's um it just makes the country a better place to be able to go and get that kind of food.

35:33Well, this is really exciting. I look forward to Tucci in Great Britain. Sounds fantastic.

35:38Matt Ball: Yeah, I think it'll be great. I've obviously got a vested interest being British. I want to promote how good the British food scene is. All right. Well, I'm really glad. And speaking of which, it's been almost a year since last we spoke. Have you been busy? Have you been traveling the world and shooting other stuff? Yeah, I've been relatively busy. I can't tell you. Oh, I did go to the Olympics. I went to the Winter Olympics with Stan, which was amazing. We had a fantastic, that was a wonderful, another great memory. Again, how fortunate. I did stuff at the Winter Olympics with him. then I can't remember I've been doing even my regular kind of jobbing cameraman working working my days and then you stuff like this comes along and you're very you just feel super fortunate to be able to do it and then I go back to you know being a dad and my daughter just complaining at me for stuff and you know trying to be trying to be a good dad is probably my best job my main job is your spouse also in the industry does she do something similar yeah she's a director um and producer so she's working on a show in the uk at the moment um but she did um barefoot contessa for 20 something years or does barefoot contessa and um with aina garten in the us that's how we met so yeah she's um again that really helps with if we both go away on separate jobs or we understand what the job entails.

37:19Matt Ball: So I know that she's super busy and I know she's not out there running around Italy having fun. She's not just living the best life in Italy like I was. I find this is quite common with people in this industry that quite often people outside of it don't necessarily understand quite so much what you're up against. And so people who are in the industry tend to find each other because at the very least, your partner in life then can understand what the realities are of the work situation and hopefully have some empathy for being able to deal with that. So good on you for finding that partner that helps make that work.

38:05do you ever then run into what feel like impossible situations of you both having to be done away for work in those situations? And that's when the extended family comes in. What's it like with two people in the industry, both working in similar fields, but not together?

38:24Matt Ball: Well, we do work together quite a lot. Oh, really? Yeah. We both worked on, like say Barefoot Contessa we've done that for a long time and a show in Oklahoma we did together called Pioneer Woman for like 11 years or something we did that so we would travel away together a lot sometimes we'd take our daughter with us if it worked with school times other times family come in and because again it goes back to us that's all we've ever done that's how we just have to make it work neither of us could afford to not work and we can't all of a sudden switch jobs and I don't think either of us would really want to so we make it work and find loads of times it's not ideal but life is never ideal all the time so So we're very fortunate and we do work together really well.

39:24Matt Ball: She's far more successful than I am. And so I know, and she's higher up the chain. So I just know my place and I do it as I'm told and try to be supportive and helpful and don't fight back too much. That's another thing I learned. Matt, I want to ask you, you know, I don't think we talked about this last time, But like, let's say someone really specifically wanted to get into doing the type of work that you're doing. Do you have any career advice for them? It seems to be this very interesting time when there are people who try to just go out and do things themselves via like social media. But I can't imagine two more different and disparate types of work than trying to do this all on your own and working with a team and doing a production.

40:11how if someone wanted to get into doing this this type of show this type of work

40:15Matt Ball: well what would you suggest to them i would definitely veer away from the kind of super short form of social media um and don't shoot anything 916 i think that's just infuriates me but the do go to you spend time taking time doing it um and by all means go and try and do it yourself but it's going to be hard but you try not to do it um for an instagram reel you make make it um give it space and time to breathe because if a project is good enough if the people are interesting enough you know it will tell its own story you don't need it doesn't need uh to have some great hook or be clickbait to get get people in if it can stand up on its own and then you can let you can let it go for as long as you want it to go if it's interesting enough that's yeah and don't conform to too many trends you do if what is trendy at the time is what you're kind of interested in doing by By all means, embrace that, but don't bunny hop and jump between this is trending or this is trending because that always just looks contriant and fake.

