0:03

Hi, and welcome to season two

0:05

of the Team Deacons podcast, a

0:08

collection of informal conversations between Roger

0:10

and James Deacons and a guest.

0:14

We never know where the conversation will take

0:16

us, so listen in and see where it

0:18

goes. This

0:22

episode is sponsored by Aputure, a

0:25

global company pioneering LED lighting

0:27

technology for cinema with cutting

0:30

edge hardware and software solutions.

0:33

Recently, Aputure expanded its lighting

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Aputure's lighting ecosystem at

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aperture.com. Today

0:56

we're doing something different. We're looking

0:59

into the world of commercial production.

1:01

We're speaking with a cinematographer who

1:03

not only has vast experience, but

1:05

has also designed devices along the way.

1:08

We're pleased to welcome Bill Bennett. Bill,

1:10

thank you for doing this. I

1:13

am so happy to be here. It's an honor. Yeah,

1:16

we want to start with our normal question,

1:18

which is, how did you

1:20

get to where you are today? Is this

1:22

something you always had in mind doing, or

1:25

did you start out on another path and

1:27

then find this? What's your story? Kind

1:30

of a little of both. My

1:32

father was an Air Force

1:34

career pilot, spent 30 years

1:37

flying airplanes, transport airplanes for the Air Force.

1:39

And because of that, we moved all over

1:41

the country, lived in some really amazing places

1:44

like Alaska. My mom,

1:46

once the children were a little bit older

1:48

and she had more time on her hands, started taking

1:51

art lessons. And

1:53

I remember sitting there on my

1:56

mom's and dad's bed in their

1:58

bedroom where her studio was. and

2:00

she would describe to me what she was

2:02

learning because she was just starting

2:04

out, but her instructors were teaching her about

2:07

line and composition and color and contrast. And

2:09

I was, you know, 12 at

2:11

the time, but it had a big

2:13

impact on me because I watched her develop

2:16

as an artist. Then on the

2:18

other hand, my father had an engineering

2:20

degree and my grandfather, for

2:22

God's sake, went to MIT. So I have,

2:27

luckily because of my upbringing, sort of

2:29

the perfect mix. I'm

2:31

not telling you guys anything. You don't know

2:34

that cinematography is a blend

2:36

of artistry and technology. And

2:39

if you're really good at one, but not so

2:41

good at the other, you don't tend

2:43

to be successful because

2:45

if you're really good artistically, but you can't

2:47

understand the technology, you just can't get

2:49

your ideas, your concepts onto the screen

2:51

or vice versa. There's lots of people

2:53

out there that are really good technologists,

2:55

but unfortunately just don't have

2:58

that artistic side to them and

3:00

their work though technically correct, just

3:03

has no soul. So

3:05

I was lucky enough to end up there,

3:08

but at that time in my life, you

3:10

know, elementary school and the

3:12

beginning of high school, I

3:14

had no idea what I wanted to do. My

3:16

dad did ask me, hey, do you want to

3:18

go to the Air Force Academy? I, you know,

3:20

I sort of had enough of the military by

3:22

association being on military bases, all of

3:24

my upbringing. So I really didn't want to do

3:27

that. So when

3:29

I was in high school, I just happened to see

3:32

a event that

3:34

they brought in, I think it might've been

3:36

an anti-drug campaign, something like that. And this

3:38

group came in and they showed what we

3:40

called at the time, a multimedia

3:42

production, which was, I don't

3:45

know, I think nine, maybe an

3:48

array of nine, maybe even more, 12

3:51

35 millimeter slide projectors, all

3:53

synchronized, all showing images up on the

3:55

screen, along with a

3:57

soundtrack and maybe some dialogue too.

4:00

Me being, I probably would have been diagnosed

4:02

as ADD, but that didn't exist at that

4:04

time. But my mind went in 27 directions

4:07

all at the same time. And the fact that

4:09

all of these images were just

4:12

appearing and then changing and stuff like that

4:15

really attracted me. And I said, you know what? I

4:17

can do that. So I started

4:19

doing them for my high school, for various clubs

4:21

and programs and stuff like that. They had a

4:24

little bit of budget and it wasn't too expensive.

4:26

My dad would loan me his camera and I

4:28

would go shoot various things. And

4:31

then I got noticed by a

4:33

local production company in, this

4:35

was San Antonio, Texas, where my dad was stationed at that

4:37

time and I was going to high school. And

4:40

they, this

4:42

local production company took notice of me and hired

4:45

me kind of as an intern and then later

4:47

as a part-time employee. And

4:49

the beauty of that was they had their own

4:52

color transparency lab

4:54

processing Ectochrome. And

4:57

their deal was as long as I paid

4:59

for the film, I could do the processing

5:01

there for free. Because I kind of

5:03

ran the lab, I did the processing. So

5:05

this just opened up my ability to just shoot

5:07

as much as I wanted. And we started putting

5:09

together our own multimedia shows.

5:11

They also had a 16 millimeter

5:14

BOLU. So I,

5:17

again, as long as I paid for the film and

5:19

processing, I could use that. So I

5:21

started blending film into these

5:24

multimedia projections with make one or

5:26

two film projectors and several slide

5:28

projectors. And then, you know,

5:30

about this time I enter college and

5:33

I naively entered thinking I was going

5:35

to study engineering because my

5:37

dad was an engineer. And I mentioned my grandfather was

5:39

an engineer and I have uncles that are engineers. Everybody

5:42

figured, well, Bill's going to be an engineer.

5:44

So I entered and I ran into a

5:47

significant stumbling block. I don't know if you guys

5:49

can relate. Me being

5:51

a very visual person,

5:53

I could not understand

5:55

abstract math, like advanced

5:57

calculus. If I can visualize it,

6:00

it, I can

6:02

understand it. But if I can't visualize

6:04

it, I cannot understand it. And by

6:06

definition, abstract math

6:08

is abstract. So I was failing

6:10

miserably at math, I was doing

6:12

really well in the mechanical

6:14

and physical part, because that partly understood, you know,

6:16

if they're talking about the length of a lever

6:18

and the moment arm, you can picture that all

6:20

in your mind, or you can do an experiment,

6:23

a physical experiment, loved all of that. And then

6:25

I noticed, on the other side of the

6:27

campus, in the theater building,

6:29

the theater, the live theater students were just

6:31

having a blast. And I would go

6:33

over there and kind of volunteer because

6:35

they never had enough help in

6:38

their setting up their productions on the technical

6:40

side. Then I was

6:44

decided I needed to change my major. This was kind

6:46

of at the end of my first first year,

6:48

freshman year. And this is not unusual. I

6:51

tell a lot of people I know that are younger that

6:53

are entering college, hey, don't be afraid to change, because you

6:55

know, you discover that what you thought you wanted to do

6:57

isn't what you want to do, or in my

7:00

case, incapable of doing. So

7:03

I was terrified to tell my father,

7:05

because he was, you know, Air Force

7:07

officer, quite the

7:09

slave driver. So I told my

7:11

mom, you know, my mom was in the kitchen

7:13

by herself and I said, hey, I want to

7:15

change my major. And she says, well, what do

7:18

you want to change to? And I said, live

7:20

theater. And she says, that's okay.

7:22

As long as you get a four-year college

7:25

degree, neither of them, when

7:27

they were young

7:29

people out of high school, got their college

7:31

degree. My dad got in the Air Force

7:33

because of the Second World War. And they

7:35

took anybody who was an experienced pilot at

7:37

that point, he'd already knew how to fly.

