#70 - Akis Konstantakopoulos - Cinematographer of The Chosen

0:00Akis Konstantakopoulos:Akis, welcome to the Creative Gap Podcast. It's good to have you. Thank you. Great to be here. I just want to start off by saying congratulations on wrapping another season of The Chosen. I believe that was a couple days ago, right? Yeah, thank you. We finished filming season six two days ago. So Thursday was our last day, 86 out of 86. 86 days is crazy. Yeah, it's a lot. what is it i'm just curious from a life standpoint because i think a lot of dps and filmmakers they dream of doing a project of that scale and size but may not think of what that actually means for their life so like what is that what is it what do you what does your life actually look like committing to a project like that yeah i mean it's a very good question um your life actually just goes on pause uh entirely from your friends your family and your relationships you have a just literally goes on pause um because as we all know being on set is extremely demanding it's extremely long hours uh 12 13 14 hours but then you also have to factor in that you also have prep time which is also multiple weeks in this case it was like 12 13 weeks of prep um and um the majority of filming for everybody happens away from where you usually live you know it's it's it's it's a it's it's a blessing and it's not very common for filming to be happening in your hometown where you where you where you're based out of so so you spent i mean this year for example i spent seven months away from home um yeah there were a couple of days here or there that I could come back and, um, stay at home for like a day or two, but we're talking about a day or two or three, maybe in the span of seven months.

2:02So yeah, I mean, that's, I think not a lot of people think about that because it's one thing being able to be good at your job and showing up and, you know, being prepared and, you know, setting up the shots. And it's another thing doing that for a very prolonged period of time and being able to maintain the level of work that you did day one in day 86. And how do you feel mentally, intellectually, emotionally day 86 versus day one, right? So you have to pace yourself. You have to, it's kind of like running a marathon, right? and and um yeah you could be very good the first 30 miles but what happens next right um both in terms of like your performance but how you treat the crew how you work with the director how you manage all the equipment um all your orders because you know in a big scale project like this you're dealing with millions of dollars of equipment that you're charged off on all the orders what you need what you don't need making sure production is happy and you're within your budget that um you could shoot efficiently and quickly but also it looks good yeah um and the chosen is quite unique in that um um i'm the only dp on it and dallas is the only director on it whereas the majority if not all almost all the tv shows they alternate dps and there's a reason for that it's because it's so much work um and it's almost impossible for one person to do all of it so you're filming one episode while the the other dp's prepping the second episode and then well you know the alternate then when that next person is shooting the second one the first dp is prepping the third one but we shoot it like a movie so we just shoot it all out of sequence all just based on location, just like a movie.

4:04Which I'm sure brings its own complications to it inherently. Its own complications, both for actors and crew, because you have to be like, wait, now we're doing scene 305 from episode 3, and next one is scene 718 from 7th episode, and now this is 9, this one's day, and what happened before, what happened after. So it's just a lot that you have to keep track of. Yeah. Yeah.