41:39I find that so much stuff that's produced that chases trends feels really dated when you see it sometime later. And that shows that are well produced feel timeless and feel like they could be seen, you know, 100 years from now and everything is going to make sense. And it lives in that moment appropriately. Do you have any thoughts between the idea of the short form, trendy or even the longer form sort of like trendy versus classically put together, you know, documentary style productions? Because I definitely feel like I don't need to see another dubstep quick cut, you know, montage ever again.

42:23I like I don't that that doesn't necessarily feel like it tells me more about about a space or a culture or a person. Do you have thoughts on the aesthetics of what makes for timeless storytelling?

42:36Matt Ball: I think it just has to be the story. It's a little bit like theater. You don't have any visual effects really at theater in a play. But if the story is good enough, people are still going to go see it. That's how I feel. When you're being sold a gimmick, you just know you're being sold a gimmick. And especially once the corporate world tries to get involved or imitate what they've seen on TikTok and then they want to do it to sell you a new car, you could just see that you're being, like you say, it just dates super quickly. And so I prefer the kind of classic documentary. Let the story tell itself.

43:24Matt Ball: that's um yeah that's how you make it timeless and worthwhile uh i i agree there's so much conversation these days about uh about ai and ai coming to take everyone's job and i feel like um the uh prowess and capabilities especially when it comes to media and storytelling and building empathy and just documenting reality. It's so overstated for AI. I don't feel like AI has a particular place in that arena. And I'm wondering if that conversation comes into your work at all. Are people concerned in the documentary space, in the hosted documentary space, in the reality storytelling of life space of AI coming to disrupt your jobs?

44:19Matt Ball: I'll probably show my real age and naivety of AI here, but I don't see how it can replace a human story. And I think you could get a video of, or AI to create a video of exactly what I do or something we've shot, but it's not going to be the real thing. And people are going to see through that. I think AI will come for thousands, millions of jobs, and it's something that's going to have to be really carefully thought about because what are those people going to do for a living? But anything that's kind of artisanal or created is always going to have a value on it, I think. I don't know where AI can do the jobs that we do to make the documentary, something like Tucci in Italy.

45:17Matt Ball: I can't see where AI can step in. I can't see a way in for it there. I really wanted to ask you that question just because it seems so omnipresent. And I fully believe that if you can make the case that AI can't step in to Tucci in Italy, you can it's very, very equal to say that it can't step in to Star Wars or it can't step in to, you know, the Brutalist or almost anything else that involves people having an emotional connection to what it is that they're they're they're seeing in front of them. So I think that the – and I try not to beat a dead horse because it's a daily conversation. It almost feels like in this industry.

46:04But I don't think that AI is really coming for all the jobs that involve people having an emotional connection with what they see play out in front of them. And that could be absolutely something that is nonfiction or something that is fiction. and the work that you're doing, I think it generates incredible emotional connections with the audience, with what's playing out, you know, on the screen in front of them. I'm curious when you are, when you're shooting and you see something that happens right in front of you in that moment, do you often have a sense of anticipation or a sense of, oh, this is really good.

46:46This is going to make it into the show. I'm wondering how you can anticipate and how you can flow into those right spots to know, hey, this is a key moment. This is something that's going to then have some drama. It's going to have some impact. How do you develop that skill?

47:02Matt Ball: It's hard in Italy because I don't speak the language, but that also makes it slightly easier because I don't know the context of what people are talking about. Then you're relying on kind of visual cues and things. There's a story we did in Abruzzo in season one, where a young chef had gone to work in New York, I think he'd worked in Berlin, but had come back to this kind of one-horse town in Abruzzo, where he was with his, you know, he had this fantastic connection with his grandfather, who had sadly since passed away, but he was talking about his grandfather, and he got super emotional, just remembering the things that his grandfather had taught him.

47:46Matt Ball: I have no idea what's happening when they're talking about his grandfather, But you see straight away that you can almost feel it, but there's been an emotional shift. And you know you're getting something that is going to resonate with people, even if there are subtitles there. That kind of human emotion just comes across straight away. So you do pick up on those things. Yeah, I think that's probably just maybe an emotional tuning that you just start to develop after you do it for a long enough period of time. Do you feel like when you first started out in this industry, you weren't as sensitive to that?