7:40

And then they later, while he

7:43

was in the service, allowed him to

7:45

go back to school and he got an engineering

7:47

degree at the University of Pittsburgh. So he did

7:49

get a college degree, but not as at the

7:51

normal age. And their goal was that all

7:54

of their children would have a college degree. So

7:56

my mom said, as long as you get a

7:58

valid four-year college degree, you can you didn't do

8:00

any major you want. And this

8:03

is a little emotional to me. My dad, you

8:05

know how you evolve as

8:07

a parent-child relationship? And then later on,

8:10

you have a more adult-to-adult relationship. And

8:12

many years later, I was

8:15

well-established in my career at that point. And

8:17

I asked my dad, I asked the question, when

8:20

I wanted to change majors, I

8:22

expected that you would resist it and you didn't.

8:25

And his answer was interesting. He said, when

8:28

a child from birth to about six years old as

8:30

a parent, and you guys are parents, so you can

8:32

relate, that's when you do

8:34

all the forning. Oh, you're right.

8:36

Okay. That's really interesting. Okay,

8:39

well then, people who do

8:42

have children can relate. And that my father said

8:44

to me, during the first

8:46

six years of a child's life, that's when

8:48

you can do all the significant steering to

8:50

what they can become. And then

8:52

after that, basically you're making

8:54

your own decisions to greater and greater

8:56

extent. And you were

8:59

deciding what you wanted to do with the

9:01

rest of your life. It was my position

9:03

to interfere. And I thought that

9:05

was pretty fantastic. Yeah. So

9:10

in college, I started doing live

9:13

theater shows. I pretty much worked over on

9:15

the technical side, though we

9:17

were required to take acting, directing,

9:19

speech. And those ended

9:21

up being extremely valuable in

9:23

that later on, I mean,

9:25

even working as a cinematographer, I could

9:27

relate to the challenges actors would

9:30

have in front of the

9:32

camera, and could be sympathetic

9:34

to some of their needs that someone

9:36

who'd never taken any acting training wouldn't even be

9:38

aware. And then

9:40

the directing classes were really, really good.

9:43

The one thing, a lot of people will

9:45

get to later, my career ended up going

9:48

down the path of doing television commercials from

9:50

pretty much my entire career. But

9:52

one of the things I noticed along the

9:54

way, a lot of commercial directors don't

9:57

have any directing training. They come from

9:59

agency. house

18:00

that I've built into offices

18:02

and the stage in the back, can you

18:04

come over and help me put up some

18:06

walls? And essentially it

18:09

was a gig for half a day.

18:11

I literally went over to the foreman

18:13

and the people at the set construction

18:15

company were very sympathetic to me. They

18:17

knew that I wanted to eventually get

18:19

into film shooting but they

18:22

would always put me as a standby carpenter on the

18:24

real shoot so I could watch films crews work. So

18:28

I went to them and said, I've got this opportunity.

18:30

And he said, go, go. I

18:32

went for one afternoon, I stayed there six

18:35

years. Ron

18:38

was an amazing guy when he

18:40

was shooting. He owned all his own

18:42

gear. He had a

18:44

machine shop. He had all the

18:46

carpentry tools. And I kind

18:48

of like fit right into his kamikaze

18:51

method of making whatever he needed

18:53

to get a shot to work,

18:55

work. And along the way,

18:57

I was working for him at

18:59

first started as a grip, then became his key

19:01

grip, then moved over to second

19:03

assistant. And then when his first assistant moved

19:06

on to be a DP, I

19:08

then became his first assistant. Now,

19:11

Ron, the nature of the work that he

19:13

did was a lot of sports commercials or

19:16

commercials with a lot of animals. So

19:18

like the Budweiser, Clydesdales and Monument Valley

19:21

or pole vaulters or swimmers or high

19:23

divers. And in all of

19:25

these situations, they weren't gonna

19:27

do it very many times. So Ron, I

19:29

think he might've owned like nine 35 millimeter

19:31

cameras. Many of them were two C's, Mitchell's,

19:33

things like that. And so he

19:35

would wanna shoot a lot of cameras

19:37

for whatever, say the pole vaulter, pole

19:39

vaulting, whatever. And he

19:42

would let almost anybody shoot. And

19:44

this was really interesting. And again, formative

19:46

in my career, he said, I

19:49

only have one rule. I don't mind seeing

19:51

the mistake and take one. I

19:53

just don't wanna see the mistake and take two. Now,

19:57

this was a time and Roger. remember

20:00

this time when the only person that saw

20:02

the shot was the camera operator. There

20:05

were no video taps, so there's nobody looking over

20:07

your shoulder, looking at the edges of the frame

20:09

to see if there's a C-stand in the shot,

20:11

things like that. So you had

20:13

to learn under fire, and it was

20:16

perfect because I'm shooting now on national

20:19

big budget television commercials. We'd go on

20:21

the road for, say, a month doing

20:23

Budweiser beer and follow the Clydesdales around

20:27

and ultimately end up in Monument Valley. And

20:29

that played out, are stories

20:31

allowed with no names? Yes. Okay.

20:35

Absolutely. I was hoping to become one of

20:38

Ron's paid operators

20:40

rather than first

20:42

assistant elevated, which I didn't mind at

20:44

all because I knew I was getting

20:47

all this fantastic experience. I didn't mind

20:49

getting paid as an assistant yet working

20:51

occasionally as an operator. So he hired

20:53

an operator for this big Monument Valley

20:55

job with the Clydesdales. And

20:58

as an aside, none

21:00

of us get residuals for our work. If

21:04

we did, I would be a

21:06

multi-billionaire because I did

21:08

a shot that I'm about to describe that

21:10

is still used in Budweiser commercial to this

21:13

day, add the tag. So

21:15

the setup was it's at sunset. We're

21:17

only going to have a few shots

21:19

at this because the Clydesdales are going

21:21

to ride along a mesa against

21:24

the sunset with the setting sun. And

21:27

then we're on the next mesa over about

21:29

eighth of a mile, couple of hundred yards

21:31

away. And I was

21:34

giving the assignment of basically

21:36

just the wide shot. Mine was a lock off,

21:38

right? Of just the horizon with

21:41

the horses riding along the bottom of the frame. That

21:44

is used in the logo at the tag

21:46

of every Budweiser commercial to this day, down

21:48

at the bottom, you see the silhouette of

21:50

the Clydesdales right along. That's

21:52

my shot. I don't get any extra money.

21:55

So anyway, the hired

21:57

operator who theoretically was quite talented

21:59

and So

24:01

we would ride the lift

24:03

up and the snowmobile, snow cats would

24:05

pull all our gear up to the

24:07

top of this run that Ron wanted

24:09

to shoot. And then with Ron kind

24:11

of carrying our cameras and the ski

24:13

patrol were helping us bringing the gear

24:15

down in their emergency sleds that

24:17

they would bring injured people down the mountain.

24:19

They would ski, we'd all slowly ski down

24:21

the mountain to different places and Ron would

24:23

pick spots for each camera going down the

24:25

hill. And there's about four of us arranged

24:28

down the hill. And we're gonna

24:30

film these kids skiing, kids I

24:32

say teenagers, right? And we

24:35

wanted them to look and be really kind of

24:37

cool, bright clothing, but it was

24:39

cold. So all the people, the

24:42

actors, skiers, actors were wearing all these extra

24:44

coats and hats and all this kind of

24:46

stuff. So at the beginning of

24:48

the take, a PA who was also, everybody

24:51

had to ski, right? A PA who was

24:53

also skiing would take

24:55

all their coats and hats and put on as many

24:57

of the hats as they could and gather as many

24:59

of the coat and grab all the coats and they

25:01

would ski down to the bottom to be

25:03

waiting at the bottom with all this stuff. Well,

25:05

naturally we saw that, we

25:08

all rolled on that, all

25:10

of us, right? Except for Ron,

25:12

because that wasn't the commercial, right?

