Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four zero three.
Speaker 2: If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can
Speaker 2: create a consoling illusion that it has been mastered. Stanley
Speaker 2: Kuber broadcasting from a dark, windowless.
Speaker 1: Room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
Speaker 1: that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
Speaker 1: the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
Speaker 1: to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
Speaker 2: I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show
Speaker 2: is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
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Speaker 2: Today we have a insanely cool episode. I am talking
Speaker 2: to one of the ogs, the original gangsters of the
Speaker 2: filmmaking blogger sphere, Philip Bloom. Now, if you guys don't
Speaker 2: know who Philip Bloom is, google him because he has
Speaker 2: been around since the early two thousands. He's one of
Speaker 2: the first filmmaking bloggers out there. He has a massive
Speaker 2: online empire, if you will. He's worked with George Lucas
Speaker 2: shot shot the movie Red Tales with him on a
Speaker 2: Canon five D when it first came out. He also
Speaker 2: travels the world as an award winning cinematographer. And over
Speaker 2: the years I've learned a ton from his YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: his blog, and all the cool stuff that he puts
Speaker 2: out there for the filmmaking community. And I am honored
Speaker 2: and humbled that he would come on the podcast to
Speaker 2: share his experience and knowledge with the tribe, and they'll
Speaker 2: be a little surprised for you at the end of
Speaker 2: this episode. Phillip's got this brand new insane course that
Speaker 2: he's got called Philip Bloom's Cinematic master Class, and I
Speaker 2: will have a link at the end of this episode
Speaker 2: where you guys can go and check it out. It
Speaker 2: is almost ten hours long. It is definitely a masterclass.
Speaker 2: I have taken a bunch of it already and I've
Speaker 2: learned a few things along the way as well, So
Speaker 2: definitely check that out. But without any further ado, please
Speaker 2: enjoy my conversation with Philip Bloom. I'd like to welcome
Speaker 2: to the show Philip Bloom. Thank you, sir so much
Speaker 2: for taking the time out to share your knowledge with
Speaker 2: the tribe.
Speaker 3: All right, Alex, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So how did you get into this crazy business?
Speaker 3: A path which probably doesn't exist anymore. It goes back
Speaker 3: to I think most times when you're growing up, you
Speaker 3: don't know what to do. And I didn't know what
Speaker 3: I wanted to do. And I'm watching a TV show
Speaker 3: and it was about a was a guy who tried
Speaker 3: out different careers, and one episode was where he tried
Speaker 3: to be a news photographer. And I watched that. This
Speaker 3: was like in the sort of like mid eighties, and
Speaker 3: I thought, that looks really cool. So a friend of
Speaker 3: my dad's knew a press strographer, and so I had
Speaker 3: a conversation with him about it, and I took photos.
Speaker 3: I was a hobbyist, nothing particularly serious, but I took photos.
Speaker 3: But I thought that looks like a really interesting job,
Speaker 3: because I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: And then he said to me, I would not bother
Speaker 3: doing this because photography's on the way out because digital
Speaker 3: is coming in and that's going to change everything. That's
Speaker 3: going to cheapen the industry. You should get into TV news.
Speaker 3: That's where the future is. So I when, yeah, why not?
Speaker 3: So I then sort of like made inquiries and contacts
Speaker 3: and tried to get in touch with somebody, and eventually
Speaker 3: found somebody who knew somebody, and I managed to go
Speaker 3: out with a news crew. I was must have been
Speaker 3: about sixteen or seventeen, did that for the day and
Speaker 3: it was the best thing I'd ever done. It was
Speaker 3: so much fun. And this was back in the golden
Speaker 3: age of TV news in a way, because where you
Speaker 3: were really looked after. I think they did a I
Speaker 3: went out with them like three man crew went out
Speaker 3: to the press conference for a boxer, and then we
Speaker 3: had a three hour lunch and Chinese restaurant. I really
Speaker 3: expected Chinese restaurant. All on the company and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: this is amazing, this is the life. And then I
Speaker 3: think then they said we may do something later, but
Speaker 3: probably not. That'd be it for the day. I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is a job. Wow, and by you know, eventually,
Speaker 3: I by the time I left Score, I then got
Speaker 3: managed to get my foot into door into Sky Television
Speaker 3: and to try and become a news cameraman. So that's
Speaker 3: kind of how I got in. Never wanted to be
Speaker 3: a use that were filmmaker. I never wanted to be
Speaker 3: a filmmaker and slightest wanted to do something. Wanted to
Speaker 3: find a job that could pay me to do something
Speaker 3: that was interesting because I really had no idea what
Speaker 3: I want to do growing up, and that was basically
Speaker 3: I just sort of fell into it. Just found that
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed filming and really enjoyed the excitement of
Speaker 3: and boredom as well of news and I kind of
Speaker 3: that's kind of where it was really and I did
Speaker 3: that for seventeen years. Oh wow, it was for staff
Speaker 3: and it was the best training anybody I think you
Speaker 3: could have when if you want to become a storyteller,
Speaker 3: because you get I got to I learned how to
Speaker 3: use it, not particularly technically because it was much simpler.