48:27That's something that's come after years of hearing people speak on camera?

48:33Matt Ball: I don't know. It's hard. One, it's hard to remember that long ago when I started. but it's also I think it's just part of a human condition isn't to have empathy and be able to pick up when there's going to be some sort of emotional shift I don't think you need to speak the same language as somebody to read or get an idea of you know if I'm feeling particularly upset over something or you know it's all you know the emotion becomes something physical you can see and I guess that's just one of the parts of a human connection that I don't need to speak the same language as you to understand how you feel about something because we can relate on a human level I think that's a wonderful place for us to leave it Matt, it's been great having you on the show thank you so much for coming back and talking about Tucci in Italy Season 2 currently streaming in all the places that it streams Do you want to remind our audience where you can see Tucci in Italy season two right now?

49:34Matt Ball: You can see it on Disney and Nat Geo. And I believe Hulu as well, too. So that's where I see it. Is it Hulu? Yeah, it's Hulu as well. Yeah, Hulu in the US, I guess. And yeah, you can see basically Nat Geo, Disney Plus and Hulu. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch? Do you do an Instagram or anything like that? I do have, yeah, I don't really have much social media. I have an Instagram account, which is at Matt B. Cam, I think. Yeah. But I don't have Facebook or any stuff. I'm too old a man for that now. You won't catch me doing any TikTok videos anytime soon. Matt, we will put a link to your Instagram on the show notes over at camnoir.com.

50:23We're also put down all the technical specs for Tucci in Italy season two. Thank you so much for being on the cinematography podcast.

50:31Matt Ball: Thank you so much.

50:35So that was Matt Ball. Matt, hey, thank you so much for being on the show. Great chatting with you again. I'm looking forward to Tucci in London. Tucci in London. Well, I don't know when it's coming out, but I think it's Tucci in Branson, Missouri. He's going to go to Branson, Missouri next. He's going to go to Yakov Smirnoff's Comedy Theater. uh i i well uh where wherever stanley tucci ends up next uh i'm in i'm all about it so so i hope he goes to branson missouri he could you never know i bet there's pretty good barbecue there it is our short end time of the show it's the time we talk about our pet obsessions what is your pet obsession this week uh so i saw a movie in the theater last week and it wasn't the Odyssey.

51:19Oh, okay. Now I saw the Odyssey and loved it. So I'm not like bagging on the Odyssey, but if you're like me and you already saw the Odyssey in the theater, or you're waiting to see it in a special IMAX screening and you can't get tickets to something else, or maybe you just want to see a kick-ass revenge movie and you don't care about Matt Damon trying to get home at any point. There's an awesome, awesome, awesome movie playing in theaters right now called Motor city. Motor city. And is it about Detroit? It is a 1970s period piece, uh, apparently shot in New Jersey, although it was, it's, it's set in Detroit directed by a friend of the show, Patsy Ponsaroli, uh, who we had on a few years ago for, uh, old Henry, which, uh, is a Western movie that I really enjoy.

52:10It's a great movie. And shot by the same DP, uh, John Matazak, who we are going to get on the show. He actually reached out to me and asked if we could have him on to talk about Motor City. And I was like, I don't know anything about Motor City, but you are always welcome to come back to the show. John's awesome. And he does great work. So I went to see Motor City and holy crap, it is it's a very experimental, hyper violent revenge epic. I think there are maybe six spoken lines of dialogue in the whole movie. It might be four. There's almost no dialogue in the whole movie. It stars the mountain of meat that is Alan Richson, the guy who plays Reacher on the Prime series, and Ben Foster, who has never done a bad job.