25:14

We all rolled on it at 120 frames per second, right? Oh,

25:18

wow. Yeah, so

25:20

it consumed like whole magazine

25:22

of film and then reloaded while we're waiting for the

25:25

kids to get ready, right? Because we thought it was

25:27

cool. So now

25:29

fast forward, we're in dailies, right? I'm

25:31

like the C camera. The

25:34

A camera shows up, the first shot is

25:36

this kid with the

25:38

clothes and all the stack of hats going through

25:40

in slow motion and Ron's not happy. B

25:44

camera, you know, then luckily A camera had the

25:47

shots of the real actors skiing and it was

25:49

all great. But Ron was just

25:51

not happy that we're wasting his film and all

25:53

that kind of stuff. So then B camera comes

25:55

up, they do the same thing, Ron's like losing

25:57

it next to me. And I know

25:59

I'm next. And

26:01

I know that I shot the same thing. Same

26:04

thing. Same thing. So,

26:06

now, C-CAMER comes up, and this is besides itself, get some

26:08

of the sorbs out of the room. Well,

26:10

the joke is on Ron, and he laughed about

26:12

it later, in that when they cut the commercial,

26:15

that was one of the scenes they used in

26:17

the commercial. Really? Of the kid wearing all the

26:19

hats and stuff. Because it was just a zany

26:22

commercial of a bunch of people out on the

26:24

slopes having fun. They used

26:26

the shot. So we never let Ron

26:28

forget that. That's

26:30

hilarious. Yeah. So,

26:32

brilliant. So,

26:35

then, you, after six years with Ron,

26:37

then you went out on your own.

26:39

Did you? Yes. How

26:42

did that happen? Ron inspired in me one

26:44

thing that I carry with me to this

26:46

day, in that he never accepted the

26:48

gear that's made by the various manufacturers

26:51

at face value. If he wanted it to do

26:53

something different, he would modify it. Either you'd ask

26:55

the manufacturers to modify it, or in his machine

26:57

shop, he would do it himself. And

27:00

to this day, I have a machine shop. I

27:02

was just out there yesterday making lens adaption parts

27:05

with optics and everything in there to get a

27:07

lens to do something I needed it to do.

27:09

And I carried that with me forward. And it

27:11

actually served me well. Whenever you're

27:13

starting in this business, and many people listen to your

27:15

podcast are probably wondering, how do I get an edge?

27:18

And one thing to get an edge is has something

27:20

that you can do that other people don't do. And

27:23

that was one of my edges, in that I could modify

27:25

and make equipment to get

27:27

a shot. And I then moved on

27:30

from there and got hired by a guy

27:32

named Sid Avery. He was the director. He

27:35

used to be a very famous still photographer

27:37

in the studio system. Like

27:39

one of his jobs was he was on

27:41

the set of giant. And

27:43

all those shots of James Dean on

27:45

the set of giant were Sid Avery.

27:47

He was the studio still shooter on

27:49

that job. So very talented guy, ego

27:52

nine miles wide. So he wanted

27:54

to be billed as both the director and

27:57

the cinematographer on these. and

28:01

then I was hired as the operator, but

28:03

he wanted to schmooze with the agency, so

28:05

I would end up lighting the set and

28:08

basically planning the camera moves, and it was

28:11

great. It was a similar situation in that

28:13

I was being paid as a operator, but

28:15

I was really doing the job of a

28:17

director of photography, and I didn't

28:19

complain about that, because it was like you're being paid

28:21

to go to school by this guy who was a

28:23

master. So I

28:26

did all that, he would come in and he would tweak

28:28

a few things, and we'd shoot, and eventually I got better

28:30

and better at it to where he would actually do very,

28:32

very little. I never complained about the

28:35

fact that I was getting paid as an operator, but

28:37

doing the DP's work. But then the britty of

28:39

that, and there's amazing coincidence that occur in

28:41

our business, you gotta be, I love

28:44

a saying, I don't know who, it's not me, I

28:46

didn't invent it. The saying is you make your own

28:48

luck, meaning when

28:51

a lucky opportunity arrives, you've got to

28:53

be prepared by your previous experience and

28:55

training and what you've learned to take

28:58

proper advantage of it to do a

29:00

good job. Because as we

29:02

said five minutes ago, if you do something

29:04

and fail at it, this business is very

29:07

unforgiving. So consequently, there was a commercial that

29:09

ran in 1984 that

29:11

introduced the Macintosh computer. It

29:14

was a very famous commercial shot by

29:16

Ridley Scott, this

29:18

young woman in like a superwoman

29:21

suit running through this mass of

29:23

gray bald-headed guys standing

29:25

there staring at a screen, and she

29:27

spins around and throws a hammer and

29:29

shatters the screen. Well, for commercials at

29:31

that point in time, that was like

29:33

mind-blowingly revolutionary. It played

29:35

only one time at the Super Bowl. I

29:37

remember watching it, my chin hit the floor

29:39

going, what did I just see?

29:42

And it introduced the Macintosh computer. So

29:45

that production designer of that

29:48

commercial, agency art director is

29:50

what his title was, then used

29:52

that as a springboard to become a director. And

29:56

he ended up at Brent Thomas' shop,

29:58

right? As one of the other... directors besides

30:01

not Brent, his name was Brent Thomas, but he

30:04

ended up at Sid Avery shop, excuse me, as

30:07

a new director. And so early

30:09

on, they assigned me to work

30:11

with him. And I remember

30:13

the first spot I did with him was

30:15

a hamburger commercial. And I'd gotten tired of

30:17

all these static close up shots of hamburgers.

30:19

So I built this rig that would smoothly

30:21

move around the hamburger, also keeping it at

30:23

the center of the radius of all the

30:25

axes. And it blew the agency

30:28

away because they didn't ask for it. And it blew

30:30

him away. So then I started working more

30:32

and more with him. The guy

30:34

was a brilliant designer. And

30:36

it's another lesson I learned along the way

30:38

in that if the

30:40

designers, the production designers, and I'm sure

30:42

Roger and James can relate to this,

30:45

if the production designers are putting ugly

30:48

stuff in front of the camera, you could be

30:50

the best lighting person in the world and it'll

30:52

be ugly. And everybody will think

30:54

that the cinematography is ugly when in reality, the

30:56

art direction is ugly. Whereas if

30:58

there's really beautiful art direction put, whether it

31:00

be a bunker, you know,

31:02

that has amazing design or whatever

31:05

it is, if it's beautiful, then

31:07

you do a decent job of lighting it,

31:09

people just fall all over themselves saying, oh

31:11

my God, what amazing cinematography. So

31:14

as I was learning how

31:17

to light, this guy was doing

31:19

fantastic sets. They had the money to

31:21

build them. Because he had come from Shai'a

31:23

day, he would be handed

31:25

these major A level jobs, much

31:28

more than a new director would normally get because

31:30

he's buddies with all those people they trusted him

31:32

that he would come up with something. So

31:35

we ended up doing like Coca-Cola and

31:37

BMW, I mean, major jobs

31:39

like that. And

31:42

he would design these amazing sets and they

31:44

had the money to build them. And

31:46

I would sometimes just set up like a 20 by

31:48

20 light grid out there and put

31:50

some nine lights behind it and wash soft light across it. Everybody

31:54

would follow themselves about how gorgeous

31:57

the cinematography was. And in reality, we're seeing a lot of

31:59

great sets. blend

34:01

that all together, it just blew

34:03

my mind how he would do that. And

34:06

the secret to him, and I

34:09

always appreciated the best directors

34:11

I ever worked for, let's not say maybe

34:13

the, he was good, maybe the easiest I

34:15

ever worked for used to be editors. Right?