4:29Akis Konstantakopoulos:I want to, I want to dig into that a little bit, but you said something that is, it's honestly been really important for me as I've started to grow as a DP is just like my general health. And I'm curious as to when you're on a show for this long and, you know, doing six seasons, are there things that you do to help you maintain proper health, like diet, working out, fitness? Like how do you maintain that sort of sharpness from day one to day 86 yeah that's a good question um dallas and i are like very much into like health hacks and health tips and like we have like a very specific like resume and dallas more so than me he's he's a freak when it comes to those things but um uh it's it's very important like you can let yourself go because if you start feeling bad then you're going to start performing bad um and if your body is not there you can't really withstand 14 hours for seven months at a time so i think i think that's very important um what i do um i like to uh um i work out every weekend because during the week is very difficult to to get time to do that now if it's a really short day for some reason we should nine ten hours i'll try to go to the gym and work out a little bit um but every weekend i definitely work out i've had like problems with my back over the years because i used to operate a lot of handheld when i was first starting out and that has given me like really bad back lately so i've uh that's something i will try to protect and be conscious of wearing the proper clothes and the proper like shoes depending on the terrain that we're at um um but uh um besides that it's just um just being conscious of what i consume i'd like really good food and a lot of like smoothies good smoothies and like juices and stuff like that and i don't need a lot on set i eat very like just a little bit of nimble basically just enough protein just to kind of get me going um but yeah um no drinking hopefully during the week you know have a couple drinks during the weekends but yeah amazing yeah i find that to be it's something that i i've always kind of had a good workout regimen i've always kind of eat pretty healthy um yeah the more that i've you know been on set and travel across the country working with different crews it seems like a common sort of thing is that people don't necessarily think too much about what they're consuming on set whether it's a commercial for 10 hours or they're on like a feature i hear people talk about them not feeling that great you know they're tight their bodies are tight there and to me that just is a recipe for a struggling career in sustainability and yeah and it's uh especially like this season we had so much travel involved because we did a big part of our filming in italy so and i went out there twice for scouting and then once for filming so i went there like three times in a span of two months um so and it's difficult you know because whenever you travel internationally it's so many hours and a lot of people do get sick on the planes right and like when you're you put your body through like jet lag and so much travel so those are the very critical moments i think for me i tried to make sure like i don't get sick so i'd get like extra vitamins extra like shots of ginger like you know so i do all that stuff i have an eye mask so i could sleep well at night when i travel internationally um so i think those are very important things to uh to to keep track of dallas goes to the extremes and he does like cold tanks literally every single day and night, morning and night.

8:08I prefer the saunas because I like the heat. So I try to sneak in a sauna whenever I can. And I love tennis. I play tennis at least, you know, I hope I try to do it once a week. But yeah, so just staying active.

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8:51Akis Konstantakopoulos:That's chivacollective.com. Sign up and be the first to know when the doors open. Join the wait list now, and I look forward to welcoming you to this community. something else that I struggled with when I did my first feature and it was nowhere near the amount of length of time is that sort of come down feeling at the end of it because you're on such a high for so long and you're around you know people that you are building close relationships with having done this for six seasons you're working with the same people over the course of years and years and you just wrapped 86 days what does it feel like two days after now that you're just home i'm relieved yeah i mean it's always bittersweet um it's always bittersweet because you've spent as you said so much time with this specific group of people that you know so well they've become your family for seven months so it's really sad to see them you know go essentially and you're not going to see them for many months or who knows when um i mean thankfully we have another season coming up so i know that i will see them you know soon in the next six seven months but yeah you kind of say goodbye and everybody goes to their own lives and uh they resume their lives and and then you kind of reunite a few months later um it's um but this season specifically because it was our longest season to date 86 days than one before it was 72 that was the longest second longest so this one involved so much travel across the united states in utah italy and you and in texas back and forth in so many places uh a lot of prep difficult scenes i was quite relieved to be wrapped it was just a very very very long journey um yeah wow yeah from what i've seen from some of the behind the scenes it does and how last season left off it does seem that this one is quite heavy um in a lot of different different ways i'm curious as to how that sort of affects everyone's state on set when you know that you have something serious coming up how does how do you as a dp sort of prepare your crew for this or how does just the set in general sort of prepare themselves for moments like that yeah i mean we have a lot as you said yeah this season is packed with emotional moments of course the crucifixion yeah scourging bearing the cross a lot of emotional scenes between the disciples uh and the women um so it's it's really packed with emotion um and the season just doesn't stop like unlike some other seasons that are a little bit more slow paced this one just moves like a train and i think people are really gonna like that like it's just even like dialogue scenes there's like really quick you know people just kind of talk like you know it's kind of like an aaron sorkin type of like screenplay so it's just like back to back to back people jumping on top of each other so it's a lot of it's a lot of that but to answer your question um we you know dallas always kind of makes an announcement at the beginning of the day if it's an emotional scene like that it's like hey guys you know i mean obviously i know and the key members know but he wants to make it known to the rest 100 150 people on set that that it's like so you're aware this a very important scene it's very emotional we really need to keep it quiet for them we really need to be respectful of their you know of their space and where they're at emotionally and um and the crew is very good at doing that you know so um uh no cracking jokes no no loud voices uh um and you know i like to communicate with my crew with hme so i we're all talking like in very low host voices um to just keep it very very quiet and very respectful for them um and uh You know, there were a lot of those scenes this season, so it was very heavy.