Speaker 3: Times it was on camera one lens, like a try
Speaker 3: that's it. It was like, yeah, there's no settings and
Speaker 3: camera it's turned it on and no, you had a
Speaker 3: game switch there you go.
Speaker 2: In the way balance so yeah, yeah, white balance.
Speaker 3: And of course it was black and white view find it.
Speaker 3: So you had to get it right. You knew you
Speaker 3: got it right because you didn't get a phone call
Speaker 3: later to tell you that you got it wrong. So
Speaker 3: and of the way things works back then. But it
Speaker 3: was brilliant. It was great training. I got to learn
Speaker 3: how to tell stories really quickly. I learned how to
Speaker 3: shoot efficiently, how to walk into a room and see
Speaker 3: the positions where I need to be, and you had
Speaker 3: to learn how to figure out how what shots I
Speaker 3: needed to get really quickly. And then they also then
Speaker 3: gave me a chance to do long form stuff, and
Speaker 3: I was always traveling around the world and they taught
Speaker 3: me how to edit. It was just a really brilliant experience,
Speaker 3: and I guess it's one of those things that when
Speaker 3: you get to I got really comfortable with it, and
Speaker 3: I could easily still be doing it now, but I
Speaker 3: realized that I had to leave to push myself further.
Speaker 3: And that was eleven years ago, and.
Speaker 2: Then you got into more filmmaking, more documentary after that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean documentaries is kind of what I was
Speaker 3: doing for the last few years of my staff job anyway,
Speaker 3: because I was one of the few caraman. There was
Speaker 3: like twenty five caraman that worked at the company on
Speaker 3: the news roster, and I was one of the few
Speaker 3: who edited, and so I got sent to do the
Speaker 3: interesting stories, and then they gave me the more creative stuff.
Speaker 3: And I showed a flair for doing creative stuff, and
Speaker 3: so they pushed me to more and more and do that.
Speaker 3: And then so I was doing the longer form stuff
Speaker 3: sort of like what I guess what you create is
Speaker 3: like sixty minutes types that you have, and that was brilliant.
Speaker 3: So that really gave me the taste for longer stuff
Speaker 3: of doing that, So that's when I went into freelancing.
Speaker 3: That's why I really wanted to still push forward with
Speaker 3: documentaries as my main thing. It is still my main thing,
Speaker 3: but also try the other things which which interested me,
Speaker 3: you know. And I've certainly found that trying all these
Speaker 3: different things and still doing that different types of work
Speaker 3: really helps in every aspect. If you're filming narrative fiction,
Speaker 3: coming from a news documentary background is incredibly useful because
Speaker 3: you know, you have that speed of thought. But also
Speaker 3: if you've what you can take from that fiction though,
Speaker 3: is the aspect of planning and working with others for
Speaker 3: in a much more controlled way and bring that into
Speaker 3: your documentary work can have a really interesting effect. So
Speaker 3: I love the way that everything that I've done in
Speaker 3: these past eleven years is really sort of old and
Speaker 3: work together to make everything hopefully better.
Speaker 2: Now you were at what point in your career did
Speaker 2: you decide, Hey, I'm going to start blogging, I'm going
Speaker 2: to open up a YouTube show your YouTube channel. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're one of the first guys in the in the industry,
Speaker 2: in the film industry at all. That was kind of
Speaker 2: figuring that out. How did you start this blog and
Speaker 2: what made you want to start one.
Speaker 3: So I think the website started initially this is in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, just as a place for my
Speaker 3: show real because nobody prior to this, people would just
Speaker 3: and still what at this time we're sending out DVDs
Speaker 3: sure or vhs or vhs is and nobody the effort
Speaker 3: it takes for somebody to open it up and put
Speaker 3: it in a machine and play it. It means they're
Speaker 3: not going to watch it. And I just thought, if
Speaker 3: I could just send them a link over this thing
Speaker 3: called email that mbod seems to start having these days.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: And that's basically it was just in the most obvious
Speaker 3: way of doing things, and that's basically where it started us.