34:19

And because of that, they

34:21

knew exactly what they wanted because they

34:23

had it all cut together in their

34:25

head and they firmly understood screen direction

34:27

and what size the shots should

34:29

be. Whereas there's a lot of directors, and I

34:32

guess Rogers probably had experience with this too, that

34:34

don't really know what they want so they tend

34:36

to overshoot. And then what

34:38

ends up happening is the editor ends

34:41

up directing the movie. Right? Because

34:43

now you have all these options and the editor

34:45

basically puts it all together. So. And

34:48

also that you're shooting so many

34:50

different things instead of focusing on

34:52

three major shots and putting all

34:54

your all into that. You're having

34:57

to do 10. That

34:59

is absolutely correct. In that as

35:02

a cinematography, you're kind of frustrated because you only

35:04

have a limited amount of time, the sun's gonna

35:06

go down and, or the

35:08

clock's gonna run out and the producer's gonna tap you on the

35:10

shoulder and say, okay, we're done. And you're

35:12

absolutely right in that if there's 60

35:15

different shots being made for what's gonna be

35:17

an eight shot commercial, you

35:19

don't know which ones are gonna use, you have to

35:21

do your best you possibly can, but there's no time.

35:23

Whereas if the director is doing like eight or nine

35:26

shots for an eight shot commercial, you

35:28

can put all your effort into making them really,

35:30

really good because you've got the time. So you

35:32

hit James, you hit the nail on the head.

35:34

It was very frustrating for cinematographers. We used to

35:36

call those guys 10,000 foot a day per

35:39

camera guys, where they would just hose film. A

35:42

commercial was 45 feet long, 90, 30 seconds, 90

35:46

feet a minute, half a second, 30 seconds, 45 feet long. And

35:49

we'd be like marveling in the loading room

35:51

afterwards of these stacks of cans to end

35:53

up with 45 feet. It

35:56

happened all the time, all

35:58

the time. Yeah. So, you know, then I

36:00

was basically moving into an

36:02

area. And

36:06

again, a serendipitous

36:08

thing happened in my career. You

36:10

know, luck, but I was observant while

36:13

the luck was happening. I

36:15

was a union cinematographer at that

36:17

time and a commercial cinematographer,

36:22

or here's a director cameraman, wanted to

36:24

shoot on the universal backlot for a

36:26

car commercial, right? And I'd

36:28

never really done a car commercial at

36:30

that point, but they needed to have

36:33

a standby union cinematographer to be there

36:35

present to satisfy the union rules. So

36:37

I was hired as the standby cinematographer. Now this was

36:40

a night commercial, right? And they were gonna shoot these

36:42

cars and light them at night. I

36:44

was really watching what this person was doing. And

36:47

the secret of lighting cars, and I

36:49

do seminars now at both AFI and

36:51

for the ASC and down at LMU,

36:53

where I teach people how to light

36:55

reflective objects. When you are lighting something

36:57

that's highly reflective, you can't point any

36:59

lights at it because you just see

37:01

the reflection of the light in the

37:03

car. It just looks nasty. You actually

37:05

build big white surfaces and you reflect

37:07

those in the car, right? Well,

37:09

I was watching him do this and

37:11

it was like magical. I'm like seeing them build

37:13

these big things with, you know, stretch taffeta and

37:15

they were lighting them. And then

37:17

they would pull the car in underneath it. And

37:19

all of a sudden I'm going, oh my God,

37:22

that's gorgeous, right? And I didn't touch a camera

37:24

the whole night. I could have gone into the

37:26

trailer and gone to sleep. Really,

37:28

I just needed to physically be there

37:30

to satisfy. But I was

37:32

watching. And so I

37:35

had the opportunity fast forward about

37:37

eight months. I'm now

37:40

working with Brent Thomas. He gets a BMW

37:42

commercial because that was one of the shot

37:44

days, major clients. And I,

37:46

because I had worked with this other guy, got together

37:49

with my key grip. I took some pictures of

37:51

this guy's lighting setups and we started developing

37:53

that and expanding upon that. And it turned

37:55

out well. And then ultimately at the end

37:57

of the day, I became known as the

37:59

car. servo

40:00

motor control that fits this, that would drive the

40:02

J4 zoom motor, but smoothly. And he'd look at

40:04

it and says, oh yeah, yeah, I can do

40:06

that. And came back the next day with a

40:08

circuit diagram and I made a big breadboard of

40:10

it. And the next shoot I used it on

40:13

was a stage shoot because you got this big

40:15

honking thing that was not practical. And I like

40:17

doing the zooms and everybody was just, I

40:19

mean, Ron was just like going, oh my God, that's

40:21

just fantastic how well that's working.

40:23

So we smallerized it and

40:25

took two prototypes and put them on a

40:27

movie called Poltergeist. Lee and Eddie

40:30

had his own camera if you remember, he had

40:32

a camera called the UltraCam, right? And

40:35

because of that, he wanted to have a

40:37

zoom control companion. So we literally gave him

40:39

two prototypes to use on that show and

40:42

the rest is history. It became the

40:44

thing that everybody used. There

40:46

was some novel things in it, like you could

40:48

start and stop the camera from the zoom control,

40:50

that was never done before. So you could actually,

40:52

if your second assistant wasn't around, you could actually

40:54

step out in front of the camera holding the

40:56

zoom control in your hand and put

40:59

the start slate on the camera. That's how long

41:01

the cable for it was, was at

41:03

the minimum focus distance of the 10 to one. So

41:06

you could step out there. Also

41:08

the minimum speed, Ron called me up in the

41:10

middle of the night, he's designing the circuitry and

41:12

he says, what's the slowest speed need

41:14

to be? I think about it, I go

41:16

11 minutes. And he says,

41:19

why 11 minutes? And I said, that's the

41:21

length of a thousand foot magazine running at

41:23

24 frames per second. Nobody's gonna let it,

41:25

nobody's gonna need a zoom longer than that.

41:27

And they're gonna run out of film, right?

41:30

So if you're gonna zoom from

41:32

one end to the other, 10 to ones, he did

41:34

the math, it's 11 minutes. So that was one thing

41:36

that I built that proved to

41:38

be useful to many, many people in the

41:41

business. And then the other thing was, Ron

41:43

was good friends with Robert Dalva. Robert

41:46

Dalva was tasked as a, he was

41:48

really an editor. I

41:50

think he worked on Godfathers I and

41:52

II and cut them. And

41:54

he wanted to direct. So he had the

41:56

opportunity to direct this movie called the Black

41:59

Stallion Returns. which is about

42:01

a young kid and it's a fantastic

42:04

adventure that happens in North Africa. And

42:06

there's all these horse races that take

42:08

place across the open desert. And

42:11

at this point in time, Steadicam was

42:13

just barely being invented and they needed

42:15

a way to reach out close to

42:17

the horses because horses are scared of

42:19

vehicles. They reach out close to the

42:21

horses and smoothly film like details of

42:23

the rider or the horse's head and

42:25

things like that. And Ron

42:27

invented this thing that later we called

42:30

the Terra Flight, which was basically this

42:32

stabilized camera system with a camera out

42:34

at the end of a, with a

42:36

pan tilt head that had a video

42:38

tap and follow focus. None of those

42:41

things existed at the time. Video taps

42:43

had just been invented. So Ron and

42:45

I built it in his machine shop.

42:47

I had to build a follow focus

42:49

system from scratch, put gears on

42:51

the lenses, design motors that engage the gears,

42:54

and then had Howard design a circuit where

42:56

I could control the focus

42:58

of these lenses and actually had to

43:00

invent the interchangeable rings with the focus marks

43:02

on them that now every follow focus system

43:04

has. So we're basically making this stuff from

43:06

scratch. And then it was a great adventure

43:08

for me because I ended up taking this

43:10

thing to Morocco, which was the first time

43:12

I'd really been outside the country

43:14

other than like Mexico or Canada and

43:17

was there for three months working on this

43:19

film. And then that led to it being

43:22

used on Silverado with John Bailey

43:24

and to live and die in

43:27

LA. Billy Friedkin was the director.

43:29

And we basically just

43:31

had a blast and it just elevated my career

43:33

to now all of a sudden, you

43:35

know, I'm working with Robbie Mueller on

43:37

these things, having conversations, you know, terrifying,

43:41

terrifying my camera assistant, because, you know, some

43:43

of the stunts we did on to live and

43:45

die in LA were one take deals. They

43:47

were going to crash the cars, the intersection, and

43:50

there wasn't going to be another take. I

43:52

remember there's this one shot, the sixth street

43:54

bridge is now gone and they've replaced it.