13:03Akis Konstantakopoulos:Throughout the course of shooting all six seasons, have you, I know you shot Jesus Revolution. Have you been able to work on other projects in between each of these? Because I know that they film pretty much back to back to back. Yeah, I mean, season one through four, there was a lot more time in between. Because we didn't go so back to back. After season four, it became like really back to back. um but yeah i've had uh you know started my my journey on the shows i'm starting in 2018 um so it's been seven years now um so during that time i've been yeah i've been able to do some pretty remarkable projects that i'm very proud of one was to use revolution um another one was uh i had the pleasure of working again with my good friend fayden pop Michael um he directed a movie that he's always wanted to direct in Greece and um that happened during 2020 or 2021 or during the pandemic or shortly after so we shot that in Athens and I I dp'd it uh for him and he directed and that was a really cool experience what was that like he's I guess working for a director that's quite a profound dp it's challenging because he I mean obviously he knows exactly what he wants um he's not very big on prep and he'll he'll tell that to anybody he likes discovering things on set um and um um it's you know i feel like i've worked with him on so many other projects from in different positions when i was a gaffer in a small movie that he directed years and years ago another one i was an operator on another one i was a camera pa on when I was starting in 2007 or 8, whenever it was.

14:57I've seen him on set and hanging out with him on set so much and he's been a big influence of me as a cinematographer. So I've always tried to kind of think consciously and subconsciously. I've tried to imitate his style and his approach and it's something that speaks to me also creatively and aesthetically that I like. yeah um so i think we're kind of very much on the same page about what looks good or what references we're going to use or um but yeah it was a very cool experience amazing yeah um

15:36Akis Konstantakopoulos:the one thing that i loved about the chosen and sort of just the journey of the show was you know watching season one you get a sense of the scale of the show which at the time you know it could look nice big but looking at season five the the growth is exponential this the sets have grown crazy just the scale and scope of it is insane yeah and being on the show from that first moment to now you just wrapped season six obviously there has been more money brought into the show more people more extras more crew and i think i looked at imdb there was like a hundred plus camera and genie people across the six seasons which is an insane amount of people but i'm curious i'm curious about like what you noticed about the change in scale throughout the seasons whether like what are some positives that you notice within this the growth like as it scales to be bigger what are some positives and were there anything that kind of made it feel a little bit negative were there some negatives to the scale and growth of it uh it's a good question so obviously the positives are pretty easy to pinpoint you have a lot more crew uh like we did not have a rigging crew the first few seasons and having a rigging crew the last couple seasons has been extremely helpful um so we can pre-light in advance we could do those bigger setups that i would want um like this night we did finish this night exterior we had two weeks of night exteriors in different locations and we had we i think we had like a total of 11 condors and uh three telehandlers and just huge moon boxes and just all this stuff and and moving it from place to place because we're in different location every night so to do that you do need to have a big infrastructure you need to have a big team like they're like six generators and multiple things like that so the team has to go in and lay all the cable in advance and then in the morning they have to move all these condors to the new location because you can't just show up and be like all right now let's put all these condors somewhere else just never gonna make your day right um and uh those are scenes that we just couldn't have done season one or season two or than season three just couldn't so um it's one thing you're having a couple characters in a field maybe you can get away with smaller stuff but when you have really 30 cast members and horses and stunts uh happening at night in in the middle of field you need that stuff um um and multiple cameras and technocranes so you have like you know hundreds of people showing up on set before and after call time.

18:34And the other great thing about having more money and more resources is we have more time, you know, so we can afford to do some days one page, you know, or five-eighths of a page one day or like a page and a half, you know, because those are difficult scenes, so let's spend time on it, you know, let's get exactly what we want. I'm so used to shooting seven pages a day. Yeah, I was going to say, we still have days, like we just finished last week, we had a day that was six pages. Because it was all dialogue, and it was three people in a room, so you could do that. And we still do that. But generally, you know, it's given us a little bit more flexibility to do those things.

