Michael Bauman on building horror for Monster: The Ed Gein Story

0:00Michael Bauman: Hey, this is Michael Bauman. I'm the DP of Ed Gein, and you're listening to the Cinematography Podcast. We would just hide reflectors everywhere, and as they were walking through, it'd be like, hey, just make sure when you pan your light around, hit that for a beat, and that would illuminate their face. So it was really a lot of the actors with the flashlights doing a lot of it on their own, which kind of added a really interesting quality to it, because we'd always have, like, the ambient from the exterior of the home was always seeping into the house, but it never carrying into the space there really wasn't any light that was leaking into the home so their flashlights were doing a lot of it it was kind of a great way to start to reveal all the little parts and the little bits and bobs of how horrifying the ed king world was this is cinepod the cinematography podcast a program about the art craft and philosophy of the moving image brought to you by hot rod cameras hey i'm your host ben rock today on our episode i got to speak with cinematographer Michael Bauman, who is nominated for an Emmy for Netflix's Monster, The Ed Gein Story.

1:00You can also see his amazing work in the Oscar-nominated movie from last year, One Battle After Another, or the upcoming A24 film, Tony. In this episode, we dive into how Michael built a distinct visual language for each era, with lensing shifting from period to period. Color and texture gave the digital image a weathered film period look. Lighting the Emmy nominated episode 6 sequence almost entirely with reflected and practical light. Rather than lighting the set conventionally, the crew bounced light and had actors sweep real flashlights themselves revealing the horror gradually. Why the less is more philosophy shaped how the show handles its most gruesome material.

1:40Instead of extreme gore, props and details were shot so that it was hard for the audience to see clearly with sound design doing a lot of the work. How a single unbroken and shot in the hardware store reveal scene grew out of a scheduling crunch. Short winter daylights forced a one-take solution that ended up becoming one of the episode's most cinematic moments. 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 little segment we like to call Close Focus.

2:14all right so uh so let's get into it with our close focus say ilia nothing's going on in the entertainment industry at this moment is is there uh yeah maybe there's one thing we could talk about actually there's a bunch of things we could talk about but i think the one thing that everyone it's on everyone's sort of in the california's mind having to do with the paramount warner brother's merger never heard of it yeah uh so the california attorney general has uh basically blocked the merger from going forward and they've set a court date for march of 2027 so at the very least this merger is not going to happen immediately assuming it does happen that being said uh david ellison who is uh chief executive of the of paramount has said well if it's going to get blocked like this, then I'm going to take my ball and go home.

3:10I'm going to pull Paramount out of California. Yeah. So a little, little billionaire tantrum there. It's, it's interesting. And it's more than one person has pointed out. It's the only major studio with a studio presence in Hollywood to which, you know, I'm sure 10 other studio complexes are going to say up yours, buddy. but uh you know but like warner brothers is in burbank disney is in burbank uh sony is in culver city we should explain this though to the people who are listening who maybe are not in los angeles and don't understand the geography between hollywood and burbank it is like they do more or less run up against each other you've got universal city in the in the middle or toluca lake but like these are this is like uh going directly to the suburb next door this is if there's no traffic a 10 minute drive if there is traffic it could be like you know nine years it could be an hour and a half because it's la but yeah um yeah yeah but but i mean paramount uh paramount was like the first lot i ever went on uh when i first moved here i was lucky enough to shadow uh jonathan frakes of all people directing an episode of roswell which was shot entirely on the paramount lot except for some location stuff at vazquez rocks and some stuff but it was mostly shot on the Paramount lot.

4:28And it's a storied lot. It's historic. I mean, everything you've ever seen was that ever came out of Paramount. So, so much of it was, was done there. It's a gorgeous lot. It's got a great back lot, got great offices, great studio facilities. You've seen a bajillion things that were shot here. And for Larry Ellison to be like, yeah, we'll just leave. We'll just leave. You know, I guarantee you that one of the other majors would buy it immediately, assuming it was at any sort of reasonable price. Netflix would buy it. Netflix would just go in and buy that. It's right down the street from Netflix's HQ.

5:00It's like Netflix would love to have that back lot. And it's interesting that is properties particularly valuable simply because they didn't sell it when so many other studios sold off their back lots. When, you know, the getting was good in the I think it was the 1970s. Mostly they're like, wow, we've totally got all this extra, you know, value for our real estate. We should sell it off. Paramount didn't do it. But I think it's a fairly empty threat. I don't believe that David Ellison really wants to dismantle Paramount. Where could you put Paramount? Where does Paramount go? I mean, I guess he could leave the country.

5:37He could go. Yeah, I mean, like he's a multi-billionaire. He could go wherever he wanted with it. But you kind of go like, OK, let's even talk about cities with a burgeoning or strong film presence like Atlanta. Yeah, there's thousands of employees at Paramount involved in the lot and the operations there. And the continuity of wanting to keep your team and your people doing what they do, not to mention they're a multinational corporation. But let's say they're going to pull everything out of California. So Hollywood, of course, gone. Let's say they're going to do that. the relocation costs to keep your people from that decision to has to be astronomical because most people are like, well, uh, okay, the job's moving.

6:20You're going to make me move for this too, because of what was the reason? I think that they would lose, potentially lose a bunch of people who don't want to go. And there's a bunch of fairly well compensated people who could be perfectly happy, you know, possibly working over at Warner brothers or one of the other places in down. I think it's pretty, pretty funny because I think that there's, it's less likely that that deal will ever go through if they leave. If they leave, there is no chance that that deal goes through. Yeah. Well, I do think that that kills it, but I just wonder, I wonder about the emptiness of the threat, you know, like Elon Musk during the pandemic got tired of pandemic regulations and he pulled Tesla out of California or major operations and relocated to Texas.

7:04it's a much younger company so there's that but also like I guess I'm getting frustrated with people who pretend that they love movies and film culture saying things like I'm just going to break Hollywood I'm just going to take one of the main avenues of production and just yank it root and branch out of Hollywood and stick it in I don't know, Albuquerque, Chicago. I don't know where you put it, but no matter where you put it, it's like the people who, like you're saying, it's not just the buildings. You could build a studio complex anywhere. You could build a back lot anywhere, but it's the infrastructure.

7:45It's the people. It's the culture. And it's so ingrained in this town. I just feel like it's just wiping your butt with uh you know whatever uh basically a century's worth of uh culture tradition history you know all that and like yeah you got the paramount library you got the paramount name but is it paramount anymore once you do that to it we won't get to the bottom of this and this is going to be a long-running thing that's going to go on for uh well we know at least i mean march of next year will but will this threat remain will uh will i think it will i think it's going to continue because, frankly, you want to uproot and move Paramount.