Speaker 3: And then about a year later I started up the blog,
Speaker 3: and the blog was really it was just a simple
Speaker 3: way of me sharing my experiences using something called thirty
Speaker 3: five milimeters adaptors, which is what we used before ds lars.
Speaker 3: It was a way of tricking these smaller sense of
Speaker 3: cameras into having essentially thirty five millimeter field a view
Speaker 3: and aesthetic and everything, and it was a really clunky
Speaker 3: c system, I remember, and the only way you could
Speaker 3: find out information about these really was by going through
Speaker 3: all of these forums, the DVX users and the dv
Speaker 3: infos and stuff like that, and it was going through
Speaker 3: countless threats, and I thought, yeah, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: just have a place where I can just share my
Speaker 3: experience with a bit and see, I can hopefully help
Speaker 3: people out if they're thinking of going down this path,
Speaker 3: and they can see me trying out all these gears,
Speaker 3: all these different adaptors that I'm buying, trying to get
Speaker 3: the most filmic look, and it was simply it sounds
Speaker 3: a bit try, but it is true. I did actually
Speaker 3: just want to give a little bit back because I
Speaker 3: was trained by such brilliant cameramen back in my news days,
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to just have you know, I
Speaker 3: was taught, I was educated on the job and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, and I could already see the way things
Speaker 3: were going that that wasn't happening anymore. People were sort
Speaker 3: of floundering. So I just wanted to share my experiences
Speaker 3: and so hopefully people could learn a little bit from
Speaker 3: what I was doing. And that's kind of really basically
Speaker 3: what it started. Out is just simply just me giving
Speaker 3: a little bit back, and then.
Speaker 2: It grew and grew and grew till it's the juggernaut
Speaker 2: that it is today. And your YouTube and when did
Speaker 2: you start your YouTube channel?
Speaker 3: YouTube? To funny that, I mean it started at a
Speaker 3: long time ago. I can't even remember how long ago,
Speaker 3: but I mean it must be about nine.
Speaker 2: At least eight something like that.
Speaker 3: Oh well yeah before then, yeah, so I didn't really
Speaker 3: do much with it. It was just a place of
Speaker 3: putting up some stuff. And really, I have to say,
Speaker 3: I mean, Vimeo was kind of my main place. It
Speaker 3: was exposure room, and then Vimeo exposure Room disappeared and
Speaker 3: Vimeo and I used to use that as a place
Speaker 3: to put my work up to be seen because nice
Speaker 3: a clean platform. YouTube always struck me as a very
Speaker 3: noisy environment. Yep. And and I've actually grown to love
Speaker 3: YouTube for what is. I've embraced it for what it is.
Speaker 3: And it took me quite a few years to understand
Speaker 3: what needs to be done with that. And I've never
Speaker 3: really embraced it in the full way that many had
Speaker 3: because I think to truly do that, it's a full
Speaker 3: time job, you know that, Hensy with YouTuber for me,
Speaker 3: so it's just I put up stuff every now and then.
Speaker 3: But it's and I'm not I'm not a snob at
Speaker 3: all about these things. And you see this online when
Speaker 3: you talk about these things people and I say, oh no,
Speaker 3: I don't put my stuff on YouTube. The quality of
Speaker 3: people who watch it, we're near as good as quality
Speaker 3: of people who watch it on Vimeo. I'm like, right,
Speaker 3: So you want to pick and choose your audience where
Speaker 3: you're in the wrong business. You want anything to watch it,
Speaker 3: Surely there's as many people to watch it as possible.
Speaker 3: So and and YouTube for me is now grown bigger
Speaker 3: for me than Vimeo. I still use Vimeo initially put
Speaker 3: my stuff up and then when I'm happy with it,
Speaker 3: I would then put it up onto YouTube because as
Speaker 3: you know, you can't change the video on YouTube. You
Speaker 3: have to let it go. And it's not like I
Speaker 3: do daily vlogs or anything. It's when I put stuff
Speaker 3: up on YouTube, it's generally quite a crafted piece that
Speaker 3: I put up there, so it takes me a while
Speaker 3: to make it.
Speaker 2: So when you approach a film, more a series, how
Speaker 2: do you approach how do you kind of like creatively
Speaker 2: go after a new jobs.