19:23We've been able to have more cameras, So instead of our usual just two, sometimes we have a third camera and we're like, okay, let's have a third camera and this or that. So that's really nice. We've been able to have more tools with lenses. So more specialty lenses or more specialty items like image shakers and Hydroflex packages. So you just have the ability to just play more with tools like that. um um but you know the biggest thing is just having more crew because it's you can always dream of doing the setups but if you don't have the manpower to actually execute them um then you're not going to make your day uh it's not just a matter of like having the equipment right you got to have the equipment and the crew for sure uh to be able to do that uh because in productions is like here's all the equipment it's like well but i don't have the guys to move this equipment what am i supposed to do with this yeah you know um because we gotta have the time the crew and the equipment you gotta have all three uh to do that and we and we've been blessed to have those all three the last couple seasons so and i think it shows um and from And that translates across all departments.

20:44It's not just my department, right? So the same applies to costumes. Now they have two additional customers and they have more money, which means they can layer more clothes and they can source better fabrics. So it looks more realistic and it looks better. and they have more people on the set who can actually come in in between takes and dirty them up and apply like more sweat on their clothes that we didn't have the time or the people or the brain power for people to go do those little things, right? So when you exponentially add those little things across all departments, it just grows. The details become way more prominent, yeah.

21:20Yeah, yeah. The set dressing, the, you know, how big the sets are, We couldn't really build sets that were this big in the prior seasons. Now you have Pilate's set and Caiaphas' set and the Holy of Holies. And these are like massive, massive sets that are worth like half a million or more dollars. These are just big sets, 16, 17 feet tall sets. So it looks impressive on camera because now I could put back in the corner and put that 28 mil in anamorphic and capture the whole thing, it's not a 12-foot set. So those little things just make a big difference, though. Same thing with VFX. We were not really able to have much visual effects the first few seasons.

22:11It was very limited. Now we have a much bigger budget, so therefore they can, it's like, okay, let's erase these buildings and put this there. It just grows.

22:22Akis Konstantakopoulos:you could do a lot more things yeah when but heavy things it brings more responsibility um it it it and there's a lot more pressure right because now yeah season one's like if you look at it by itself season one season two and three like by themselves they look good but then everybody is expecting you to deliver much more since you have much more um so it has to look better they're like, well, we spend more money, so it has to look much better, right? And we spend even more money season six than season five, so it has to look even better than last season. So there's that pressure that you deliver.

23:00Akis Konstantakopoulos:Do you find yourselves sort of like fighting the balance of, okay, we have all this money to spend on things, let's get all the tools, but how do you make it feel like you're not degrading? What am I trying to say? You're not impeding on the story too much, because sometimes when you have all the money, like if I do a commercial and I have more money than I'm used to, I'm like, okay, let's get all the things. And I know the commercial is different than a narrative, but how do you find that balance of asking for everything versus like what you truly need for it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really just boils down to the scene, right?

23:42And for me, it always comes down to like, what's happening here emotionally, this moment in the scene so um and what tool do i need to what tools do i need to get that point across um uh within the world of of of the show that we have created um so um are we doing a cool shot just to do a cool shot or does it actually say something right so that's where it really comes down to um and if like what does this say if i could interrupt there i think because you

24:21Akis Konstantakopoulos:have so many years you know of experience and i think you know from where i am i'm about six years into my career i still sometimes struggle with is this truly a cool shot just for a cool shot or does this actually say something like how do you learn to decipher yeah this cool shot is actually making a difference and is telling the story versus it's just cool you know i don't know if you want if that's the right question yeah i mean i think it just takes time and it just takes like i think just a year so it's just shooting stuff and then watching your stuff i think it's important to watch your stuff even a year later two years later revisit stuff you've done and be like oh like because then you can um it's tough sometimes to think of that in the moment but if you like i see a lot of stuff in color correction a year later when i'm coloring i'm like oh why do we do that you know then you have to like constantly have a critical eye of your work even when um not just during filming obviously during filming you're just criticizing everything you're doing or like is this too bright is this too too hard do i need to soften it you know should i put dolly or should i do this one steady camera you're always like no i shouldn't do you know you're always like thinking and analyzing criticizing but you need to have that same critical eye when you see finished um be like where did i mess up how does that feel now you know and kind of try to remember the conversations you're having in your head seven eight months earlier um but and also just you know i think just constantly watching stuff from people that i respect and i like and it's like oh how do they do something similar you know and the problem is that and that's a a bad kind of path to go down um because a lot of times we watch movies from people that we respect and we admire we're like oh they did this shot therefore i'm gonna do this type of thing i see but that doesn't always apply because each scene is different right it's emotional a beat in its movie is going to be different than what you're doing so even though they did this cool shot and this lighting setup that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to work for your scene right um because the chances that the emotional content of that scene to mass That's exactly the most likely.