52:59Ben Foster, possibly one of the most unsung, brilliant actors. Somebody give Ben Foster an acting Oscar. Right now, he's great. And also has Chalene Woodley in a big part. The whole cast is great. Most of the movie, I would say, I can't wait to talk to John about this, but I'd say 90 % of the movie is shot in some form of slow motion. Might be 32 frames per second, might be 48, might be 120. Wow. It's a lot of slow motion. Wow. And it's a deeply, deeply stylized film, like very, very stylish, beautiful. Every shot is so well art directed, so well lit. The violence crackles. It just looks amazing.

53:50And, you know, I just want to remind people, The Odyssey is great. Love The Odyssey. There's other stuff in theaters. I know that probably by the time people are listening to this, the new Spider-Man movie will be out. but what I love about this movie is how many big weird swings it takes you know the the very almost no dialogue thing is like a really interesting thing there was a movie a few years ago that was an alien invasion movie I think it was called no one will save you had I think one line of dialogue in the whole thing it's a very tough conceit to pull off and there's a I have to admit there are a couple places in the movie where I felt like a normal movie would have a line of dialogue and it felt like the actor i wanted the actor to say something out loud uh but that kind of anticipation kind of increased the tension of watching it um is there a lot of voiceover no okay so it is like it is like six lines of dialogue and no other human words being is or subtitles no no no there's there's no dialogue every once i mean and the thing is it's like i i i would i i would love to ask why the lines of dialogue that are said are the ones that were chosen because in a movie with no dialogue like you know if you're gonna only have six lines of dialogue each one of those lines of dialogue is like the thesis statement somehow it's gonna count and it didn't feel that way yeah it was like thank you there was not like there wasn't but and like a lot of times there's like a dialogue scene happening in a restaurant and we're outside the window and you just don't hear the people or or or stuff like that or it's just slow motion so like you'll see mouth flap in slow but you're not hearing what people are saying.

55:27Do you understand people's motivations? I would think it might be hard to comprehend what's happening. I will say that that will be unambiguous to you throughout the whole movie. You will know exactly why everyone is doing whatever they're doing. Okay. And Ben Foster plays the scummiest 1970s coke-addicted creep you've ever seen in your life. He's great. I mean, everybody's really great in this. And Jack White, of all people, from The White Stripes. Wow. and several other bands yeah is a producer on this movie he produced the soundtrack the soundtrack is freaking spot on the music is great all the needle drops are great and i didn't realize that when i saw the movie but there's there's a particular scene in a restaurant where there's like a lounge pianist who's mostly out of focus and i'm like is that jack white jack white's the lounge pianist in the movie so uh uh definitely uh a good piece of counter programming i i would the movie uh supposedly was done in 2025.

56:24So they chose to release it the week after the Odyssey, which seems like not a release schedule designed for maximum theatrical success. It's an IFC Films movie. So maybe IFC Films just wants to put it on IFC and they don't care about making anything at the theater in their theatrical release. But I think it is worth seeing in the theater. and uh and anyway i can't i can't say enough good things about it might not be your taste you know if if the things i'm saying make you go meh i don't i don't think i want to watch a super violent revenge film uh with no dialogue then definitely skip it but uh i think it's beautiful i think uh there's just some incredible craftsmanship going on in it and i can't wait to see what this team does next they're they're so good okay i'm in i would totally see that give everyone the title once once more it's called motor city and i mean like it wasn't playing at a at a random art house theater i saw it playing literally at a regal so it might be at a regular old movie theater right near you so uh so ilia what is your pet obsession this week you know up until this very moment like right now i was all prepared to do the odyssey like you know the odyssey i i saw it yesterday uh i've seen the saturday night live sort of like parody sketch it is uh entering the you know the zeitgeist of uh the world it's made 730 million dollars the box office already and it's been out what three weeks now three weeks i think yeah so yeah this is week three right now but i mean i think as of tomorrow it will have been out for three weeks but you know what i think that i'm gonna wait because i i still did talk to a few people who haven't seen it and i don't know if i want to talk about it without you know giving some spoilers or things that people would perceive you can't spoil the odyssey the freaking story is 3 000 years old you know what you could spoil oh brother where art thou and that's based on the odyssey you could spoil finding nemo and that's based on the odyssey there's all kinds of ways that you could ruin ruin those movies i'm not going to do that so as someone who had read the odyssey in college uh it pretty it it stuck pretty close to the version of it as i recall i mean you know there's obviously it's an adaptation so there are certain omissions and there are certain things get emphasized that i don't remember being emphasized in the original but but anyway you're saying that your short end is not the odyssey it's not i just want to say i love the odyssey and i hope hoida comes back on to talk about it because i could i could ask hoida five million questions about this this movie it's so cool i really liked it and i thought hoida's work was chef's kiss holy crap is it beautiful it is so beautiful it's a it's a great great looking movie so he's definitely on his way to winning his second Oscar.