8:25That is not an overnight decision. That is a massive undertaking. And just to make that threat, I think it's highly... The timeline between, hey, we're going to prevent this merger from going through, we have a court challenge, to I'm making this threat was almost zero time. So to make that threat, I don't think that they've even run the numbers of what that move is going to cost. That move is going to cost a lot. And I think that once that move happens to the deal is probably dead. So there you go. Yeah. And like, what's the upside of the move? So, so, you know, let's pretend they relocate Paramount to Albuquerque.

9:03Like, you know, that, that is going to, it's going to cost the cost of making, you know, several, many, God knows how many movies to do that. And with no, they're not going to make any of that money back. That's just like selling land and buying land and moving shit. and at the end of it, what have they done? And you're absolutely right. Once they play that card, the merger is ostensibly dead. It's Saudi Arabian money. And so that's sort of like the big talk of this too is because they're not financing it entirely out of pocket. They have the Saudi money that's coming in to do this. So there's an awful lot of moving parts.

9:40And I think that if they can't get it done quickly too, then the longer it goes on, the less likely it is to happen. yeah all right well all right well i'll just sit here in suspense uh having a daily cortisol spike over uh what what's going to happen to our entire town in our industry so you know what uh i i'm seeing more signs of life so uh i think even if let's say the worst scenario was to happen if paramount did pull out and somehow the merger still went through and the promise which is it's a pretty empty promise of them making 15 theatrical release movies a year also fails to materialize.

10:19Thankfully, the industry is not just one company. Thankfully, there is a bunch of other stuff that's happening right now. And in a way, this is legacy media doing what it can do. It is not a particularly innovative space. I know that Oracle wants to think of itself as a tech company and there's Oracle money flowing into all this, but this is legacy media. This is mature companies. The way that they expand is through acquisitions. And if these continue to get swallowed up, I feel like there are more entities that are going to rise up and challenge the status quo. I don't think that we are locked into this monopolistic single pole option of the future.

11:06And I think that there are more tech companies that are being founded right now that are looking to challenge it. I know it's a big dollar. It's a big dollar swing for them to do it. But, you know, Netflix feels like it came out of nowhere and it really didn't. I think there are going to be more challengers, more challengers entering the space. Mark my words. I think that's a perfect place to leave it, man. Let's go on with our interview with Michael Bauman. Let's do it.

11:35let me start just by asking because we you know we didn't talk to you that long ago it was uh right before the oscars so it was even i think this year uh with uh one battle after another which uh features you know just some jaw-dropping amazing cinematography and one of the most remarkable car chases i've seen in any movie ever um how did how did your life change after after all the hoopla around around uh one battle after another that was just an incredible ride

12:07Michael Bauman: just from when all that fired up and everything and just to see and meet so many people um you know look i mean it's certainly because i had already um after one battle i did i finished um you know it took a while for paul and andy to finish editing and get the movie out and all that so i was doing all sorts of different stuff i did you know i did monster and i did all this So there's work in the pipeline. And I ended up, but when all that happened, it was just like, wow, some really interesting scripts and things. And got to, you know, just function on some new projects. And one of them is this current project I'm doing, which is this Nancy Meyers movie.

12:46Michael Bauman: Oh, very cool. In L.A. And so we're shooting in L.A. Shooting in L.A. Yes. We're about halfway through the shoot. It's all based on, it's a Warner Brothers project. So we're shooting a lot of Warner Brothers in the studio a lot. A lot of, it's really great. You know, Nancy, well, I would say Nancy is one of the things she's really into, which has been fascinating for me, is a lot of historical cinema. The cinema of screwball comedies and things from the 30s and 40s. And so it just really allowed an opportunity for me just to like deep dive into just this styles of filmmaking that I knew, but hadn't really like dug into at the level that she has.

13:25Michael Bauman: And this particular project was actually set up at Netflix first and then went down and then strikes happened and everything. And then Warner Brothers ended up picking it up and turning it in and greenlighting it. And we're off to the races. So it's been a lot of fun. Now, I mean, since your background was being a gaffer and being in the lighting department, are you finding yourself like now that you are a very established DP? are you are you finding that like people who you worked with as a gaffer are reaching out to you and being like holy crap come on out and shoot my film like is there any relationship between the gaffer and the the dp uh kind of uh jobs that you're being reached out for there is some of that it's also like a lot of like producers and people you know that you've worked with on different projects who are like hey i hear you're shooting now what you know you know that kind of thing and i mean you know so much of this like you know this community is just all about relationships and things like that.

14:23Michael Bauman: And so to, so it's certainly people that I've worked with over the years who have ascended into new positions, whether they're in studios or other things, and just those relationships are always, always really good and strong, you know? And so you get, you get calls from interesting places. I'll put it that way, you know, which is kind of fun. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, you know, what, what, what a movie to signal your arrival as a cinematographer. It's just, it's such a great, great piece of work. Um, but let's talk a little bit about, uh, monster at Gein. So you were making that, were you making that before you even were nominated for, uh, the cinematographer, best cinematographer?

15:02Michael Bauman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had, um, so I kind of came about cause, um, when I done licorice pizza, I was in, I was in New York, you know, just out there for a bit. And a friend of mine, Jason McCormick, who's DP, who shoots a lot of, he'd been working on a series called Feud, which is about Truman Capote. And he had somebody to shoot a couple episodes. And so he said, hey, look, you're out here. Why don't you do this? I know you, you know, we know each other. We've known each other for a long time. Back when he was the first AC and I was gaffing. And so I came on and did a few episodes of that. And I met Max Winkler, who we developed a really good relationship.

15:43and then Max went on and we did um we did some of American Horror Stories and then he ended up

15:47Michael Bauman: getting Monster and he said hey would you be interested in doing this and I was like yeah I mean it was he's great to work with incredibly collaborative um I since I grew up in Wisconsin oh I knew a lot about the Ed Gein story you know because that was always something I had heard about when I was growing up there and um so I and I knew like you know what the aesthetic was of that part of the world and all that and so it was really uh an interesting collaborative you know basis for the for us getting started on this thing so i i actually finished um uh one battle and then just and then we ended up just going right into this and so um yeah and this all happened we shot the entire series and um i ended up doing um right after that i did uh this a24 movie called tony with a director named matt johnson and uh about anthony bourdain and we did that right after that and so there's like it was all these things that were going on before any of the one battle hype kicked in because that didn't come out until fall that year wow well that's great though because like once you know the one battle hype starts happening you you have all this other stuff in the pipeline too you know yeah i haven't seen tony but it looks really good i've seen the trailers and stuff for it and uh you know this this This is a pretty epic piece of work about Ed Gein.

