Frame & Reference is a conversation between Cinematographers hosted by Kenny McMillan of OWL BOT. Each episode dives into the respective DP’s current and past work, as well as what influences and inspires them. These discussions are an entertaining and informative look in to the world making films through the lens of the people who shoot them. You can listen to Frame & Reference where all the best podcasts are listened to like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Each episode can also be found in video form on YouTube. Follow Frame & Reference on Twitter and Instagram for more content, and check your favorite app every Thursday for new episodes.

Where are you calling in from right now?

Well [laughs], as life would have it I’m on the side of the road, just before I go do color tonight on Lonestar. So I just pulled it off before I heading over to the post house to do some color.

Oh, wow. Who’s handling color for you?

MTI. In Hollywood. So doing that with Julio Giron over there, he really does a great job. So yeah, so just finished shooting tonight and just lucky enough to have a chance to speak to you and then I’ll just race off to do color for several hours to finish the day.

I’m actually really interested coloring so we can get to that in a minute, but I was looking at your IMDb and it looks like you’re primarily in television. How’d you get started there?

Well starting back in Australia in the mid-nineties, back then it was film. I worked my way up through, you know… video split, 2nd AC, 1st AC and then DP, and then came to State Side for about close to a decade shot a lot of little independent movies, some okay some not so okay. You know, and you kind of meet multiple people along the way. Next thing you know you get an opportunity to get a break and you’re lucky enough to make the most of it. Sometimes it’s fortuitous and you go on from there. So it was just through contacts of these little independent cinema projects that I was lucky enough to meet line producers that then introduced me to show runners and so forth. And then I got my break.

Where are you always aiming to be a DP?

Oh yeah mate, I was seven or eight years old and I lived in the Outback in a small country town that had small one screen theater. I knew when I saw the Empire Strikes Back as a seven or eight year old that I knew what I wanted to do. You know, back then in the early 80s in Australia, the opportunity and the industry isn’t as prolific as it is here. So it seems more remote and pipe dream back there because it wasn’t an industry that was sustainable. And so it’s like, “well, how the hell do I do that?” And so it was being back there and working in the industry, it just taught you to be very versatile and persistent to get in and to try to make headway, you know?

You started off making just like short films with friends? I know for me it was mostly just “Hey I’ve got a camera let’s do go do something” but we were shooting VHS or Hi8 so it was a whole lot of shooting in sequence and not being able to put it on a computer to edit.

Yeah well it was something like that, man. I was around 20 years old, 19 when I first started. Back then it was Video 8mm and you know… I grew up in a small country town and there was literally no one, other than local stringers that would shoot news and local race horses and things like that. So I would go do work experience, but the same theater that I saw Empire Strikes Back, I ended up working in as a cleaner, but so when people say, “what is the lowest position you can start?” it’s not a production assistant, it’s a cleaner of a cinema [laughs]. And then you work your way to usher, candy bar, and then projectionist. And that’s how I started. So I literally just watched things like Braveheart and True Lies and Forrest Gump like 80 times and just would just watch the lighting and then would go get a video camera and try to make my own little films. You’re so much of a sponge that you just couldn’t get enough of it, so to speak. So that’s how I started. So you know, it was a very humble beginnings and sometimes innocence and ignorance is actually a really good thing.

I just remember sitting there at seven or eight and obviously you can’t articulate it, but you just, for that 90 minutes to two hours, you’re like, “I want to do that. I don’t know what that is, but I want to do that. I want to kind of put the camera there and do that.” It was something over time that obviously gestated and it grows and develops, and then you start to understand what does it really entail? And from that going forward, I’m glad that that genesis happened at such a young, early age because we all grow up with friends at different avenues of life and it’s interesting… I feel very fortunate that I knew what I wanted to do, even though the path to get there was somewhat convoluted, but I just knew that I wanted to do, you know?

What was what was your experience like being a projectionist?