43:56

But so many movies were shot in and

43:58

above. or under the 6th

44:00

Street Bridge, and one of them was to live and

44:03

die in LA. And the shot that they laid out

44:05

for me was kind of terrifying. The

44:08

bad guys are up above on the upper part of

44:10

the bridge, and the good guys are down below chasing

44:12

them. And I start out looking

44:14

through the bridge pilings on the lower road

44:16

on the opposite side of the bridge, tracking

44:19

with the good guy's car. And

44:21

then when my view is blocked by

44:23

the concrete bridge now, I'm

44:25

supposed to rise up and find the

44:28

bad guy's car. So the audience

44:30

goes, oh my God, they're almost next to each

44:32

other. And then they meet at

44:34

the intersection down below and a collision occurs.

44:36

Right? Well,

44:40

there's two terrifying things that are going

44:42

on. Number one, you've

44:45

operated remote head before, Roger. And

44:48

when your view is obscured for a

44:50

while, and then you reveal and

44:52

your framing has to be perfect, it's

44:55

terrifying because you don't know and you don't

44:57

dare do anything. Or maybe you've rehearsed the

44:59

number of wheel turns that are going to

45:01

get you to where you need to be,

45:03

but there's no guarantees. So

45:06

I was the happiest man on earth

45:08

when my grips raised the terra-flight arm

45:10

up to the top and I could

45:12

see the other car. And

45:15

I also didn't have to do that oh so awful

45:17

thing that every operator in the world goes, oh that's

45:19

shit. Were you re-correct? I

45:22

didn't have to do that. I was in the frame. So

45:25

I rose up and there it was and I'm

45:27

going, holy shit, there it is. And

45:30

we come down and I'm praying

45:32

now that we don't misframe the

45:34

car crash and the car crash

45:36

collides and the AD yells,

45:38

that's a cut, that's a cut. And

45:41

they yell, everybody check the gates. I

45:43

remember my camera assistant's hands were shaking

45:46

because she had to pull focus from

45:48

the distant car, which was probably a

45:50

hundred yards away, to the much

45:53

closer car, which is now 25 feet away, right? And

45:58

nail it without really seeing it. Right

46:00

and then practice all down this

46:03

woman Beth Jana fever bless her heart I just distinctly

46:05

remember she's opening the you know, she ran a few

46:07

feet She's opening the eight and their hands are shaky

46:09

because I mean if there was a big honking hair

46:11

in the gate or a scratch It

46:14

didn't matter right? It really didn't matter

46:17

The other funny story that was happening

46:19

there was we were rehearsing this and

46:21

this was right after The

46:23

big crash of a helicopter occurred

46:25

out in Indian dunes for Twilight

46:27

Zone So everybody was

46:30

super scared of accidents occurring and we

46:32

were with Bill Friedkin and we were

46:34

rehearsing this very complex scene on a

46:36

weekday Right

46:39

and we theoretically had all

46:41

the streets blocked and we're doing this thing and it's

46:44

the warehouse district So they had a bunch of

46:46

stunt people who were driving Forklifts

46:48

with boxes because they were part of the

46:51

collision and these empty boxes are supposed to

46:53

go flying That sort of stuff and

46:55

we were rehearsing this thing first at half speed now at

46:57

full speed never to have the collision

46:59

at the end but so everybody and I'm rehearsing

47:01

our move and we're all sweating and then

47:04

all of a sudden the lead

47:06

stunt person yells cot cot cot

47:08

abort abort abort and Those

47:11

running out into the street and points at a

47:13

guy at a forklift and says this

47:15

guy is not with us This

47:18

is just a forklift driver from a nearby warehouse

47:20

in the middle of our shot Who

47:23

has no idea this poor guy is driving down the

47:25

street saying yeah, it's a wild day in Los Angeles

47:27

today All these people are whizzing

47:29

by me and what's going on, right? So

47:32

immediately Friedkin got on the phone and called a

47:34

rap. He says that's it. We're out of here

47:36

We're done. We're done. And so we never rehearsed

47:39

again and stepped on the weekends when all the

47:41

warehouses were closed So that was

47:43

yeah, one of those close calls Could

47:46

have really bad accident could have occurred But

47:48

luckily the stunt person recognized that that's not

47:50

one of my drivers and that's not one

47:52

of our forklifts. Yeah Anyway,

47:55

the terra flight development with Ron

47:57

inventing it me building it got

48:00

me into a whole bunch

48:02

of elevated shows. But then a very

48:04

interesting steering thing started happening. I'm

48:07

sure you guys have related to this,

48:09

where as you move

48:11

into your career, there's certain types of things

48:13

you want to do, and there's

48:15

other types of jobs you would rather not do. I

48:19

was the terra-flight operator, and

48:21

I was good at it, and it was

48:24

a unique piece of equipment. But I also

48:26

knew that other people would

48:29

start wanting me to do that, and I

48:31

would ultimately grow up in my career to

48:33

be the terra-flight operator. And I wanted to

48:35

be a cinematographer. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

48:39

So basically what happened is I started, I

48:41

also knew that I would have to keep

48:43

developing it. Now at this point I was

48:45

spending my own money building it. I

48:48

would need to get outside investors at

48:50

gyroscopes and just make it

48:52

much more sophisticated to keep it moving forward.

48:55

And I really wanted to be

48:57

a cinematographer. So I started soft-pedaling

48:59

that work and started

49:01

taking the commercial shooting jobs that

49:04

I was getting. John Bailey on

49:06

Silverado, even after we got done

49:08

with all the terra-flight work, he allowed

49:10

me to stay on. And I was like

49:13

the sea camera operator for all those big

49:15

stampede scenes and things like that. But I

49:17

was starting to get calls to be a

49:19

director of photography that I was turning down.

49:21

And every week

49:23

John would ask me to stay on for the

49:26

following week. He would get budgetary approval to keep

49:28

me on. And finally I was there for like

49:30

two months in Santa Fe. And finally

49:32

on a Friday he came to me and says,

49:34

hey, can you stay on next week? And I

49:36

said, well, I'm getting a call that I really

49:38

don't want to turn down as DP as

49:41

a cinematographer. And he said, John

49:43

was a great guy. He also passed away

49:46

just recently. He said, no, you should go

49:48

do that. If you're getting calls

49:50

to go do that and you want to do that, you should

49:52

go do that. So he kind of released me from

49:54

that. But again, I was ready

49:57

to step up to that opportunity. I

50:00

took those jobs on and I was able to

50:02

do them. Another steering thing that I

50:04

did was, I was

50:06

really good at tabletop photography. You'll remember the

50:09

hamburger commercial that I did as one of the

50:11

first things that I did. I remember it well,

50:13

yeah. Well, I was really good at that, but

50:16

also I really didn't enjoy it. I,

50:19

you know, your whole world is a three

50:21

by three foot table in a dark studio

50:23

and it's all day long and it's very

50:25

stressful and it just- Really long hours

50:28

too. Yeah, because the sun never goes down,

50:30

right? And it's

50:32

really stressful because agency is really demanding

50:34

because the food has to look perfect.

50:36

You know, the lettuce can't

50:38

be wilting, but the cheese can't be melting and

50:40

the beef has to look, you know, it's like,

50:42

oh my God, just kill me now. So I

50:46

stopped taking, I took all of those

50:48

things off my reel and put on

50:50

things that were more live action, you

50:53

know, character driven commercials and then ultimately

50:55

car commercials. And so I

50:57

steered my career away for that. I'm sure you

51:00

guys have done that too with your career of

51:03

only really accepting or jobs

51:05

that were interesting to you and early

51:07

on you take anything you can get, but

51:09

then eventually you start steering in

51:12

a direction that you enjoy. Otherwise you'd

51:14

be a very, very unhappy person, you

51:17

know. When things started

51:19

going towards digital, how

51:23

did you go with that? Because for one

51:25

thing, everybody can see what you're shooting. Is

51:28

that a good thing for you or a bad thing?