17:05I was familiar. I'd seen the, it was like a movie in like 2000 or 2001 with Steve Railsback as Ed Gein. And it was shot by a guy who's actually been on our show, Vanya Chernow, I think. I hope I'm not butchering his name. I didn't go back and, I mean, I went back and rewatched the trailer just to kind of be like, you know, do I remember much about it? I mean, it's been so long. but you know I feel like a lot has been said about Ed Gein over the years and in a sense this series is commenting on that not as much as it's commenting on Ed Gein but it's you know sort of like I was shocked in I think episode two when Alfred Hitchcock is a character and we're and now we're making Psycho and then I was like I opened up IMDb and I'm like I bet Toby Hooper's coming up, you know, and it was, it was kind of fun to see how some of that stuff sort of seeped into it.

17:59The other kind of cinematic influences that the Ed Gein story in its own, you know, grisly, terrible way had had on the culture and, and kind of that, that like when you're, when you're looking at the script and you realize you're going to have to recreate moments from Texas Chainsaw and, and, uh, Psycho and Silence of the Lambs, you know, like pretty, pretty noteworthy stuff um you know like uh i mean i assume it must be a pretty exciting proposition but like what are the first things that go through your head how much of an influence

18:32Michael Bauman: were those films on you yeah that's a great question i mean look i i remember um you know seeing cycle for the first time and i was like well this is crazy and i was a little too young to really understand that really all of it until i rewatched it a few years later but you know in Texas Chainsaw Massacre I mean I remember watching that I was just like it's such a raw film to begin with the style the photographic you know the photography of it the the look of it all of it and then you and then just the the violence is so extreme it's so on top and and it's just like this is I was just like this is crazy because I watched it like a buddy's house where's desks you know we were hanging out and it was like you know 11 o 'clock at night and you're like what is this thing and and you know just the title of a texas chainsaw massacre but i i think what was interesting about the series i think i really was when max started talking about was the fact that it wasn't just like what you just said which wasn't just about like the ed keens story which is its own there's definitely a huge thing there and but it's really the impact that this event had had on American culture, you know, especially cinema.

19:41And which is really mind blowing the

19:46Michael Bauman: scale and scope of what this guy, this guy, this single act of what he did. And in this remote town in the, you know, in the late 40s, early 50s in Wisconsin, and just how it ended up, you know, launching, you know, a lot of what modern American horror is based off of and it's and so what was interesting about the project is you know max was like okay well we're gonna we have multiple time periods we have the 40s you know because there's all this stuff about what influenced ed and then we have the whole ed period and that whole kind of look of what all that is and then we've also got all the albert alfred hitchcock stuff and and and the texas chainsaw massacre and then you know a nod to silence and lambs at the end and it's just really like it was like okay well we're basically shooting from the 40s to the 90s yeah well how do we separate all these different periods and you know which of the areas that we're going to emphasis you know put a lot more emphasis on and yeah so it was it was just a whole broad framework of how just a million different looks and things like that and and it was uh it was it was a lot of visually it was a lot of fun you know so yeah yeah so so uh you know that that was probably one of my biggest questions was how did you go about differentiating all of those things was it mostly a lens thing?

21:03Was it a lighting thing? How much of it happens in the grade? Like I noticed in some of the later episodes, like the Ted Bundy stuff, I was like, is that a Petzval lens? It looks like a Petzval lens. Not sure. Nice. And I'm like, how do you end up with Petzval lens for Ted Bundy? But like, what was your creative process for kind of dissecting everything that you're doing and figuring out what would be shown with what representation color palette wise, like there's such a differentiation amongst every world that this series goes through

21:38Michael Bauman: no totally i mean one of the things was is like you know just in light and like how we kind of stuck with lensing wise we just kind of stuck with uh you know what we tested a bunch of stuff we even tested we tested film and you know because we were talking about like do we shoot like the alfred hitchcock sequence sections of the movie on film you know and just try something different and things like that but we ended up for various reasons sticking with digital and then primarily our primary lens package was you know just kawa lenses because max really responded to how they flared and the softness of them when we looked at our schedule that was like that really worked for us as far as or what we could do with the hitchcock end of things and i mean at the end of things and so i mean lensing wise there's a mix of kawas and we had some p vintage um you know some of uh dance the p vintage stuff and then we also had a few pencils um which were really uh you know so much of this is about you know it's interesting you talk about the bundy part and there was yeah there's definitely parts we're using pencils because it was just like all right how do you isolate the sky and that's where it most that's where it most struck me i recently did a project where we used petsville lenses so i'm i'm kind of used to that look and i think that we get used to the robby ryan swirly bokeh look yeah and petzels don't do that unless you're unless you shoot a really specific way like it has to do with a lot of different factors but there's something about kind of the center punch focus of those lenses yeah yeah yeah so it's interesting just to kind of mess around with that a bit and but i mean overall it was like one of the things that you know manny uh tapia who's gaffing it and ray Garcia.

23:18Michael Bauman: We were really good, lucky with our crew. And I think some of it was because we shot most of it in LA, which was, Oh really? Cause our, yeah. Yeah. So we never would have guessed. No, we shot, uh, we shot at sunset Gower for, um, for the, for the first half of it. And then we ended up going out to, um, outside of Chicago and Illinois area to shoot for the exteriors. Yeah. Yeah. The exteriors. I'm like that. I mean, if you did, if you did that in LA, I'd be very impressed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what was interesting is like the interior of Ed's house was all, you know, obviously built on stage in LA and we had to make a commitment to that.

23:53Michael Bauman: It was going to be snowing outside. We sure hope there was going to be snow. We get there to shoot on location because, um, we had to, you know, all the backdrops and everything, all the backings had to be, you know, fabricated. And so we had to commit to like, okay, this is what we think it's going to look like. And this is the level of snow. and we got really lucky because we went on location there was a snowstorm the weekend before it was ungodly cold when we ended up you know we're about an hour and a half outside of illinois in a town called moments and um but of course halfway through the production it warms up all the snow's gone and the special effects department's got to bring in like 80 tons of ice to create snow oh man and uh you know but yeah it was um the fact that we were able to shoot in la life or a good chunk of it we had uh you know just an incredible crew and so you know one of the things that Manny and Ray and I talked about was just you know the differences in light from like Ed Gein's world into like the Hitchcock world and the use of sun and hard light versus soft light and all this kind of thing and so it was um you know just trying to find these ways to kind of differentiate these different periods because a lot of times in the cut you're cutting between we're here we're here now we're in the 40s and it's just you've got to really try to kind of develop what that language is um you know so it's just not just one big visual mush so yeah that was um that was it was that was one of the interesting challenges of the project was just that it covers so many different periods and and just how to differentiate differentiate all of that in the way that it was going to be put together so we started with like looking at light and lenses but then also um mike hatzer over at picture shop was doing the grade for us the color and so um we talked with mike did a lot of tests brought in film tests that we had shot and um you know just kind of max and i just kind of sat and we're just kind of like looking at what it was really just seeing kind of what max is responding to and what kind of was interesting for him because he had built a pretty elaborate deck of images that uh were kind of the inspiration for it a lot of stuff was from capote in cold blood you know sense of like broad uh you know one of the things about where ed lived in Wisconsin was, um, and I went there, uh, you know, we were shooting when we're shooting Chicago.