It was great when it worked [laughs]. If the film got jammed and it’s spitting it out at 24 frames a second, and it just it’s chewing it up, it’s like, yeah, there’s a few colorful expletives that are usually followed, but it was great. I feel I was very, very lucky cause I you would get the old canisters and you’d get them in 2000 foot spools and you’d tape them together and join them, and it was really cool handling film. And even though, again, I was so far removed from the execution of what that is, it was still somewhat this essence that while you’re touching film, you’re somewhat part of it, you know? So it was definitely something that in the early days it was a it was a lot of fun just to be, even though it was a bit naive to think that you’re “part of the industry”, it was just a different side of it. It was obviously distributing and exhibition as opposed to production, but it was a lot of fun and it was just, it was really cool. It was just something pretty magical just to hear that flicker much like years later operating and then shooting and hearing the sound of film run through the magazine to your ear was that’s, that’s one thing I do miss is hearing that sound.

Oh totally, when I was in film school we got to shoot 16mm and you do start to, especially when things go wrong or it starts to run out, you’d hear the the mechanism kind of change sounds and you’re like, “Oh, no” right in the middle of a really great take, you just have to sit there with your face stuck in the eyepiece and just eat it.

[Laughs] yeah there’s a little bit of that sometimes that yeah, I didn’t really have too many mishaps, but nonetheless it was it was pretty cool. I got paid to sit and watch films through a portal and that’s essentially what I did. I just literally, like a sponge, just tried to soak up and that was my early beginnings of a very rudimentary film school of looking at an image and trying to follow where the shadow was and ascertain “if there’s a shadow there, even if it’s soft or hard, then that means the light source must be coming from the opposite direction.”

When you were looking at that, when you started really trying to figure out lighting, what sort of tools were you [using as opposed to film lights and equipment]? I assume you just hit the hardware store and grab something, or were you just “no lights” for the first few projects?

Well, I was lucky enough, as I said, I worked as work experience for a couple of Stringers at rival networks that would shoot local news and what not. And so I was lucky enough that you go carry around the tripod for them and they see that you’re keen, they had a little Tota lighting kit and a Red Head and a Blondie. And you know, it was funny because I thought that they were the bigger lights that I’d never, ever need again. Like, now you use those to light a catering tent [laughs]. But you know, I would get those lights and you learn things are fire retardant and I just thought, “well, to recreate what Ross Carpenter did on True Lies, you just put a blue filter on the lamp.” You know, again, I had no influences (and this is pre-internet and all that type of stuff) so I just went, like you said, to a newsagent and foolishly, stupidly, got blue cellophane!

Oh jeez haha

[laughs] You got to understand I was 17 or 18 years old when I started this. So I throw that over a lamp and you make it all nice and neat and tidy, and it looks pretty. And then you turn the thing on and within a second it’s on fire! You’re patting down the light, not realizing there’s 240 volt power running to a lamp [laughs]. But you know, you live and you learn and luckily nothing bad happened to me, but yeah, there’s a couple of little funny things like that on the way where you just go “well, I’m not doing that again.”

For sure. Can you can you point to like the first sort of break that you remember coming through where you felt like, “Oh, now I’m in the big leagues?”