59:08And, uh, I mean like no matter what Hoyta does, he's going to probably get nominated for best cinematography, but I feel like this is also one of those things where they pushed the technology and did something no one had ever done before. And so much of that was on Hoyta's shoulders. As of this recording, it is still July. And I don't think that, uh, it takes, uh, you know, uh, a real psychic to know that, uh, he's got to be shortlisted right now in everybody's mind. Cause the work is just so incredible. And Greg Fraser for, uh, for project hail mary to me like both of those movies are too like we're on our way to being one of those noteworthy years that a ton of great movies came out and we've already had two movies that i know i will watch repeatedly anyway for sure all-time class but your short end again is not it's not the odyssey it's not the odyssey so i've talked a lot about how it's not the odyssey it is the magic castle you've been to the magic castle many times yeah and you know one of the things i was talking to someone featured featured in clive barker's last movie lord of illusions go on really wow okay uh outside of los angeles i don't think the magic castle has uh as much sort of notoriety i don't think it has as much fame but inside los angeles it is an institution it's a private club they have a very strict dress code you kind of got to know someone to be able to go to it and this is my i don't know it was like second or third time going and i have to say that every time i go it seems somehow better than the time it was before it's always great and i feel like it can only like you need a city like Los Angeles to keep that going and it's because there is such a giant depth of like magicians who are members and can perform and if you've never heard of the Magic Castle or you don't know what I'm talking about right now essentially it is a very old home it's a it's a hundred plus year old home that's been added on to a few times and turned into this uh this space for magic it is um run by a non-profit and uh they have a whole second sort of like you know mentorship program to to bring young magicians in to learn the art of magic and yeah you can just go there and take classes there are people who do this and it is amazing to me that in 2026 at 5 p.m on a fucking tuesday there is a line of people around the building trying to get into the magic castle and it's like and you know what totally deservedly so in most other cities they could not support this they wouldn't have the talent they wouldn't have the commitment from members and boosters and support and whatnot.

1:01:35And if you get to go there, plan on going there right when it opens and going to all the magic shows you possibly can and just hanging out. Plan on spending the entire rest of your day there because it is an incredible experience. Oh, totally. And they want you to because they're going to sell you a lot of drinks and unless you are one of the lucky ones who can waive dinner, you're going to have to buy dinner and it ain't cheap. It ain't cheap. This is an expensive, we were celebrating, we were celebrating a birthday. It was like, it was a special occasion sort of thing. But still, if you're going to splurge on something, there's all kinds of places you can go to in Los Angeles where you can have a similar experience elsewhere.

1:02:13There are other places like that. There is no place like the Magic Castle. I agree. There's no place, yeah, I mean, the Magic Castle is wonderful. And I know a cheat code to get, to make sure you can get into it. Because you can't, you can't just walk up to the box office and buy a ticket. No, not at all. You have to be invited. You have to be invited. And so what's your cheat code? Our friend Janelle Riley once told me that the way to get in is you go onto their website and you see which magicians are playing that you want to go. And you go to them on their websites and say, hey, I'm going to be in town or I'm in Los Angeles and I would love to come see your magic show.