26:07I drove up there like to the actual, is the house still there?

26:11Michael Bauman: No, no, it's a lot. It's in the middle of nowhere, just corners. So I kind of overgrown. And then I went there and I went to, um, you know, you go to his grave and all this kind of thing in the graveyard and all this, but it's, which is doesn't exist. Cause people have stolen them. Yeah. I was, I was reading, I maybe went down more of a rabbit hole than I usually do. yeah it's and but i mean the thing is the remoteness of that area is and i thought like okay he lives in town like you know but it's like it's actually where his house was was still a good 15 minute drive from plainville yeah plainfield and so um you know one of the things was when max was talking about the visuals was just the remoteness the loneliness the sense of isolation and of what this character is going through because here you have somebody who's out there with undiagnosed schizophrenia basically and in a in a time period where there just wasn't that you know the access to the what you would need to to manage that just wasn't available and barely existed and so um yeah i mean when he had this very elaborate deck that we went through and just kind of like started to pick together and figure out the color palette and i was working really closely with uh matthew ferguson who's a production designer and you know as far as like textures and houses and way to create separation and how are we making the interior of the house dark even though the exterior might be sunny or whatever what is it how do we you know size of windows and all this kind of stuff and it's really a lot of interesting conversations as they're kind of building this house and and how to kind of create the sense of especially there's a scene in um in episode six where the cops finally come into the two policemen come into the to the um uh to the house for the first time and they've got flashlights and and we talked a lot about like how you're bringing them into this world and the sense of you know isolation and frame within a frame and all this i was going to ask you about that i saw i noticed so much and episode six is the one you're nominated for the emmy for correct yeah yeah yeah and it's such a such a well constructed uh piece of of cinema that that whole episode it's so it's so freaky because even though we've been living with this guy now for five episodes, kind of like we've been so into his world that it's the first time we're like, yeah, that's where the bill comes due.

28:29Yeah. Normal people walk into it. It kind of reminded me a little bit of seven, like when they, when they bust into John Doe's house or actually sloth, probably more like sloth.

28:38Michael Bauman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what was interesting is the, um, uh, when I was, I went to film school at AFI and one of the days that we were i was out there conrad hall came in and uh and he caught so connie hall shows up and he brings two prints with him he brings in cold blood and he brings jennifer eight and he just turns them on he shuts the sound off and just starts talking and one of the things that when he was showing jennifer eight was that he was talking about how he had this huge space that they had to do and they hadn't and you know we talked about oh yeah we put condors outside and light everything up and i was like you know forget all that just let's start with flashlights and i'm just gonna have a board we'll walk around and as we're characters are walking through the space we're going to just reflect light back on him and so this was something that um kind of really resonated with me over the years and so when we talked about the scene you know i was like well you know so much about what were what the the whole crux of the of the scene is these guys are walking through and one guy the more seasoned vet kind of has an idea what he thinks is going on in here the other guy is the uninitiated newbie who's like just completely who's really stumbling through the entire house but not aware of what he's looking at yeah and and it was about how to reveal these moments of when he's seeing things and so with the flashlights we were you know we did a lot what was interesting in this project is we did a lot with reflected light and we used so we used a lot of the light bridge system the snap they have a product called snap bridge which is which is like an umbrella that integrates light bridge product with it is that to create kind of the snowy reflective look yeah and it was like it wasn't so much about like okay let's have a key light through a soft thing but like how do we just get like areas of reflectance and so that we can just kind of and then use something harder as a reflector just to pick up little accents and so for this scene for example we would just hide reflectors everywhere and as they were walking through it'd be like hey just make sure when you pan your light around hit that for a beat you know and that would illuminate their face and then you know and then we and so it was really a lot of the actors with the flashlights doing a lot of it on their own which is which kind of added a really interesting quality to it because we'd always have like the ambient from the exterior of the home was always seeping into the house but it was never carrying into the into the space so there really wasn't any it was there really wasn't any light that was leaking into the home so their flashlights were doing a lot of it it was kind of a great way to start to reveal all the little parts and the little uh you know bits and bobs of how horrifying the ed geene world was oh and we never we never uh mentioned which camera system you guys settled on Oh, yeah.

31:13Michael Bauman: So we ended up shooting Alexa 35. Oh, yeah. Which is, you know, I mean, I don't have cameras or like film stocks. I kind of view it like that. You know, and Alexa 35 has probably been, you know, for me, has been a very good match for kind of my sensibility. So it worked out really well for us. I mean, what's it like going from shooting VistaVision to shooting digital? I know that, you know, like you're not going to have a favorite. They both have their own utility. But what's it like making that move? You know, the interesting thing on One Battle is that Paul and I have always been not afraid about pushing.

31:48Michael Bauman: Like, it was something we started way back on Phantom Thread when we were kind of like trying to find the look of that movie. That was involving taking 5219 and pushing it to stop and rating it like 640. And then adding other elements to it, low con, things like this. And so the advantage of Vista, which is that we were generally always rating it around. We were always pushing it. Most of the time, one stop, sometimes two stops. but um it was so you could always rate it at like 800 comfortably and so you're really almost in the same you know asa as like what digital is that yeah so it's not it wasn't like you needed like oh you know and i'm always not a fan also of i i don't like working i mean the camera you know obviously digital cameras are incredibly sensitive amazing that is unbelievable but i also don't like working necessarily at that like oh hey we shoot it at 2.8 i need like three foot candles and at 800 asa and that to me i like to be in an environment where it can light more by your eye rather than like let me go check at the monitor to see you know if the camera's registering something so um you know even on this current job a lot of times we'll just start the day with an n6 and the the internal n6 and because we're shooting alexa 35 right now and so at least you're you're working at levels that are a little bit more you know you can walk in you can make more judgment calls that way and so for me uh you know moving to the alexa 35 it was just like to go from vista it was just like okay well this is we're very similar as far as asa i mean you know we have a more dynamic range with the with the alexa 35 which we kind of tampered a bit a lot just because it was a little too much but um yeah yeah i mean it's just it's it's just an interesting another another type of format which has its own i mean i wonder i wonder too because like you know digital has the the uh the peril of going too sterile or flat or whatever and and i feel like you got a really nice look out of like the whole show looks looks amazing and it looks very organic i was wondering if there were things you did filter wise lighting wise lut wise to kind of soften that up and give it and give it more of an organic-y, I feel like it's almost pejorative to say a film-like look because I feel like digital looks great.