Well, I remember what got me to the United States was an independent film, and that was probably the thing that started the ball, particularly stateside, was an independent film with Peter and Michael Spierig back in 2001 called Undead. At the time I was just about to finish you know, moonlighting on the weekends shooting. But I was finishing up being a first AC at that time. I was just about to do a nine month series and you know, a month in these blokes called me up and said, “Hey, listen, we’ve got this horror feature. It’s, it’s eight weeks work on Super 16, but it’s all deferred.” But these guys were successful commercial directors, and I knew it was going to be somewhat stylized. I just jumped out of the chain. And I said, “yep, I’ll do it.” And went to my UPM’s office for the series and said, “Hey, I have to quit.” And they’re like, why? And I said “I’m being offered a job to shoot a feature!” and I was 25 at the time. And I was like you know, this is why I got into business. I want to do this. And they said, “well, are making good money?” I said “Nope. They’ll pay me when it makes money.” And they said, “well, wait a minute. You’re going to give up nine months worth of work for no money right now.” And I said, “yep.” And they were like somewhat taken back and were like, “look, go do this show, come back in 10 weeks. And your job will be here.” So fast forward, three years later, that movie came out because of the visual effects that needed to be done on it took a year to 15 months… that releases in the States, limited with Lionsgate, in mid to late 2005. And I just came over. And once I was here, I was shooting commercial work in Australia, things were starting to happen with directors in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. And I just thought if I go back, I’ll never come back Stateside. So I just stayed, renewed my visa and kept renewing and then went for the 01 and got that. And started from scratch here.

How were you managing between sort of the bigger projects? Are you like still doing commercials out here or a side gigs, or what was that like?

No, when I first came here was, it was very working class humble beginnings. I started off you know, moving furniture, doing labor work, whatever you could do under the table. The one thing that I was very fortunate about in Australia was it taught you the hustle. You know, there’s no door closed, it’s just… everything’s slightly ajar. And you learn how a “no” really means you just got to ask in a very polite manner, you know? Back then, “how do I get a job?” Well, I just went to IMDb. I looked up every production that was being made in pre-production and I would just go literally from top to bottom and look at who the producers were, the directors, and click on their companies and if they had their emails, I’d cold email them. And that’s how I started. And for every hundred emails, I would usually get 3 to 6 back. So I, that’s how I started. And I would do three or four movies a year.

Do you think that strategy would work today? Just cold emailing companies like that?

I think to a degree that looked those, those were movies a million dollars or less.

Sure. And those are rare now.

Yeah. And I think that’s that was, that was a different time. I think once you start getting above that, obviously non solicitated a you’re never going to get an answer. So for that time, it was more of a case of, well there’s a sense of ownership. If I’m not working and not doing what I want, then it’s on me to make the change. I can’t rely on anyone else to do it. Austrailia taught me so much; you gotta be versatile, you gotta be malleable. You gotta be fast, you gotta be easy to work with. All of those attributes seem to pay dividends as you start to make ground, then people always call the previous producer. “Hey what was this bloke like? Oh, what was he like?” from there you start to get a roll on

That’s actually interesting because I’ve spoken to a couple Australian DPs and they all do seem to have the same kind of like… it’s work. There’s no holier-than-thou sort of attitudes about it. Is there anything else that Australia taught you about doing the work that we in LA could stand to learn more of?

I mean, there’s a lot leftover from the British that we borrowed, but I still to this day call DPs “cameramen” and and you know, it’s lost in translation with ADs because that will say “the camera operator?” “No, no, no, the camera man” and so I think that there’s no mistique or anything like that, or you know, reverence to the industry back home, because it’s so small, it’s really a tiny, tiny industry. I think the landscape and the culture in general is this kind of “if you injure yourself you’ll be right, mate, just get up and walk it off.” You know, I mean, our national sport summer is cricket. There’s no gloves. Our national sport in winter is football. Full contact, no pads. So it’s kind of like this culture that is kind of like, “just get on with it, if there’s a problem, how do you fix it?” so it’s kind of like, you’re just brought up not knowing any different that this is just what you do, you know? I think it really serves a great purpose in just being adaptable, because as you know, there is no filmmaking utopia. You’re always going to be fighting. Weather, light, time, producers, money, actors… you’re always going to be in that situation. And all of us have the same tools. We have a camera, we have lenses. Yeah, you might have a bit of gear here and there, or what have you, or different lights, but essentially at the end of the day, what really separates everyone is their problem solving. And that’s all it is. It’s just problem solving.