51:31

Did commercials stay on film or

51:33

did they go into digital? It's

51:36

a very good question. And

51:39

enough time has passed to where I think it can be

51:41

honest about it. Ha ha

51:43

ha. Early on commercial,

51:47

cinematar, commercial agencies

51:50

and ad agencies and the clients

51:53

really appreciated how good film looked. And

51:57

we dipped our toe occasionally. into

52:01

digital cameras and

52:03

either shooting tests, I've done countless

52:06

side-by-side tests as these digital cameras

52:08

are being developed. Occasionally

52:10

agencies would say, okay, we wanna

52:12

shoot with that. Ultimately, they

52:15

weren't happy. Many times I would get

52:17

blamed because there was

52:19

a very unusual thing happening in that

52:22

these companies that were inventing these digital

52:24

cinema cameras were investing a lot of

52:26

money and they would

52:28

go around the cinematography. Prior to that,

52:31

any camera company, whether it be

52:33

Ari or Aton or whoever,

52:35

would design a new camera and they would

52:37

present it to somebody like Roger Deakins or

52:40

Ari would give me like the 435 camera

52:42

and say, go out and shoot with this

52:45

and tell us what you think. And then

52:47

if we deemed it sufficiently good

52:49

enough, we would then book it on our

52:51

shows and then it would appear

52:53

in producer's world, this camera that was

52:55

new. The exact opposite thing

52:57

happened with these digital cameras. They went

52:59

around the cinematographers and pitched them to the

53:02

producers as being just as good,

53:04

if not better, and

53:06

also far cheaper. All

53:09

three of those things were lies in

53:11

the early days. And so what

53:14

happened is we had producers insisting

53:16

that we do it and our jobs

53:18

were on the line because we've already established that

53:21

you're only as good as your last shot, right?

53:23

And if you fail at something, then

53:25

it's gonna reflect badly upon your career.

53:27

So we as cinematographers, I don't know

53:30

if this happened over in the feature

53:32

film side, certainly happened in the commercial

53:34

shooting side, were often criticized as being

53:36

Luddites for not wanting to embrace it

53:39

with open arms right from the get-go

53:41

when it wasn't good enough, right?

53:44

Because in the early days, film,

53:46

scan film particularly outperformed these digital

53:49

cameras. It's also too,

53:51

the first digital cameras were difficult

53:54

to work with. It was all

53:56

that excessive cabling. It was big

53:58

pieces of equipment. So

54:00

it's not what we have today. You're

54:03

absolutely right. For years and years,

54:05

I've been a very good friend of Ari and

54:08

I've been part of their design group that they

54:10

reach out to and they will like let me

54:12

in. I sign a big NDA and they'll let

54:14

me in on the development of a camera. I

54:16

had a huge role in what the

54:19

435 became. They

54:21

were going to make this big monstrous camera

54:23

that was gonna be as big as the

54:25

535 and just as heavy and have, you

54:28

know, unique magazines. And it was just horrible.

54:30

And I convinced them through a serendipitous thing

54:32

that the camera needed to be the size

54:35

of the 35.3 but be

54:37

dual pin registered and run 120 frames per second. I

54:40

had been booked on a job for, I was part

54:42

of the design team. I was telling them, no, no,

54:44

no, they were being stubborn. And I was booked on

54:46

a job for ILM and

54:48

they had taken a 35.3, which had

54:51

a registration pin in the wrong hole. So they couldn't

54:53

use film shot on a 35.3 on

54:55

their optical printers, which had the registration pins in

54:58

the proper holes where Mitchell cameras would have. So

55:00

they presented me with this camera. We showed up on location

55:03

and said, we want you to shoot all the plate shots

55:05

with this camera. And I said, well, it's a 35.3. I've

55:08

got two of them in the truck. And they said, no,

55:10

no, open the door. And I opened the door and they

55:12

had installed a Mitchell movement in there with dual pin registration.

55:15

Well, all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm going,

55:17

oh my God, this is the camera that Airy needs

55:19

to build. And here these guys have already done it.

55:21

So I said, do you mind if they take pictures

55:23

of this camera? And they said, no, no,

55:25

take all the pictures you want. And if you want us to build

55:27

you one, just get us a old Mitchell Mark II and a 35.3.

55:30

We'll do it for you for a thousand dollars. And

55:33

I said, okay. And I took pictures of the camera on

55:35

all sides with the door closed. And I took pictures of

55:37

the door open with the film threaded up and the movement,

55:39

clearly a Mitchell Mark II movement. Fast

55:42

forward six weeks. I go to the next meeting

55:44

over at the Airy offices in Burbank. The German

55:46

engineers have come over from Europe and they brought

55:48

the now a wooden mockup of this monstrosity that

55:50

they were going to build. And they clunk it

55:52

down on the table because it's all weighted to

55:54

be the same weight as what the camera is

55:56

going to be. It was just horrific. And

55:58

I said, this is going to work. We need the camera to be

56:01

the size of the 35.3, do

56:03

at least 120 frames per second, use

56:05

the same magazines. They said that's not

56:07

possible. I had the pictures in my

56:09

pocket. I pulled the pictures out, I

56:11

slide them across the table, and

56:14

I described to them what it was, and

56:16

all of a sudden there's just dead silence in the

56:18

room, and now there's a lot of German on the

56:20

other side of the table back and forth and back

56:22

and forth. Then I stuck the knife in and twisted

56:24

it, then I said, listen,

56:27

if you build this monstrosity, we

56:29

won't buy it. We will take all of

56:31

our 35.3s and have ILM convert them

56:33

with Mitchell Mark II movements for $1,000, and

56:36

we won't buy this thing. To give them

56:38

credit, they went away, they abandoned that camera, took

56:40

an extra year, and came back with the 435,

56:44

which ended up being their most successful film

56:46

camera. I think they sold thousands of them.

56:49

So anyway, I was now in good stead with

56:51

them, and they involved me in the development, this

56:53

is the long story to get to the development

56:55

of the Alexa, where in

56:57

the early days, the only

56:59

engineers that they could hire to build

57:01

digital cinema cameras were video engineers, because

57:04

the people who designed film cameras knew

57:06

nothing about electronics, right? So

57:09

the designers of the interface, I

57:12

was in a meeting in Munich with them, and they were

57:14

talking about what the interface needed

57:17

to do, and it

57:19

was incredibly complex. Think Sony in

57:21

the earlier cameras, they've gotten much

57:23

better now, because

57:26

they've learned from the Alexa. But these

57:28

guys were arguing with me that I

57:30

would make a, they had a prototype

57:32

sitting there, and I would make some settings, and then

57:34

this big red light would come on, and the camera

57:36

wouldn't do what I needed to do, which

57:39

was maybe change a frame rate or change a

57:41

shutter angle, something like that. And I would say

57:43

to them, it won't

57:45

let me do it. And they say, well, you should

57:47

know better because this, this, this, and this thing are

57:49

incompatible. And I was

57:51

frustrated at that point. And

57:54

I was used to film cameras. They had very

57:56

simple controls, and the camera would do what we

57:58

needed it to do. And finally,

58:00

after frustration, they were doing this thing

58:02

where you should know better because you

58:05

should have this vast quantity

58:07

of information about how video cameras work. And

58:09

I said, no, no, no, we're cinematographers. We

58:11

light, we line the camera up, we expect

58:13

what to do for exposure, and then the

58:15

camera does what we need. Right. And

58:17

finally, out of frustration, I held iPhones existed.

58:20

I held up my iPhone and I said,

58:22

my mom lives in San Antonio, Texas. I

58:25

don't know how this cell phone works. I

58:27

don't know how the undersea cable works. I

58:30

don't know how the exchange at the other end

58:32

works, but I can dial 12 numbers. And within

58:34

30 seconds, I'm talking to my mom. Right.