34:05It's not that there's anything wrong with it, but you're going for a vintage-y look. You're going for a period look. And so feeling digital might betray that.

34:15Michael Bauman: Yeah. I mean, one of the things was, you're totally right. And that's why the film discussion came up early in the process because Max was like, I really just don't want this to, this has got to look weathered and period and have like a film feel to it so we did do film testing and just to see and and we took some of that in with mike hatzer and just started looking at like okay these are the things this is film this is what we like you know this is good this is great and mike had already he had kind of built we started with like a basic film lot that he had and then um you know it's just putting the cocktail on top of it when we shot digital tests and and just putting them next to each other and and and you know taking advantage of the versatility of what we could get of the digital but still really trying to make it feel as much like film as possible which is you know i mean so we it's so the the end image has you know obviously it's got grain vatted grain vatted barrel distortion there's a halation in there there's a few things that there's this there's this cocktail that kind of came out of it and and especially rolling off the highlights i think it's a really critical thing which is like a lot of times with digital you know it's just the highlights can get really peaky yeah and like they're very and so we just tampered that that kind of all that coupled with the kawas which had a slightly lower resolution helped also did you do any filtration on camera or is it all post i don't think we did much i'm not i'm really not much of a filter person in general you know so it's like um i really i think that the cow was just how they kind of performed but really that was good for us and and uh we maybe add a thing every now and then but it was pretty pretty rare and it might just be you know the lighting for snow and lighting the way that you you did it it kind of gave it a kind of a softish cast yeah yeah yeah totally periods like it's all yeah exactly because it's all you know so much of the area around his house.

36:14Michael Bauman: It's all, I mean, it's just like snow. So it's just white everywhere. And so you've just got this like very rappy, very reflective light that kind of goes around the entire house, which was, which was fun to play with. So episode six, again, the one you're, you're nominated for, and congratulations again for that, um, is, uh, there's a lot of special effects. Uh, we're seeing a lot of special effects. Uh, I'll call them props for the unspoiled, but it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty gruesome stuff and uh you know like we're we're seeing ed gein's crimes like you were saying like we're seeing it you know the the the check came due or whatever like we're like the the cops are in like and and so we're seeing it the way that they see it when you're showing these gruesome things uh you know and there's also the school of thought of like just show it um but i was i was getting the thing kind of vibes maybe it was the snow um from the way that you revealed i mean there's that one big reveal in the barn or whatever.

37:13That's like, yeah, I'm just curious, like what was your ethos in terms of how much light, how much do we want to see this? How much do we want to let people fill in? Cause I'm sure the props looked amazing.

37:24Michael Bauman: Yeah, no, I mean, look, they, yeah. Killer team, killer team who did that stuff. And, um, it was definitely like, you'd look at the things and you'd hold them and you'd be like, okay, this is you know this part of the body and but how do we look at this and you know even though I know what this is you're looking at how do we photograph it look at it shape it in ways that it's just is that what I'm looking at I can't quite tell and you know kind of thing and so but to you you make a great point about the thing because that to me that movie is is it's funny I I talked to Dean Cundy about it because, you know, he's got crazy stories about that thing.

38:04Michael Bauman: The sense of like, yeah, less is more. And we also had the benefit of some great sound design, which is ultimately another element that, you know, Max and, you know, Max and I talked about like score and what are you going to do here? And, you know, he's a very, very, very collaborative individual, which is joy. and as far as like um you know when we started to talk about how we're going to see some of these how do we reveal the horror and and certainly that's exactly it less is more a range like all these finger uh these fingernail clippings in a manner that you're like what is that i'm looking at and yeah so there's this part where the guy goes around and they get into the house and he's going he's walking through the house and his flashlight is hitting all these horrific stuff but you don't the the audience might know some of it just because they've seen some of it previously but it's really like you know you just let's put this this way and you know here's all the skin suits hanging on the line and all this kind of stuff and it's just and then when he comes into the one room where it's and it was just something that matthew the house ed's house was pretty well documented obviously when they arrested i i went and looked watched a documentary about it after i I saw your whole series and I was like, wow, it really, I mean, you know, I'm sure that geographically or, you know, the layout might be different, but it really captured the whole vibe of Ed Gein's house.

39:25Michael Bauman: Yeah, Matthew was like, look, we got to be, we have to honor as much as we can and be true to it. And, but he goes, here's where we can kind of fudge a little bit. And, and so, you know, a lot of it was like building parts of his house that didn't necessarily get documented. and so you know because the house the house got burned down like they were you know it's kind of like what was going to happen what happened in the series like they were going to sell it and this guy was going and then they just burned down you know the town's folk were like we had a lot of conversations about how we how the architecture of the home and and you know because there's a part with the when the guy walks through and there's he sees these faces wrapped around like jars and it was really like put that in front of a window so it's kind of a little bit backlit you don't really know what you're looking at then this flashlight reveals it and it's just it's kind of building all those different layers in as as these guys are walking around just figuring out oh boy we're screwed you know now how much of the sequence build of that was in the script and how much of it was you guys figuring it out on on set and being like oh okay if we have them come in this door we'll have you know first we see that you know like it's a little bit like a video game you know like we're bringing in the the smaller things and then you get to uh you know the the boss fight in the barn yeah yeah yeah i mean it was um it was interesting it was a lot it was definitely scripted ian ian uh who'd written the script done you know he did the whole series and he had stuff in there but there was also a thing of like we we would went in there as they were building the set and constructing it and started just to block it out with artemis and kind of come up with different sequences we did this for several things we create like a board and just kind of look at like how are we telling the tension moment here artemis the app yeah oh i want to i want to hear how you use that oh it's just i don't know it's just popping up all the time and it's just a great way to you know for us to go through and just kind of document everything and come up with potential ways of working through the um what that sequence would be i mean i also used uh a lot of um there's a scanner called the xgrid which um which we had a scan of the of the house too and so i could move around in 3d and just kind of look at like different angles where we could put cameras and things like this which is kind of fun and so it really gave us the the we had a lot of prep xgrid is the app or is xgrid something that like xgrid's a physical scanner oh yeah and so that's something that i've kind of really been messing with over the last couple last year or so just like you know through polycam which is an app on your phone which is your phone's lidar it creates 3d space i use polycam i've messed with it every time i scan like a location it comes out looking really lumpy yeah it can and what we were doing in our scans is lowering them into a product called jet set which was in it which we're able to move around and look at through a lens the set in 3d wait so you do a polycam scan and then you bring that into jet set we took an xgrid scan and got it into jet set but um i have used polycam to just do a quick you know like i'm in this environment especially on scouting because you can create really quick floor plans and details and then go back and look at all of that which is super helpful so you know we talked we touched about this a little bit earlier but it's like you cover like 40s 50s then 60s with alfred hitchcock then 70s with toby hooper and then uh we we do get into the 80s because not only do we go into like the movie after effects of the ed gein story but we go into sort of his impact on other serial killers, you know, Ted, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck.