That’s actually a good sort of segue into the work you’re doing now cause I haven’t actually spoken to a lot of television DPs. That compressed schedule has got to be a really educational when it comes to moving quickly and being adaptable.

Yeah definitely. I’m enjoying it right now. Just from the you know, the consistency of problem solving and working two steps ahead and all that type of stuff. And particularly on our show… the previous show I did was Lethal Weapon. It was very different; it was a cop buddy drama based off the movies with Mel and Danny. But you know, this show Lonestar is really interesting with your firefighters are wearing black turnouts or black uniforms and the design of some of the sets and pieces are these very soft pastel tones. How do you create contrast and tone of the scene when you’re dealing with such extreme values? To me that’s a great challenge and then obviously each actor we have Caucasian, we have African-American, we have Hispanic, we have British, so you have all these varying degrees of tonality with skin tone and making that work and shooting them in a way, particularly with the way this show works, the camera moves a lot. So it’s the intention behind all that was that the camera was always with the “126” characters and that whether they skylarking around together in the firehouse or on an emergency or at home, you always feel like you’re with them as opposed to standing back and just observing them.

Gotcha. So is there a lot of handheld then?

No, we don’t do handheld on this show. We do more Steadicam, Ronin, Crane, a lot of crane, Dolly… it’s just a mix of all of those tools to create the energy through the lens

Sure. And lighting obviously, like you said… as cinematographers we are all pretty much focused on skin tones all the time and contrast on the face… what does that sort of lighting challenge look like for you? Cause I know with darker tones, you kind of want to use larger sort of softer sources to more reflect in the skin. You know, lighter skin tends to absorb light a little bit, how are you approaching that? I can’t imagine you’re flagging off individual actors.

No, no, not at all. I mean, sometimes we’ll put in a little special here and there, but for the most part it’s more about… PJ Ross is my DIT on the show and we came up with a system based off our lead actor what worked for him, skin tone wise. And so we came up the original show is obviously successful in its own right. And we said, “well, we’re not going to do part two of that. This is let’s, let’s do a standalone.” So we kind of came up with the approach where, when I think of Texas, I think of copper during the day this kind of dryness that kind of reminds me of Australia. And then at night, this kind of silver, metallic tinge to stuff. So it has these cooler hues at night and kind of yellow, brown, copper during the day in the skin, or in the vegetation. So greens appear more olive, the blue appears more pastel blue as a result, more of a warmer blue. So with that being said a lot of our look, because we’re dealing with such extreme values of skin tone versus costume, we basically come at it from a point of view of really creating a very dense negative in the mid tones. All of our contrast comes in the mid-tones and the blacks and the highlights we don’t really push too around too much because otherwise you get blocky in the, in the shadows and in the highlights. So a lot of our “negative” is very thick in the mids. And then we pull that all down and that gives us the illusion of contrast, but you still see texture in the wardrobe, in the black wardrobe. So as a result, to your point, yeah there’s a lot more, you know, broad lighting to some degree, but then it’s a combination of specular lighting here and there too. Primarily because some of our sets are either pastel in time or have a lot of glass, so you’re shooting straight into glass or you know, have a lot of darkness. So there’s not one size fits all with the approach because each set and each location really has to have a different approach. But you know, it is a combination of a little bit of specular lighting. Sometimes I’ll basically light with big, broad, soft sources, but then I’ll also light from the same direction, with a little bit more of a specular, harder source with an exposure contrast difference. And I also create contrast not only through lighting and exposure, but color. So as it gets darker in exposure, I’ll start shifting the hue to cooler. So that gives us some sort of almost like a two-prong effect, not only exposure, but color to give us two layers of contrast.

Are you kind of on the new “All LED Everything” train? Are you still using Traditional sources?