Speaker 3: That's a tricky one because it really depends on the
Speaker 3: type of worker do is so varied and did generally
Speaker 3: the way it works. I'm lucky enough to be in
Speaker 3: a position now where I don't have to actually knock
Speaker 3: on doors as such to find work. I still make
Speaker 3: new contacts and do things like that just the normal way,
Speaker 3: but I don't send my my I don't try and
Speaker 3: contact people looking for well. I get people contacted me
Speaker 3: with job offers and ideas, and if it's something that
Speaker 3: interests me, then I will then I'll go and work
Speaker 3: with it. And it really depends on what the job is.
Speaker 3: It can be. It's such a different process for you know,
Speaker 3: whether it's whether it's working on a documentary series or
Speaker 3: doing a corporate or branded content for example. I mean,
Speaker 3: all of these things have such different processes. Obviously there's
Speaker 3: some parts of it which are a similar which is
Speaker 3: I think the common ground on all of it would
Speaker 3: be filming, because on everything that I do, I'll always
Speaker 3: be filming something, But on other stuff it may not
Speaker 3: be editing, I may not be doing any pre production.
Speaker 3: It really depends on type of things that I do.
Speaker 2: Now, you shoot a lot on location. Do you have
Speaker 2: any tips on lighting with natural light?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, lighting natural lighting is a wonderful thing. It's
Speaker 3: an unpredictable, uncontrollable thing frequently, and so whilst working with
Speaker 3: what there is is a nice quick way of doing things.
Speaker 3: You can't use it for everything. It's the best thing
Speaker 3: I can suggest when you are working with available I mean,
Speaker 3: I would always suggest having your own light as well.
Speaker 3: If you're going to try and do talking heads and
Speaker 3: interviews in a room, trying to do that on just
Speaker 3: available light or natural light unless you've got continuous gray
Speaker 3: cloud outside or anything like that, it's just going to
Speaker 3: be a nightmare. But it is a case of working
Speaker 3: with what's there, don't fight it, embrace the lights. Work
Speaker 3: finds a location or room with a background that works
Speaker 3: with the windows and what there is. When you walk
Speaker 3: into a room that has lights on, turn them off
Speaker 3: and then see what the light's like, and then turn
Speaker 3: the back on again if you want. So it's a
Speaker 3: case of just don't don't turn the camera on until
Speaker 3: you've figured out where the light is and how can
Speaker 3: harness it. And I think to many people don't look
Speaker 3: at where the light is before they choose their background first,
Speaker 3: and then they go, oh, what about the light. The
Speaker 3: two should be hand in hand, especially if you're going
Speaker 3: to be working with natural light, you need to make
Speaker 3: it work together very well.
Speaker 2: It's that it's, in other words, kind of roll with
Speaker 2: the punches when it comes to natural light as opposed
Speaker 2: to trying to control it or manipulate it too much.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't control and manipulate it to a
Speaker 2: certain extent, but it's ever changing. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: like you know, wrestling a wet cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just it depends on what it is you're
Speaker 3: trying to film. If you're just trying to grab some
Speaker 3: shots here and there, it's you know, you can work
Speaker 3: with it, and you know lighting is not turning up
Speaker 3: the ISO on your camera, as you know, is a
Speaker 3: completely different thing. Horrendous to think that some people actually
Speaker 3: do think that is what lighting is. No, we still
Speaker 3: need to lighting also, you know, it creates the movie,
Speaker 3: it creates everything. And I love natural light. But when
Speaker 3: the natural light doesn't work for me, which is can
Speaker 3: easily be you know, seventy five percent of the time,
Speaker 3: that's when you start adding lights to yourself, but in
Speaker 3: the most naturalistic way possible. For me, it's all about
Speaker 3: finding the position where your lights can be that can
Speaker 3: looks like it's a motivated light source, like it could
Speaker 3: be the window, and that's what I could be doing.
Speaker 3: I could literally just be putting up a light to
Speaker 3: add to the window light, to take it over, to
Speaker 3: add a little bit more to it, to give it a
Speaker 3: bit more sparkle case changes. So I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of what you need to do with it. And there's
Speaker 3: lots of apps and things out there which you can
Speaker 3: use to see, you know, if you want to scout
Speaker 3: locations beforehand to see where the sun will be, the
Speaker 3: light will be, and how that will affect things. But
Speaker 3: most of the time, if you're just doing things quickly,
Speaker 3: you just have to work with it and just be
Speaker 3: quick is my best advice. If you are going to
Speaker 3: work with natural light, don't faff around and start being
Speaker 3: undecided about what you're going to do. You just have
Speaker 3: to just go with it. Now.