43:02And, you know, like, what were the things that you were using kind of to differentiate our way through the, through the specific decades? You know, I mean, obviously you've got wardrobe and stuff like that, but, you know, when we get to the Toby Hooper stuff, you know, that's, that's a Texas chainsaw, more, more of a Texas chainsaw aesthetic. I feel like it gets more contrasty, but, you know, i could be reading into that what you know like what were the what were the creative choices that

43:27Michael Bauman: you were making on those i mean i just want to take a second shout out to carolina costa who was the other oh yeah yeah and she did um a lot of the texas chainsaw stuff with ian who was directing those episodes the guy who wrote the series when we were talking about like what is what is the texas chainsaw component supposed to look like it was um we did a sequence where we were really trying to duplicate shot for shot what they had done it you know we worked a lot with okay the light the lighting back then what daniel pearl did is you know it was very hard it was very harsh really tried to duplicate exactly what they were doing and then also with mike um on the color with hatzer was just to to add some contrast and grain but then also just really uh you know blow the highlights a little bit more that kind of thing just to kind of really mimic that 16 millimeter I can't remember what stock it was I ended up seeing Daniel Pearl and he was telling me all sorts of great stuff which I wish you would have known at the time but it's great you know and just just how wacky that insane shoot was and um you know and he was like I don't know 24 years old or something like that when they were doing and still shooting today and still shooting today and still obviously had an insane career and all that kind of stuff but yeah it was it was really just like okay how are we gonna how to really because that's such that that that imagery is so iconic and so many people have come back to that film on for so many you know the the body language all of it the look of the face mask and all that and it was really interesting to look at that and then look at like what ed dean was doing you know back then and how does those translate just a lot of You had to have a crew that had a good gallows humor.

45:11Michael Bauman: I'll tell you that because this is stuff that you're in all day long. And then, you know, you just have to be able to have a laugh about the whole thing. I mean, in my experience, the horror stuff is where people are the goofiest on set and the comedic stuff is where everyone's the most serious. I completely agree. It's like, you know, when you've got all these body parts in this and this is going to happen. Okay, cool. You know, let's, you know, yeah. You have to have people who have a sense of humor because otherwise it's just, it's super dark stuff. So, yeah. No, you couldn't you couldn't like make it through that.

45:40There was not to make it about me, but one time I worked on one of those crime scene reenactment shows and it was a real crime, but it was I'm just doing reenactments. And in my mind, if I make it a horror movie, I can make it not real. And I don't feel gross about what I'm doing. But the executive producer kept wanting to play us the real 911 call. And I eventually had to say, like, I don't want to hear it. Like, no, like I'll feel guilty about what we're doing if I feel like this is real.

46:08Michael Bauman: you know like no i mean that's one of the things that we're lucky with on the uh with ed's thing is that there's the documentation there is a lot but it is very it you know there's i mean uh charlie that um who plays ed he found some recordings of um of ed's voice that he worked off of and things like that but but what is pretty wild is that this isn't you know i keep thinking this is like ancient history but my parents are still around and they they retired in wisconsin and their retirement community there were people who were from plainfield who actually had interacted with ed gein yeah he only died in like 1984 and that was one of the things you guys do at the end is he's like i was like wow is it going to go out on him listening to you know uh owner of a lonely heart yes i was like uh you know that that ending sequence is something interesting because max is like think all that jazz and we watched oh wow jazz when roy schneider yeah yeah exactly and Fosse and all, and this is where we're taking it.

47:07Michael Bauman: And I was like, I remember talking to Ian, right? I'm like, wow, how did this end up? And he was just like, well, you know, I was thinking this and this and this. And, and Max was like, let's just really lean into it. And so, um, yeah, that was, that was a crazy day on the set. That was a crazy day at the office. I'll tell you that. Well, I mean, we only have a few more minutes, but let's, let's talk more about, you know, episode six, the one you're, you're nominated for, for the Emmy. Um, you know, Like what were the what were the big challenges that you had to overcome? Were there any specific things about that episode that that stand out to you or noteworthy things?

47:42Because, again, it is like the big reveal episode. At the end of the day, you know, we're making we have to make a schedule.

47:49Michael Bauman: And so a lot of times Max and I would just talk about, like, what's the scene really about? And so there's a sequence in the movie where we were under the gun to make the day and make the schedule. and we're shooting when light levels would get dark early and all this kind of stuff. She didn't have a lot of daylight. So there's a sequence where the two police officers go to the hardware store to try and find the guy's mother. And they walk in and we only had a little bit of time to shoot the sequence. And we had originally talked about, okay, we'll get coverage here, we'll get coverage here, we'll get coverage here, but it just wasn't, we weren't gonna have that luxury.