Mate I wish I was on the whole LED train [laughs]. We shoot it through our studio, obviously it’s on the studio lot, certain things that were under what they call “the cap” and what they’ll give you a hell of a lot of, and then the other stuff, the new technology is somewhat sparingly. So it’s a combination of the two. But definitely the advantages of LED, because I particularly love color, so the advantages of you know, obviously S360s and S60s are our workhorses in the interior, because I like to play with color a lot. I don’t see an environment being 56 or 32 or whatever. I see it as a multitude or a layering of color. That’s how I see the natural world. And that, to me, tastes a little bit of the sting off the… sometimes digital can look synthetic and too clean. So having a little bit of “dirt” in the color sometimes to me makes it feel more, “okay, I buy that this is real now I buy that this exists” you know? So I play with color a hell of a lot again, very subtle, sometimes part of the same family. But to me, that approach seems to feel right so I might interiors play anywhere, a night sequence, anywhere from 2800 to 5000 and shoot a 3200. And it just gives us that little bit of color separation that also helps when you’re using soft light, that little bit more of a subtle, soft contrast in that curve, through the use of color.

Speaking of digital sharpness, what’s your camera lens package? Are you filtering at all or is it all pretty clean?

We use Master Primes. We carry zooms just when we’re on Techno, and then Fujinons, great lenses, I used them on Lethal Weapon…

Oh yeah I love ‘em.

Yeah they’re just amazing mate, but the Master Primes, wow. They’re just beautiful. And particularly since we deal with… the one element of the show is fire, and just how clean that next to zero halation is pretty amazing. Now, when it comes to filtration, we sometimes depending on the character and the setting, if it’s at home or what have you, we might use Black Satins, but for the most part it’s out on the rescues and interiors at the firehouse and all that. I just want to keep it a little bit more of a realistic edge. And then when they take off their uniforms and they’re at home, or what have you, that’s when it becomes a little softer because the adrenaline’s not up and they’re not on edge and all that type of stuff. But you know, usually the Black Satin I just use for the ladies and just to take the edge off a little bit, because the Master Primes, beautiful edge to edge, great resolving power, but a little sharp, which is great but it  sometimes just takes that off just a little bit, which I think gives a bit more of a pleasing result.

Totally. And you’re Shooting Alexa or Venice or…

We’re shooting Alexas, Alexa minis and we’ve got four of those and you know, we’re lucky to have A camera basically living off the SRH 360 head, the Arriflex 360 head, and now with COVID, it’s an interesting scenario that landscape that we’re all in right now, we’re all working through. So generally speaking, we’re using more and more A and B cameras or remotes and just the Dolly grips are near the actors. So that allows us distancing and all the rest of it and it allows us to put less people in a confined area.

So then does that mean that you’re operating with remote wheels?

Yeah mate, yeah. There’s there’s nothing more pretty in this world than a geared head or some wheels. You jump on there, you do a couple of stars or, or hexagons, and then your away to go. And it’s just, to me, there’s something about the precision and depending on who the operator is, some people breathe heavy and some people don’t. And I always felt when I operated on Oconnors or Sachtlers or whatever, I always felt like I needed the most amount of resistance because I like to keep it as solid as possible. And that’s the beauty of wheels is that if you don’t turn that wheel, that camera doesn’t move. And I think there’s something really deliberate about that. And the choices and operator makes when framing the action or letting the actors play the front.

Oh, absolutely, I’m in the same boat. I think the… I don’t know, I assume the handheld craze started when cameras started to get smaller, but I was raised watching films that were very composed, very sort of proscenium, solid movement, that kind of thing. And that’s what I want to emulate personally, if I can.