58:37

And they went, okay. And I

58:39

said, it needs to be just like this. It

58:42

needs to be this easy. Right. And

58:44

so they kept refining it and calling me

58:46

back and refining it. And they would eventually,

58:48

you know, they start arguing and all I do

58:50

is hold up my cell phone. Okay.

58:55

And it ended up with the Alexa interface,

58:57

which became now is the standard. It's really

58:59

interesting that all the other camera manufacturers, I

59:01

don't care who they are. They've all kind

59:04

of copied that window with the six buttons

59:06

in the little knob and the

59:08

back and forward button. They've

59:10

all copied that with and the six buttons

59:12

all essentially do the same thing because that

59:15

was a simplified version. And my argument to

59:17

them was this is a supercomputer. What's inside

59:19

here is a supercomputer. If it's

59:22

not happy with incompatible settings, if

59:24

it can make the change itself to get what

59:26

I need without radically changing, just do it. Maybe

59:29

tell me what you just did, but

59:32

then if it's incompatible, put up a warning signal

59:34

and you push an information button and tell me

59:36

what's wrong. That this

59:38

speed is too slow for the sensor or

59:40

there's the media can't accept this

59:43

frame rate. Whatever the problem

59:45

is, tell me what it is so that

59:47

I can fix the problem. Don't just tell

59:49

me no and expect that I'm going to

59:51

know this vast knowledge of information. And they

59:53

took me to heart and the interface was

59:56

very good. And now we're fast forward to a different part

59:58

of the story of the. acceptance of digital

1:00:00

cameras. I

1:00:03

was shooting commercials and I

1:00:06

was on a Honda commercial and

1:00:08

the car we're shooting was

1:00:10

going to be silver, right? And

1:00:12

we're going to be shooting silver cars in downtown

1:00:15

LA driving in and out of sunlight, which

1:00:17

for any digital camera prior to that would

1:00:19

have been death on wheels. Because

1:00:22

if you expose for the shadows when the

1:00:24

car came into the sunlight, it would just

1:00:26

explode in clipping or if you expose for

1:00:28

the highlights in the car when it's in

1:00:30

the sun, in the shadows it would just

1:00:32

be black, right? So I'm tooling up to

1:00:34

do this commercial. I was good friends with

1:00:37

the agency people and I

1:00:39

was offered the first prototype Alexa, the

1:00:42

first one that had come into the United States that was

1:00:44

up to snuff to be able to where they felt like

1:00:46

they could let it out and let somebody shoot with it.

1:00:49

And so I asked the agency

1:00:52

if I could bring this extra camera on with

1:00:54

the second crew to parallel shoot. And

1:00:57

they said, what is it? And I said, well, it's a new

1:00:59

digital camera by the same camera company that makes all the comfy

1:01:01

cameras that we use now. And

1:01:03

they said, well, we have to ask the client. So

1:01:05

they asked the client and Honda is a

1:01:07

very forward thinking company in terms of development.

1:01:10

And so they ran it up the ladder and they

1:01:12

came back down the ladder and they said, absolutely. We

1:01:14

want to know everything there is to know about this.

1:01:17

Say yes, as long as it doesn't cost us any

1:01:19

more money or hold us up in time. So I

1:01:21

brought in my good friend, Kestfun Ostrom,

1:01:23

and we parallel shot the commercial.

1:01:26

So now he was doing the exact same

1:01:28

shots, exact same lenses I was doing, basically

1:01:31

matching the ISO exposures, everything

1:01:34

fast forward to Daley's

1:01:36

or final color correction. Right. We

1:01:39

didn't do Daley's. We just went right into final

1:01:41

color correction because commercials have such a short timeframe.

1:01:44

So we had at this point in

1:01:46

time, all film was scanned and then

1:01:48

existed as digital files. Right. And

1:01:51

the color corrector was digit color correcting these

1:01:53

digital files. And we got done kind of

1:01:55

quickly because the guy was really good.

1:01:58

And we had about two hours left in

1:02:00

the. color correction session and he had already loaded

1:02:02

all the Alexa files into his server in

1:02:05

the other room and he said, let

1:02:07

us see what those files look like. And

1:02:10

so he pulled up the first file and

1:02:12

applied a lot to it and pushed the

1:02:14

wheels a little bit and the first words out of

1:02:16

his mouth was, holy shit, because

1:02:20

it looked like film. The

1:02:22

only difference between, and he was able, in his

1:02:24

color corrector, was able to run the two shots

1:02:26

side by side and the only way

1:02:28

you could tell the film from the digital was the film

1:02:30

head grain. And at that

1:02:33

moment I knew, as the car was driving in

1:02:35

and out of sunlight and all that kind of

1:02:37

stuff, it was performing just as well or better

1:02:40

than the film was. And then

1:02:42

another secret that a lot of people don't understand about

1:02:45

the Alexa and its color science

1:02:47

was the person that designed the

1:02:49

Alexa had previously designed the ARRI

1:02:51

scanner, which was a previous product

1:02:53

for ARRI. They were very

1:02:55

smart in that when the digital revolution was

1:02:57

happening, they didn't first try to build a

1:03:00

camera, they built a scanner because

1:03:02

it was necessary to shoot film, do digital

1:03:05

intermediates and Roger, you were the first person to

1:03:07

do a digital intermediate on Oh Brother,

1:03:09

We're Art Thou and then bring

1:03:11

the film back out to make a

1:03:13

film print. Well, they built the two

1:03:15

things that allowed you to do that,

1:03:17

a scanner and then a film printer,

1:03:19

right? Well, in the process of developing

1:03:21

that scanner, the color scientists kept looking

1:03:23

at what film print looked like and

1:03:25

what the scanner was doing. So

1:03:28

they wanted to emulate film as much as

1:03:30

possible. So then that same person

1:03:32

was kept on and hired to do the

1:03:34

color science for the Alexa. And

1:03:36

that person had thousands of images of how scanned

1:03:39

film looked like and in

1:03:41

their computer and also in their mind and

1:03:44

made the Alexa not only

1:03:46

look like scanned film, but to the

1:03:49

colorist, it behaved like scanned film when

1:03:51

they pushed the wheels. So

1:03:53

other digital cameras, you've been in color

1:03:56

correction sessions with other people's digital cameras,

1:03:58

it does wild things. the wheels

1:04:00

and it's like very unexpected, what's it doing?

1:04:02

These people were all very used to how

1:04:05

film, scan, film behaved. The Alexa behaved just

1:04:07

like that. So the color correction sessions went

1:04:09

really quickly and aided to, that's kind of

1:04:11

a secret thing that nobody's really aware of

1:04:13

unless you've been in color correction sessions, that

1:04:15

it goes really quickly. So that

1:04:18

was the first camera I drove across town right

1:04:20

afterwards, put my money down, a deposit on a

1:04:22

new camera, even though they weren't even offered for

1:04:25

sale yet and said I want one of these.

1:04:27

And I took delivery of one of the very

1:04:29

first ones. So then what

1:04:31

happened is that camera dominated and Roger

1:04:35

took to it quickly and loved it

1:04:37

for various projects that he worked on.

1:04:39

And then what happened is other

1:04:41

digital camera manufacturers ultimately

1:04:44

copied what the Alexa is

1:04:46

and became. And in some cases is

1:04:48

overachieving it now. I mean, it's competition,

1:04:50

it's great. But you can tell that

1:04:52

the other camera manufacturers ultimately were

1:04:55

given the Alexa and say, just copy this camera,

1:04:57

how it looks, how it behaves.

1:04:59

But that was the turning point. I don't know

1:05:01

if I answered my question, it was a long

1:05:03

answer to a simple question. Yeah, I want

1:05:06

to ask you also, I'll shoot at that.