26:51Akis Konstantakopoulos:It's very unlikely. Do you use movies as a lot of references? Because I know some DPs that shy away from movies or stills or frames because they feel like it's going to interpret a sort of copiness from them or they're going to copy what they see. Do you shy away from that stuff? No, I watch a lot of movies and I put a lot of frames. I love that stuff because I think it's great as a source of inspiration, for me at least. um and it's great to kind of like get my brain going um but it kind of stops there you know i try to change it up or elevate or do something different put my own spin on it but at least it kind of gets me going yeah um when this might be a funny question but sometimes when i walk on set especially if it's a day that i know is like okay this is a day of growth for me this is a big one for me i'm maybe touching a new level here i'm trying something new and when i walk on set sometimes i like pause and i'm like how did i even get here like i'm just like this is amazing do you still get moments where you walk on set you have six condors you have a hundred extras and you're like how the heck did i even get here this is 600 extras um you know had multiple days with 600s that was crazy um yeah i mean um yeah for sure you know there are moments like that where especially when you see how much it's touched people that's kind of what really to me makes a difference um because i've worked at a lot of projects where we've had like tons of stuff um but it's just not about again about the tools it's like what what what happens afterwards you know what what do we do with this um and um i was just i was finishing color correction last year in in in february uh for season five and i was driving back home and I was just so tired.

28:55I had been in the color suite for 11 hours, you know, in the dark room. And I was just driving by. I was in Hollywood Boulevard, and I was driving by the W. And I look up, and it's like the billboard of The Chosen over the entire hotel. And it's like, wow, like, those are the things that I was dreaming of when I was starting off, of, like, having a show, having a movie be presented that way. And it's like moments like that, it's kind of, like, makes it all worth it. you know it's like okay this is being seen by people this makes a difference because the beginning of my career i probably shot 20 25 movies when i was first starting up that were all like movies that nobody ever saw you know they were like small indies um and it was like like i you know i'm probably paying my dues right now i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing but I'm putting so much effort, so much time and so much of my heart into these projects and nobody's ever going to see them or hear them and that was just, it's just not a great feeling for an artist, I think.

29:59Their work is meant to be seen. Otherwise, why are you doing it? Hopefully, as an artist, you have something to say, you have something to express through your images, through your cinematography and you want it to touch people. so twice been so great you know with the Joes and it's just something that's been seen by a lot of people and I think it transcends religion it transcends like your people's beliefs in this or that and I really hope even more people get to see who are not Christian or not religious I don't think you have to be religious to watch the show you're going to discover a lot of things and a lot of lessons throughout the show.

30:47Akis Konstantakopoulos:As biblical as it is, and as much as it portrays Jesus as this religious faith figure, it is such a human-based story. And I think that's really what attracted me to it, because as I started sort of on my journey in Christianity, it was hard for me to pinpoint these figures in the Bible as human beings because you just read them on a page and it's hard to put a face to them but when i watched the chosen it was like i i'm watching these stories that i've read and i'm putting a human face to it and it really just i don't know there's something really magical about the show that really humanized this whole thing that you read in the bible and it's truly the writing is insane the uh yes acting uh everything is just a fantastic it's an unbelievable show it really is yeah thank you i mean that was that was one of the main things that dallas wanted to make sure we achieve with the show from the very beginning that was one of the first things that he told me it was like we want to make this figure caesar's that everybody knows but nobody everybody has heard of, but nobody really knows, as human as possible.