Yeah I feel the same way mate and I think also too, what’s dangerous is you never want to give people the option that “oh we got out of a bind because we just slap on a handheld camera and we run around” I think all cinematographers this day and age, regardless of budget or scale, I think we’re all in that same boat where I think, unfortunately, cinematographers’ position in the world is somewhat been diminished with… there’s great things that have come from digital, but it used to be something that only cinematographers understood. What happened in the bath, what happened when it went to the lab, what printer lights, what “32, 23, 35” meant on printer lights. Those types of things, it was like a mystery. It’s like this magic sort of concoction. Now that everyone can see it, sometimes there’s a bit of a committee meeting with regards to people going, “can’t you fix that in post?” Or, “nah, it looked fine to me” you know? And so that loss of control… I think it’s up to every DP to try to stand his or her ground for the image, because really we’re the only people standing in the way of the process of going “let’s do it faster, cheaper, and quicker and easier” you know? So we’re the last custodians and usually the people that are like, “Oh, how long is this going to take it’s Friday night, it’s 1 o’clock! can’t we just get this over with?” so you’re usually the person that’s going “no, we’re going to do this right. Let’s just give me 10 minutes, give me 20 minutes” you know? So it’s one of those things that it’s the last frontier that if it serves the story, then it’s a great way to shoot. If it doesn’t, and it’s just because of ease, I think it’s a very slippery slope to entertain.

Sure. And I think another thing too, is it can become dangerous when people think they know what your job is and start making suggestions, or speaking for you to, whoever… the producer or director or someone like that, you know? Like “No, he can fix it in post” like you said.

Absolutely. And the truth of the matter is mate, in my experience in episodic… I’ve just done two action shows back to back over a five-year period, but you’re shooting anywhere, for a 43 minute screening, you’re shooting anywhere from 400 to 600 shots in 43 minutes. So the idea of fixing it in post doesn’t exist because to me, you got to get it right. And then you just find tune in color and you’re just really doing the fine tuning at that point, as opposed to a total… I only have 16 or 20 hours to color time 600 shots. It’s a one light at best. So you’re not doing yourself any favors, or the show any favors with, with that kind of approach.

Yeah. There was a quote that I found recently that really stuck with me which was, you know, “if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to fix it?”

Hey that’s a really good line! That’s a really good line.

Feel free to take it. I took it from someone else [laughs] So starting kind of where we started at the beginning of the chat, talk to me about your color grading process. You said you had a DIT on set. Do you guys have like a work LUT? Is he constantly riding the wheels for you? And when you go meet up with him in a bit here, what’s what kind of conversations are you having?

Yeah PJ and I, when we’re at this stage and we have we have uh a LUT in the CDL we stand by, but because the locations and the sets… one is more tan and earth toned and then another one has more color in it. And then one has really dark tones. So one LUT doesn’t really suit everything. So there is several different LUTs that we have and I’m a big stickler for time of day, and it’s very subtle, but to me 5:00 AM pre-dawn, dawn, 30 minutes after dawn, an hour and a half after dawn, two hours after… to me, there’s a shifting color, palette with regards to color temperature and the way that looks and what that does to a set. So there’s very much a consistency in a line that we take and then just adjust for each different set. But on top of that, time of day is a really big thing that I really put a lot of emphasis on. So, I mean, it’s very subtle, you you’d really have to look for it, but to me, I see it with regards to… you want to see this transition of time, even though an episode might be shot over four or five days screen-time. You want to feel that it’s real by having different times of day. So from there, I’ll go in with Julio, with final color, and then I’ll just give him a background of the episode. We’ll talk about it first for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then we’ll go through and essentially we’ll go through each scene and we’ll pick a shot, and then we’ll just tweak from there and go, okay, let’s do this, that. And, and usually for the most part it’s really fixing up a it’s a little bit of a isolating a window here or qualify for color here to pull down because in our world reds are burgundies, blues are more of a pastel warm blue, and greens are more of an olive, so we kind of just qualify things, pull them apart and then put them back together. So it’s pretty much just fine tuning, it’s very little to do with color. Once I get to the final color, we pretty much stay consistent to getting it right on the day-off. And then it’s just like, tweaking this, tweaking the curve here and there, but it’s all very small stuff at that point.

How has digital changed the way you shoot versus Film? Because digital is two parts now, right? You’ve got the raw footage and then you’ve got the DI, whereas with film (obviously you had color timing) but it wasn’t as targeted as it is now.