1:05:08

I'll find it really interesting. I

1:05:10

mean, I don't work in commercials,

1:05:12

but when I watch them on

1:05:14

TV or the movies, I'm

1:05:17

very aware now that even

1:05:19

a car commercial, the car might

1:05:21

not actually really be in the

1:05:23

location because of the CGI

1:05:26

work. How is that affected? Would

1:05:29

that famous Budweiser commercial in

1:05:31

the sunset, would

1:05:33

that now be a comp, a

1:05:35

digital creation? Or would

1:05:37

AI be used to create something

1:05:39

like that? I mean, how is

1:05:41

commercials changing? Oh, yeah, radically. I

1:05:43

mean, AI, yes, you

1:05:45

would have trouble finding a LED

1:05:48

volume wall that would let you bring eight

1:05:50

Clydesdales into their stage and poop on the floor and

1:05:52

tromp through. That's a bit of a

1:05:55

stretch. Just imagine them

1:05:57

saying no. But anyway. Yes,

1:06:02

I have actually lit cars in

1:06:04

the CGI world because

1:06:06

the lighting rules still remain the same. They

1:06:09

wrote that software that allows you to

1:06:11

light things in the virtual world to

1:06:13

behave just like light behaves and light

1:06:15

sources behave like light behave. I've

1:06:18

done some of the very first times

1:06:20

when a commercial had a CG car

1:06:22

in it. Sometimes it was a

1:06:24

paint job that had to be changed early on

1:06:26

of a Dodge Viper. We

1:06:29

had shot it with some stripes on it and

1:06:31

they decided they weren't going to do the stripes in the

1:06:33

finished car. At first we're

1:06:35

trying to remove the stripes, but

1:06:37

then they had a 3D model of

1:06:39

the car and they ultimately said, no,

1:06:41

no, let's just reconstitute

1:06:44

the car from the model that

1:06:47

we have. The guy was struggling

1:06:49

to light it. They called me up and

1:06:51

said, hey, can you come down here? I said,

1:06:53

can you zoom out and reveal to me

1:06:55

where your lights are? I

1:06:58

can see them and he did and I said going, oh my

1:07:00

God, they're all in the wrong places. He also had too many

1:07:02

of them. I said, get

1:07:05

rid of this one, get this one, move this one here.

1:07:07

I did basically lit the car as I would on stage

1:07:09

and then he rendered a frame and oh my God, it was in

1:07:12

general. The

1:07:14

rules are still the same. I've been doing

1:07:16

that for CG cars. As a matter of

1:07:18

fact, I did a commercial where we shot

1:07:20

in Valencia, Spain and the

1:07:22

product was a Lincoln car that

1:07:24

didn't exist at the time. It

1:07:27

was still a prototype. They didn't have a driving version of

1:07:29

it, but they wanted to start making a commercial about it.

1:07:32

We shot a BMW car

1:07:35

and then they placed the 3D

1:07:38

CG car on top of it. When

1:07:40

you see the spot, you have no idea. Then

1:07:43

people say, but you didn't light that car and

1:07:45

I say, yes, I did. The reason why is

1:07:47

I picked where we were because shooting cars outside

1:07:49

is picking the light and the angle and being

1:07:51

in the right place at the right time. It's

1:07:53

all about the reflections of that light in the

1:07:55

car. After we would

1:07:57

drive through, we shot normally with a camera.

1:08:00

car and an arm, after we would

1:08:02

drive through, then there was the environment

1:08:04

team that had a camera looking straight

1:08:06

up with a fisheye lens

1:08:08

that recorded the entire environment. So after we

1:08:10

had passed through, they were just around the

1:08:12

corner. Moments later, we'd be going to the

1:08:15

next location. They would drive through and record

1:08:17

the lighting environment. And then what the CG

1:08:19

people would do is they would take that

1:08:21

image, which is a round image in

1:08:24

the image, and they would

1:08:26

map that on the inside of a hemisphere

1:08:28

that they would place over the CG car,

1:08:31

and then in the software, they'd instruct the

1:08:33

CG car to reflect that environment. That's

1:08:36

great, isn't it? That's how my

1:08:38

lighting lit that car. A

1:08:40

lot of people will cry for it. Doesn't it take all

1:08:42

the fun out of it, though? Doesn't it take the fun

1:08:44

out of it? You soon won't be going to Spain either.

1:08:46

Spain will be on the wall in the studio and the

1:08:48

whole thing will be. Yeah. I

1:08:51

mean, people ask me to predict how

1:08:53

AI is going to go. It's hard

1:08:55

to know. Yeah. I'm asking you now.

1:08:57

Yeah. I just read today in Adweek

1:08:59

that some clients

1:09:02

are nervous about the liability aspect

1:09:04

and are instructing their agencies to

1:09:07

not use any AI. Because

1:09:09

I think what the other shoe

1:09:11

that's going to drop, and I could be

1:09:13

wrong here, I'm no lawyer, but

1:09:15

the other shoe that's going to drop is the

1:09:18

lawsuits that are going to occur. There's

1:09:20

already been a spot done for Under

1:09:23

Armour where they used previous work

1:09:25

to make a spot that looked a hell

1:09:27

of a lot like the previous work, but

1:09:29

none of the crew was hired again and

1:09:31

the cinematographer and the director, the

1:09:33

agency just did it all themselves very proudly

1:09:35

and put it up and proudly said, this

1:09:37

is all our work. We did

1:09:39

it all with AI. But in reality, it's other

1:09:41

people's work that they ripped,

1:09:44

for lack of a better term. Right. But

1:09:47

that's an interesting concept, isn't it? Because

1:09:49

you don't get any residuals for

1:09:51

shooting the Budweiser sunset. Yes, exactly.

1:09:55

Where is that going to fall? Can they recreate

1:09:57

that sunset exactly as it is? What

1:10:00

do you get for it? It's kind of it

1:10:02

just it's a new well very a whole new

1:10:04

world and the shoe hasn't dropped yet I think

1:10:07

right now everybody's being cautious Google

1:10:10

Getty images Set out a

1:10:12

thing saying we don't want to accept any images

1:10:14

that are whole or in part Invented with you

1:10:17

know created with AI because they also don't want

1:10:19

to have somebody sue them Yeah, you know I

1:10:21

think right now the legal aspect all this needs

1:10:23

to be sorted out and that'll probably take a

1:10:26

year or two But I

1:10:28

find it absolutely fascinating some of the stuff that I'm

1:10:30

seeing Yeah,

1:10:33

yeah lovely. Hey, yeah, this

1:10:35

is being great. It's really interesting. I hope I

1:10:37

have a doctor guys heads off. I mean I

1:10:40

took off I've

1:10:42

been fascinated It's

1:10:45

been really interesting The

1:10:50

way you introduced the

1:10:53

idea of Creativity

1:10:56

creativity and technology working

1:10:58

hand-in-hand which is exactly

1:11:00

Hmm what both

1:11:02

all of us love about the industry really?

1:11:04

I you know, yeah, I think that's a

1:11:07

great thing And I've been

1:11:09

long a great fan of your guys work.

1:11:11

So I Admire everything

1:11:13

you do so I hope you

1:11:15

like our podcast Love

1:11:18

the podcast and I'm honored to be a part

1:11:20

of it I know many people have learned a

1:11:22

lot from your other guests and

1:11:25

it's a fantastic opportunity You guys put all

1:11:27

this effort because it's no small amount of effort you

1:11:29

guys put into this No, it's really not Fun

1:11:52

If you'd like to sponsor the team

1:11:54

deacons podcast let us know at pod

1:11:56

at team deacons calm Thanks

1:12:01

for listening. If you want

1:12:03

more information and further discussion, check

1:12:05

out the forums at www.rogerdeakins.com.

1:12:12

Becoming a member is free and you

1:12:14

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1:12:18

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1:12:20

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1:12:22

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1:12:28

you next time!