48:25Michael Bauman: So it was really like, let's talk about how we can block this and turn it into a one-er, but still reveal the fact that we have to show the cash register's gone we have to show blood on the wall we have to separate the two guys at one point and one guy and so it was a it was those kind of things of like okay here's a challenge of like how are we going to get this have this have the emotional impact it needs to have and and and navigate this and just do it as one fluid shot and um it ended up working out really well and it helped that we had two actors who are really they knew the material they knew what they're doing they were really like down with the plan and um yeah so they come walking in you know and it's all very soft soft front light that's coming in from the streets because the plate glass windows behind them and they walk in and they they kind of you know walk through the thing and one guy goes off into the back and he's walking around there and then we focus up we come in right close on the other guys he's walking down behind the counter and he's cash registers missing and then you see him look over and there's blood on the wall but the key part was is that to get to where the blood hit we couldn't um we couldn't carry his face at the same time because we had to paint off him so we put a a key box that had a reflective glass as you can see him in reflection oh as he's staring at the um as he's staring at the blood and um that became a way to pull him pull him in and then he went and then he went back to his face as he realizes oh boy and then it swings around and then our other guy comes back in who's like i'm sure she's around here someplace and he's and the other guy's like okay she's clearly dead but this guy doesn't want to believe it yeah so it's an interesting thing of like trying to you know maintain lighting consistency and get the shot done in the amount of time we had because that's always under the gun it was a great time of the year to be there from the standpoint of like you know it's winter all that but the days were super short so you really had to plan accordingly I mean like you know but when you're doing a one-er like that and I you you know better than I do but like you know it sometimes will make it more complicated won't it because you got to get it because I know the exact shot you're talking about and it's it's like a beautiful cinematic moment of the series and it doesn't feel like it doesn't it doesn't play like a choice you made to save time it it plays like oh this is the big reveal you know it's like at what point does it become a purely uh creative choice for you versus being a uh a matter of necessity yeah yeah because because i mean like if you cut it into two shots you might have been it might have taken you less time because if you do if you can once you commit to a one or it's like you know one thing doesn't you know that guy misses that key box by six inches due to no fault of his own yeah you got to start over no i i think it was you know max and i talked about it early and it was like this would be really interesting and i mean obviously we're trying to figure out how to make a day but it was really like the set itself the way the set was laid out it really it really made we could we could it was like oh i see a path here how we could do this and we have him do this and come over yeah do this and it was really like it worked out really well and it helped also that we'd worked a lot with these actors before and we knew they could deliver yeah yeah it wasn't like oh this you know i don't know if they're gonna know the lines or there'd be if you know they're comfortable doing this but those those two were were in full fighting form and um we got lucky with that to have that level of actors who can just you know no problem and i you know we did i don't think we even did a lot of takes i think we did like four takes or something oh wow yeah and it was just you know you rehearse it you had a good we had a really good dolly grip who knew how to you know that's the other thing is like max is really good at creating an environment where a lot of the technical positions are involved in the creative process.

52:05Michael Bauman: And so it's like, you know, you have a dolly grip who is just really like, okay, I could do it if we did it this way. If he takes a step over here, then I can get this, which means you'll get that background. And it's that and having an app and an operator and stuff and just people who really bring things to the party to celebrate the shot. And you can do it in a timely fashion and just execute at a level that would be much harder to do if you were trying to one man bandit, so to speak, you know. Yeah, yeah. Before we go, you know, we just want to encourage people to go on Netflix and check out Monster Ed Gein.

52:37Do you think he'll be returning for the next season of Monster, which I believe is Lizzie Borden?

52:41Michael Bauman: Yeah, well, we did it. Macklin did it. We already shot it. Did Monster, and they went off to Tony, and then came back and did season four of Monster. So we did all that, which we shot in L.A., but then also in Rome for a chunk of it, because they dip into the periods of the 1500s, 1600s. Oh, wow. Visually, it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Definitely a departure from a lot of what the Monster series is. That's cool. So I'm excited to see what the reactions are. Will you come back and talk to us about that when that's drops? That'd be so cool. Yeah, I'm excited to see it. That's pretty amazing.

53:16So, you know, people should check that out. But do you have a website or any place where people can interact with you online? Instagram, anything?

53:22Michael Bauman: I have Instagram, which is at Bauman Lights, B-A-U-M-A-N-L-I-G-H-T-S. Probably need to be more active on it than I am. But yeah, that's out there. Well, cool. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Can't wait to see what you do next. Yeah, absolutely.

53:41All right. So that was Michael Bauman. Michael, thank you so much for being on the show. Always great to have you chat about your process and really exciting stuff. And congratulations on the Emmy nomination for Ed Gein, episode six. Everyone check it out.

53:57All right, Ben, it is our short end time of the show. It's time we talk about our pet obsessions. What are you obsessed about this week? There was a movie that came out. It kind of came and went a few months ago and I know it came out this year and I remember seeing trailers and being like oh that looks cool and it's got Liam Neeson in it uh but it's called Cold Storage and it was written by David Koepp from a novel by David Koepp I didn't even know he'd written a novel but David Koepp who wrote everything you know he Jurassic Park uh you know look him up David Koepp's uh one of the most prolific screenwriters in Hollywood it's a wonderful kind of alien goo the blob kind of story that balances i wouldn't call it a horror comedy but it kind of balances an irreverent tone with some some funky uh horror elements and it's got really a great cast i would totally have loved to have seen it in the theater uh it was uh directed by a guy named johnny campbell and shot by tony slater ling who i don't believe we've had on the show um it doesn't sound familiar to me uh i saw it pop up on canopy so if you have a library card in canopy you can watch it for free um and it's just it firstly it's visually it's awesome it it looks great it's got a great kinetic interesting kind of fun vibe you know very colorful and interesting and uh liam neeson is is great in it the cast is really great in it and it's uh the kind of thing i wish had stuck around at theaters a little more.

55:31You know, it came out this year and I feel like this year, you know, we had two mega hit horror movies and there have been a lot of other excellent horror movies that came out, including, you know, I know I've talked a lot about Hocum, for instance. You know, there's a lot of, there've been a lot of really good horror movies this year. We all talk about Backrooms and Obsession, which are both great. But I feel like Cold Storage, if Backrooms and Obsession got you hungry for more 2026 horror, check out Cold Storage. It's really fun. It's a fun horror movie, like in a Sam Raimi-ish kind of way. I mean, it's got its own vibe.

56:09It doesn't feel like a Sam Raimi clone, but it's got that kind of crazy vibe. Nice. Yeah. Sam Raimi vibe is a good vibe to have. Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely cool. So, Ilya, what is your pet obsession this week? Well, I'm a big fan of DJI's little robot camera called the Osmo Pockets. I've owned a couple of different versions of it. I'm also a big fan of this company called Muse, which basically makes a knockoff. I shouldn't say a knockoff. It's their own device, but really they use technology. They're fueled by DJI. They have a partnership. there is a new competitor in the space and it's Aerie and Aerie is yes I know so Aerie I made a big deal a while back about a partnership with a cell phone company called Honor a Chinese cell phone company and they have officially as of today as of like eight hours ago launched their robot phone and so it's Honor and Aerie robot phone there's a story about it on newsshooter.com We'll put a link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out.

57:22But basically, it's got Airy Color Science and a little gimbal, and it flips out of the back of your phone. So if you can imagine like an Osmo Pocket 3, like, peeling out of the back of your phone, you can then essentially have that sort of like gimbal functionality and your phone screen to shoot content or stuff. So on this page on New Shooter, they've got a little teaser, they've got a short film, and they've got the official sort of like global launch event, which is an hour and 44 minutes. So if you want to go deep into this, you can get really, really deep. At the end of the day, I still feel it looks pretty phone-like.