32:03And all the disciples and all the people who will come into his life as real and as human as possible. Because everybody knows the story, right? We all know the story. Most of the viewers have read the Bible probably, or a lot of the viewers have read the Bible. So it's a story that everybody knows in very good detail. But why are people flocking to the movie theaters? And why are people watching it again and again and they're going crazy over the show it's because they've never seen these characters that they know so well presented in this way um they've never they've never seen them so human and so real uh that they jump out of the bible they become like human they're like oh i can relate now to this person i can relate to what it was like yeah um and um i've been with dallas in like many social settings like we might be at the airport together or we might be at a restaurant together and there are people just coming up to him and they start crying people that you know he's never met before and uh it's just that emotional reaction that people have had have towards the show that it's they see the bible in a way and then you and then you light right in your way

33:16Akis Konstantakopoulos:yeah oh did you did you know what this was going to become when you joined did you know you were when you joined season one, did you think that you were going to be on for six seasons? No way. I had no idea what it was going to be. I mean, I knew, I mean, he, I don't think anybody knew, right? Because the first season, the first two seasons were all crowdfunded. Right. So they were, their resources were pretty limited and we were at the mercy essentially of whoever was going to donate. so if people did not donate enough money there would be no show um and we knew that getting into season four especially season three you need a lot more money to make this happen but also from a crew standpoint like it was tough to keep the crew and to keep the same actors if there was not another kind of motive to keep them you know people were going to get other jobs other opportunities that might have presented themselves it's like sorry like i can't take this job now it's just not paying me enough i have this really good opportunity i gotta go do that and that would have happened across the crew across the cast so there would be no no no show um so it was either growing or not gonna happen what made you join the show knowing that it was this crowd funded project and the uncertainty behind the future of it what what about your initial meeting was like yes i this is something i want to be a part of i was recommended to dallas by a director that i had worked for before john gun who i really respect and um uh and so and funny enough there was another actor that i had worked with who also recommended me to dallas because she was looking for a cinematographer and at first when i heard about it i just wasn't too thrilled i wasn't sure i wanted to do that i was up for a couple other projects um that seemed a little bit more in line with what i wanted to do at the time and um but i still of course was like i'll take the meeting i'll read the scripts and go from there so i read the first four scripts because that's kind of what i was sent and i was just blown away i just thought the writing was just like so good it just flowed very nicely just like it did not seem preachy which what i was afraid of right um it just didn't feel like anything I had read like before um it's like oh this is really well written like this flows really well and um and then I met Dallas and that also that kind of like sealed the deal for me because he was not who I expected to show up and he was really cool and he was very pleasant and very positive and and um he sort of just want you to have control of the visuals I want you to be in charge of that they give you like freedom to you know to work how you want to work and explore the themes that you want to explore as as an artist and you know i want us to have a good relationship a collaborative relationship and you know um you do your thing and you know i want to focus on the actors and you create the world around it and this is kind of this is kind of how i wanted to feel um so giving me that space and the creative freedom to do what i want to do and even to this day is like, yeah, you can come up with the shots.

36:52You know, there are a few things that I want to make sure I get. And there are some shots that I have in mind. But for the most part, you just go figure out all the shots that you want to get and how you want to shoot it. And if I want to change something, we'll talk about it. But 90 % of the time, it's like, however, you know.

37:08Akis Konstantakopoulos:Yeah, that trust is huge, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, and I could tell that he was going to trust me from the very beginning. So it's like, oh yeah, this is a really good relationship. because a lot of the times you know you get on projects and you're just not happy with the relationship you have with the director right you're like you feel like you're not being given the freedom to do to shine the way that you could shine or really show off your qualities feel like your hands are tied right and and this is not a very good feeling um so i've never felt like that with dallas and it's just been a very fruitful experience um so yeah amazing when you get to the scale of where you're at season five season six you know the most crew that i've worked with was probably a five and five on g and e and maybe three people on camera at this point in my career and you know the the sort of managerial side of that the leadership of communication at the scale that i was working with the five five is you know much different than I'm assuming it would be when you have a hundred people or however many you have.

38:19Akis Konstantakopoulos:What do you think changes in your role as a DP, as a, as a manager, a leader, when you have that many people and you have these big, huge setups and this sort of responsibility that is quite significant compared to say like a three and three team? Yeah. Um, honestly it's, it's the same, You know, I mean, it is the same because, um, I will interact with my key grip and I will interact with my gaffer and I'm going to interact with my operator, my first AC and my dimmer board op. So those are the five key people that I'm talking to constantly. So if you're working on a smaller show, you're probably not going to have the dimmer board op and you might not have an operator.