Yeah, I’m caught in two worlds. Obviously there’s a beauty to film and I think there’s also a change in the crew’s way of looking at execution. There’s none of this, “let’s just keep the camera rolling.” It’s kind of like this prestige of money just pouring through the magazine, the more you shoot and keep rolling without really necessarily fixing or fine tuning or finessing. I love the idea of… there was something beautiful about calling the dailies guy each morning and saying “Hey, how’d it look? How do the dailies look?” and finding that out and waking up with that. I always enjoyed calling the next morning and waking up to that and knowing that… it was more often than not a great phone call, then you’re off with a bit more of a pep in your step to, to set.

The thing I love about digital that film doesn’t give is I love the immediacy of creating the world right there. And that to me, is something really exciting is that I can create and shift, and what would normally take 24 hours in the sense of sending nodes to the telecine or the lab or what have you, I can do right there because their telecine and lab is right there. So I like that immediacy of doing that. And to me, lighting is so immediate. My choices, as you know, is so instinctual. Yes, logistically you do lighting schematics and things like that for sets and big set pieces and whatnot, but when it gets down to it, it’s really just like cooking; you throw it in the mix and you go, “I feel like this needs to be this color or this lighting value for no other reason than I feel it should be”. You can’t quantify anything more than that, or explain yourself other than “this feels right, this feels right, this feels right.” And then there’s something great about that immediacy to me, of the art of seeing it right there and then. So I’m torn in between two worlds, but I do love that part of it as much as I used to love waking up in the morning at 5:00 AM and talking to the lab or telecine.

Sure. Well, and I guess with film the flip side of that coin is, you know, waking up in the morning, hopping on the phone and he goes “yeah, all the negatives were blank!”

[laughs] Well, yeah. I mean, luckily I never had that, that’s a very sobering thought where you’d probably open up the classified pages and you start looking for a job at that point [laughs] but luckily I never had that that situation.

It’s such an amazing job. And if you can really love what you do, it’s just like… you’re just 8 years old again. It’s like theater. You’re lucky enough that you get to play in a sand pit and even the worst day… I know some of my mates that on Monday morning at 8:00 AM, they wish it was Friday 5:00 PM and I just, I’ve never felt like that.

No, I’m the same way. I’ve been a DP for as long as I can remember, and I don’t have “weekends” like that. You know, it’s always… I’m constantly surrounded by it.

Yeah. I mean, I, I know the last several years… I’m a huge football fan, die hard football fan, and usually Sundays is putting on some sweat pants, sitting on the couch with the computer, doing lighting schematics for the next week whilst watching football [laughs].

Before I let you go, I’ve been asking every DP which everyday thing do you find most important that has helped you in your career, and if you have any personal projects that you’re working on.

One thing that I love is, I love getting up every morning and when I leave, it’s usually really early either before dawn or whatever, and it amazes me the quality of light that changes every day. And just seeing it come through blinds or windows and… I’m never surprised what light can do. And I’m always marveled that. I think I’ll spend a lifetime chasing it. And that’s okay by me. I’m quite happy to have a carrot two inches from my nose and keep thinking that I’m going to get it.

With regards to personal projects, I don’t have anything right now obviously there’s projects you’d like to work on in the future and directors you’d like to work with on the future, but you know, nothing, nothing right now, I’m just enjoying you know, I was lucky enough to shoot car flips and explosions and shoot outs and high falls and all that with the previous action drama. And now with this I’m shooting firemen and fire. And so I don’t know what’s next, but I’m glad that I’ve gotten a chance to shoot different sequence, different action if you will. And I’m looking forward to doing more of that, but in a different way.

Right on, well I will let you get to your color session. Thank you so much for spending this time with me, in your car [laughs] and I hope we can have you back!

I really appreciate your time mate, thank you very much.