58:03It doesn't completely shatter the illusion of what you've got as a phone. It does also look, though, very similar to sort of like Osmo Pocket, Muse, Extra, Extra Muse type of things. But here's the thing, at least initially, won't be available in the U.S. So if you're listening to the sound of my voice and you're in the U.S., you're going to have to import this from somewhere else. And I would confirm that all of the different wireless signals work for you because different countries have different systems. And it's going to be not cheap. It's going to be about$1 ,500, I think, for the base model.

58:38And I think there's a higher-end model. It's about$2 ,000 US. I mean, honestly, that's not that much more expensive than an iPhone. It's not. But there's some people out there who they, you know, look, you can, for$400 and something dollars, you can get the Muse Extra or get the Osmo Pockets. And it's like, then you have a standalone device, which is fully made for a thing versus a hybrid device which is certainly more convenient to carry around but is not actually really made to just do that one thing because it's also a phone it's also this does give me like uh weird uh memory vibes of when red came out with their own phone very much very much yeah i knew one guy who had that i'm sure you knew more more more people who had it there's one in a desk drawer at the office yeah i gotta say that like having a standalone like i you sold me an osmo pocket uh I think the two.

59:31And I don't use it as much as I thought I would. But when I've used it, I think the image quality is pretty amazing. And I know the newer ones, the quality has gone up. And, you know, and it's a great little device. Like this is operating under the old saw of, you know, the best camera to have is the one that's on you all the time. And, you know, that honestly is why phone cameras have become such a staple because like, yeah, I could also lug around a DSLR with me all day long, but I'm going to have my phone. And if it has a halfway decent camera, if it looks at least as good as a, you know, a Kodak disposable camera would have looked, you know, 20 years ago, then I'm for 80 % of what I would ever take pictures of, you know, like that's good enough.

1:00:17So I guess the question is if I was going to buy this camera, this camera phone, how is it as a camera? How is it as a phone? and how does the camera compare with like a professional camera that I might use? What size is the sensor? Well, they claim it's a 200 megapixel sensor and it's in a very small size. It's one over 1.28 inch CMOS. So it's actually, it's not that small. It's fairly good size. But at the same time, it all kind of depends. But I watched the videos and the videos look good. I didn't think that they all looked, you know, like a cinema camera. But definitely the Aerie color science.

1:00:55I think Aerie is the big winner in this deal, actually, because Aerie gets to they get to diversify their product offerings through another company, suffer no blowback if this doesn't work because they're just lending their color science and their their optimization, their noise canceling technology. technology. And frankly, it gives this company honor a leg up potentially in the international market. And maybe they're really going after filmmakers to like, look, how many times have you been out with your phone somewhere and just been like, hey, I wish that I had something better than my phone, but I'm just using my phone because this is what I've got.

1:01:33That's exactly what this is doing. This is trying to give you a better option that you've got with you all the time. And in that regard, I think for the person out there who's looking for that, it's going to be a win. I mean, it's definitely interesting looking at it. I'm like, does that gimbal fold away or is it just like sticking out? It does. Yeah. If you look further down in that article, there is a picture where it shows the whole thing folding into itself. So it doesn't look like there is another camera that is visible, sort of facing that. Maybe there is. I can't really tell based on this.

1:02:12So it seems like you would have to pull it out every time you go to use it. And for some people, that also might be obnoxious. I don't know. So maybe there's another camera hidden in there. And I can't tell. I didn't see that in the article. Yeah, no, I'm looking at that picture now. And you're like, yeah, it does fold away. That's good. Because, you know, that's the other thing about the Osmo. It's just it's an odd shape. You can't really could put it in your pocket in its case, but it's it's a little unwieldy and you want something that you can like pull out. I mean, I feel like this is going to be great for, you know, filming your kids soccer game and, you know, getting higher quality, you know, on the fly.

1:02:47It's probably aimed at vloggers and stuff, too. Well, I think what's the the the utility that I'm seeing now from it, though, which I think is probably probably most practical for people is it looks like you can use it while it's folded up. So you literally slide the cover and so you can still use it while it's folded. Also, you're now going to have an extremely high quality rear facing camera or front facing camera, or I guess whichever it is. When someone wants to take a selfie, you now have a much higher quality camera doing that. That's all true. And yeah, like people who are doing TikTok and stuff like that probably can get a lot of great use out of it.

1:03:21Yeah, no, I mean, it's an interesting announcement. They got Claudio Miranda ASE to shoot a launch film. It's a really small little gimbal phone hybrid. I've never seen anything like it. And that'll be interesting to see what happens. I assume it's going to come to the US. I assume it's going to come worldwide. And it'll remain to be seen if the market decides that they want to have a separate device or they want to do all in one. I don't know. Very interesting. Very interesting. Indeed. All right, Ben, that just about does it for this episode. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch?

1:03:56Find me at BenRock.com. A few people have reached out to me and given me their unvarnished opinion about my new overhaul of my website and how I'm presenting stuff. So, you know, please keep it coming. It's very helpful. How about yourself, Ilya? Where can people find you? You can find me at Hot Rod Cameras, hotrodcameras.com, a sponsor of the show. If you need any sort of gear for any sort of thing, good chance we can help you. We got offices in Burbank, California and Portland, Oregon. And if you're in the state of Oregon listening to me, yes, all of the money you spend with us would qualify for your tax incentive rebates in the state of Oregon.

1:04:34Nice. Yeah. All right, Ben, who made the show possible? How did we get here? I mean, we would be nowhere. We'd be like dead skeletons on a desert island somewhere without our producer slash editor, Alana Cody, setting up all these great interviews and getting staying on us to get all the stuff done. And now also conducting so many of the interviews herself, which I think is great, too. So pretty soon you and I will both be obsolete. That's what I'm saying. But we've got to thank Alana and we've got to thank Kaze Alatraxi, who composed all the music that you hear on the show. Check out Kay's new website, Kay's Labs, where Kay's fixes synthesizers.

1:05:17True story. Or go to Music by Kay's. Hear some of Kay's music. Awesome. All right. Ben, I think that is a great place to leave it. Do you want to take us out? Thanks for tuning in. This has been CinePod, the cinematography podcast presented by Hot Rod Cameras. Find your next camera, lens, or accessory at hotrodcameras.com. watch and subscribe to our show on youtube or listen on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts follow and interact with us on instagram threads facebook blue sky and linkedin but not not x don't do that thanks for tuning in