39:02um so um you kind of have to take those two people out of the equation but besides that you're still going to talk to your gaffer the same way you're still going to talk to your key group the same way i think just knowing you know you can you can request more things because you're like okay well i can ask for a couple more things because there's a bigger team so so being aware of like also size of crew time constraints what time it is like where uh, where you're in the day, how significant it is. Do I need to ask for another 12 by 12 or can I do it with like a floppy?

39:37Akis Konstantakopoulos:Right. You know, uh, is the crew like really tired that we're finishing up? Do they need to wrap, you know, just kind of being aware of those little things. Uh, um, and, um, could I ask for another 12 by? I could, but do I need to right now? I kind of need to get going, you know, like we're a little bit behind. So just kind of being aware of those things. Um, and, um, um, the people that i work with are amazing both the key grip and the gaffer they're just spectacular and uh um they're very easy going and they always want to give me what i want and and they're very collaborative so um they're they don't have egos of like oh you only talk to me and you can't talk to any of the other guys so the key grip sometimes like i'm gonna go take care of this over there so i can explain to them exactly what needs to be built you can talk if you want to mike here about anything else so then i'm telling my hey mike let's put a 12 by here you know and while i know my key grip is dealing with a bigger issue over there um same thing with with the gaffer you know he's he's an older guy who's who has so much experience and he hates wearing the hme so he's always like following me around wherever i go on set just to hear like if we need to change something um and then i'm talking through the hme to the dim report up where we're like always making micro adjustments even during the filming.

41:04You know, start filming, it's like, oh, this looks a little too bright. You know, bring it down five points. So you're bringing it down five points. Or when we build cues and the camera is moving, it's like, okay, you're going to start at 80 % of these. You're going to go down to 40 % when he goes by the window. And then you're going to turn this on. And we had a lot of that actually this season because when he gets crucified, it gets dark. right so the light goes away the sun goes away and it's kind of like it goes in a dimmer and from day becomes almost night um and the show cuts to various scenes in various places and you see that light effect happening um so it's pilot's house suddenly from daytime becomes nighttime that where the disciples are happening from daytime against nighttime exterior scenes it becomes from day to night so there were a lot of and challenges in how do you achieve that um the interiors were relatively straightforward right but the the exteriors it was kind of

42:13Akis Konstantakopoulos:pretty difficult do you mind sharing a little bit of how you were able to accomplish that yeah we did we did a number of different things uh depending on the situation uh it was some of it was as kind of rudimentary and simple as picking a location where we we had um we had a 20 by 80 uh uh solid on pulleys that would uh on cue it would just the grips would just kind of start pulling it and at the same time we would have a couple 18ks lighting the scene. One was bounced, one was direct, another one was in the background, so it would be like two or three 18ks that all on cue would pan away, dim down and slowly pan away.

43:06And we would have to find, you know, we'd be filming in a spot that I had scouted before that there would be no direct sunlight, right? So that you can create the direct sunlight with your 18ks. um so then you pull the solid all the ambience is completely gone imagine if you're 2 p.m right tons of ambience all that ambience is now gone and the 18ks are also gone um and would have a few grips running in with floppies and 12 by solids at the same time just to limit the ambience also from the ground and also stopping down at the same time on camera like you'll be like in three three three stop iris pool how much responsibility of that is put directly on you

43:55Akis Konstantakopoulos:and how much do you kind of delegate to other key members or other departments to be able to accomplish this thing in total for like the lighting setup for like bigger lighting setups for things that are quite grand and extreme like is all that responsibility really put on you or like how do you delegate that i come up with the lighting designs for scenes like that in advance so something i'll do over the weekend um uh and uh and then i kind of pass with information to the gaffer and the key grip uh but yeah all the big like setups because we have some huge setups in stage interiors. We're talking about like, you know, 20, 20 Ks and over 100 sky panels.