1:02:45And then they will get you a pass. You're still going to have to pay to go in, but they'll get you in. And, you know, I mean, the food is not cheap. It's good, though. I mean, the food is good, as I recall. It's been a minute. You know, they have a Houdini room there where they can do seances. And that's like a private party thing. There's like, I think, five different rooms, but there's also a basement where like all kinds of. The best time to go there, by the way, is right around Halloween. I remember going there once on Halloween and I know he's, you know, maybe not in the public's high favor right now, but just like Marilyn Manson, just standing around watching magicians in full Marilyn Manson get up.

1:03:21And it was really him. Joel Hodgson, the creator of Mystery Science Theater. I've seen him there. But like every magician you've ever seen, every magician who's ever played on Penn and Teller Fool Us, they go to the Magic Castle. There's a close up room where you are right on top of them. There's a Palace of Mystery where they do kind of bigger stage shows. It's it is great. I agree with you. Yeah, I it's 21 and over. but there are three nights a year where they do young adult night, which is also about to say your kids aren't 21 and over. I'm not that old. No, but I got to get them in because it was young adult night.

1:03:56And so young adults, 13 to 20 are invited on those three evenings. And I got to say, both of my kids ended up being like magician's assistants at parts and had an incredible time. It was like, yeah, amazing. So totally. No notes. Definitely go there. Even when you go see a magician who just bombs it, there's even some value in that. and I've seen a few of those. I've not ever seen a bomb and I have seen some now some tricks that I'm still scratching my head on and even though I know conceptually how they did it I have no idea how they pulled it off. Really impressive stuff. So anyway Magic Castle we'll put a link to Magic Castle on the show notes over at camnoir.com.

1:04:34If you're going to Los Angeles follow the Janelle Riley trick of reaching out to a magician and if you're really really stuck I might know a person you can you can send me a message maybe i can help yeah well there are many magicians are members of the magic castle and can just get you in that's correct they can get you an invite you still will have to pay a door fee you still have to uh you still have to buy dinner but those are yeah you can you can get that anyway so ben uh that's gonna do it for this episode uh where can people find you if they want to get in touch uh you can find me at the newly uh relatively revamped benrock.com I've been kind of working on my website to make it easier to see the stuff that I've done.

1:05:12And I've put a bunch of stuff up there that I have never posted anywhere. For instance, I did a GoDaddy commercial some years ago that I realized I'd never really put it on my reel. So it's up there now. Hello. Check it out. Let me know what you think. Hey, you know, whatever. How about yourself, Ilya? Where can people find you? You can find me at Hot Rod Cameras, sponsor of the show, hotrodcameras.com. That is the current best way to get a hold of me. Someday soon, there will be a personal website. I registered it. It's in the works. It's just not live and existing yet, but we'll get there. You know, I was going to say, Ben, you can tell a real professional by the people who have produced a bunch of stuff, but actually don't have it existing online anywhere.

1:05:56They are too busy and stuff is, you know, gets backed up. How many DPs have we had on the show whose websites are completely out of date if they have a website at all? I mean, all of them. I mean, every DP, when I say, where can people find you online? They're like, well, my website is, you know, whatever.com. But it's like six years old. I haven't had a chance to touch it in 10 years. Exactly. So, Ben, who do we have to thank? Who made this show possible? As always, we've got to thank our producer slash editor, Alana Cody, who's still kicking all the ass getting us a bunch of interviews. I know for a fact, I know I already said it, we have John Matazak coming up pretty soon from Motor City.

1:06:32Cannot wait to talk to him about Motor City. Really, really loved it. I texted him from the theater. I'm like, that was fucking awesome. We got to, so she's, she'll be editing this as soon as we're done recording it. And we got to thank Kaze Alatrachi, who composed all the music for the entire podcast. Check out Kaze's website, kazelabs.com. Get your synthesizer fixed by Kaze. Also hire Kaze to do a score for you. Go to musicbykaze.com. Check out all of Kaze's work. Awesome. All right, Ben, you want to take us out? I would love to take us out. Nothing would make me happier. Thanks for tuning in.

1:07:12This 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. you