44:39We had over 100 sky panels rigged for a set

44:45and 100 feet of truss, hundreds and hundreds. So all that I kind of do in pre-production where I draw it out and I think, okay, if I'm looking this direction, what would I need? so I kind of I kind of do you know like if I'm looking this direction what do I need here and then I get very specific plans overhead plans and blueprint plans from production design and a lot of those sets if they've not been built they have 3D images rendered so I can actually travel through the space and see exactly what it would look like and I can even visualize if I put my lens there what am I going to see if I'm on a 28 so i usually just start like if i'm lighting wide this way what would i need right because

45:35Akis Konstantakopoulos:from there you're gonna go down so what's the most that i would need what does your conversation with your gaffer look like at that sort of at that place like you're looking at the space you're asking yourself what you need and you write down what you think where you perceive you think you need then what does that conversation look like with the gaffer who might have another alternative option or maybe a better solution so i i doubt i read down all the thoughts i write down like in this massive like imagine like an architectural plan so it's like this huge thing that we're all out and i've written down all the lights that i think we're going to need in every direction and then we'll sit down and we have a meeting about it uh with both the gaffer and the key grip and we go over the entire plan can we do this you know what do you guys think is there something that will not work or just something better and that's kind of where the dialogue starts right but i always present something in full detail for what i think i want it to look like and how i think we should achieve it and from there it evolves right um yeah but uh we use trans lights a lot starting season five oh really that was a new thing that we didn't we hadn't done it prior seasons and they're super helpful they look great if you like them properly but they're so hard to work with so um that was a big thing i think i read something or heard something that you love to use tungsten on this show yeah yeah i mean for all the state stuff we use tungsten uh 20ks and 10ks and 5ks but um even for nighttime for nighttime exteriors i use all tungsten um so i'll use zips 4k zips and 2k zips and 750s um uh i use um uh twinnies yeah um So 5Ks, 10Ks, and 20Ks, those are the tungsten units that we use.

47:35And from there, it's just, you know, sky panels and the stairs and just the usual stuff. Phylexes, Q8s, Q10s. Yeah.

47:46Akis Konstantakopoulos:For a show that's 86 days, how much expectation, or I guess, what is the expectation you put on your gaffer and key grip in particular? how much do you expect them to sort of have a certain level of passion and care for the show that you're asking them to come on yeah i mean they um i've worked with the same guys for the last four or five seasons actually with the gaffer we've worked together since season one and uh we see key grip we've worked together since season three and uh they're both amazing and extremely passionate and they want to make sure I'm happy and they're always going above and beyond and we have a lot of time in pre-production where we go through the schedule day by day and so they're aware exactly of what needs to be done just like alright this week for this scene we're going to need a condor there, there and there that's right, that's what we have here making sure we're all at the same pace and the next day these two colors are going to move over to that location great yeah yeah so they and they write everything down and they create a schedule their own schedule with all these moves and all the needs per scene then the pass will let info do their best boys the pass will let info do their reading team so we've developed a system and it's like pretty you know it works pretty well um and uh i mean they're great you know without them there's just no way i could do any of this uh because yeah i can come up with some of the ideas and how we're going to do this and how we're going to shoot and how we're going to light it but if this guy's done pass down the notes if it don't actually execute this stuff if if it's not done correctly there is nothing you know was there a was there a particular moment that you could recall filming this last season where you might have faced a challenge and it didn't go as you planned

49:46not really that's good yeah yeah yeah um i think we have a pretty well oiled machine at this point and i know how much we can achieve per day setups wise work wise um and i do all the shot listing the weekend before um and i work with adam our first ad in like organizing scenes and making sure we're on the same page about stuff and how much we're gonna shoot every day and in pre-production we spend a ton of time the two of us working on the schedule like a ton of time and dallas completely trust both of us just kind of putting all that together and this season he was super happy he's like you know we you guys actually did a great job on the schedule and you know it was very well kind of spread out um so it was just a lot of work but but i think it was spread out very well and we had enough time to get the stuff that we need to get done um but yeah not not really surprised by anything it was just i knew that it was going to be a really difficult season yeah um because every day there was just something different like we were in the desert for two days that was really difficult it was supposed to be sunny and it was raining um that was very unexpected that was unexpected um do you have sort of contingency plans for