Speaker 2: I know because I actually watched your your Skywalker ranch
Speaker 2: video that you did years ago, which was stunning and
Speaker 2: for any Star Wars fan that is mecca. So I
Speaker 2: watched it. I found it online. I was like wow,
Speaker 2: and then you were shooting it with a DSLR if
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, So that was that was an interesting time.
Speaker 3: So that was back in oh, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: and they contacted me and it's it's a fun it's
Speaker 3: a nice story because I'm a huge Star Wars fan,
Speaker 3: have been since I saw the first Star Wars back
Speaker 3: in seventy seven. And they emailed me and I didn't reply.
Speaker 3: So Lucasfilm emailed me and I didn't reply because I'm
Speaker 3: terrible with emails. And you know, I have a PA
Speaker 3: now and it makes things better, but in there she
Speaker 3: does my work emails. She doesn't do my personal emails,
Speaker 3: and I'm still rubbish with my personal emails. But it
Speaker 3: was still bad then and I missed it, and then
Speaker 3: they called me and I didn't. I'm rubbish with voicemails,
Speaker 3: terrible with voicemails. I'll they be like, you know, you
Speaker 3: have sixty new voicemails it I mean. But I actually
Speaker 3: they did play it back pla maid one back about
Speaker 3: a day after it was left.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: And it was Producer Rick McCallum has said, dropped you
Speaker 3: an email last week and tried to call you, and
Speaker 3: it's strange that we've not heard back from you. I think, basically,
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody never nobody ignores and I wasn't ignoring.
Speaker 3: I'm just rubbish.
Speaker 2: No one ever ignores an email.
Speaker 3: George Lucas. I immediately called them back and apologized, and
Speaker 3: they just said that they want to know what this
Speaker 3: can five D Mark, Who's about if it's any good?
Speaker 3: They have Second World War movie but they're currently shooting
Speaker 3: called Redtails, and they've got some other plans for other
Speaker 3: stuff that they just want to I just don't know
Speaker 3: what the quality is. Like they've got one, they've messed
Speaker 3: around with it, but they're not They don't really know
Speaker 3: much about it. So could I come over to Skywalker
Speaker 3: Rage for maybe a few days and give them some advice?
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, sure we Actually I was
Speaker 3: actually I was booked on a job. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 3: was booked on a job a short notice. It was
Speaker 3: like can you come out next week? And I was
Speaker 3: booked for like three weeks, And so I phoned up
Speaker 3: the production manager of the job I was on and
Speaker 3: gave the sob story of like, you know how important
Speaker 3: Star Wars was to my life, And then eventually got
Speaker 3: to the bit that I said, and they've asked me
Speaker 3: to come over there next week to work with them,
Speaker 3: And she said to me, why don't you tell me
Speaker 3: about the beginning ten minutes ago. Yeah, that's fine, I understand, totally,
Speaker 3: not problem. I'll let you, I'll let you off the job.
Speaker 3: And yeah. So I went out there and I shot
Speaker 3: with it around the ranch, which I didn't have long
Speaker 3: to do it at all, and they just wanted to
Speaker 3: see it. Didn't want me to shoot a need test
Speaker 3: charts or anything like that. They weren't interested in that.
Speaker 3: They wanted to see what it looked like projected. So
Speaker 3: I just got some stuff around the ranch and I
Speaker 3: went into there, into the main house, into the screening room.
Speaker 3: And it was a hell of experience because it was
Speaker 3: so it was Ritt McCallum there, and George Lucas and
Speaker 3: his visiting director friend Quentin Tarantino, and legendary sound designer
Speaker 3: and editor Ben Bert. So they're go into this and
Speaker 3: Dennis there was he was he wasn't there. And I
Speaker 3: cut the stuff on my laptop in the room and
Speaker 3: went looks all right, a bit noisy, a bit of
Speaker 3: alien sitting there bit maray, oh it's all right, Oh god.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know they were going to screen it
Speaker 3: on the big screen, so when I took it in
Speaker 3: there and I had it's one of the things I
Speaker 3: would like to have seen it on the big screen
Speaker 3: before anybody else saw it, just to check it. So
Speaker 3: the first time I ever saw Callum five Mark two
Speaker 3: stuff projected was at that point, and it looked beautiful.
Speaker 3: It looked so much better than did it on the
Speaker 3: computer through their magical I don't know what amazing projector
Speaker 3: they had. It just looked fantastic and they loved it.
Speaker 3: So it was a hell of an experience.
Speaker 2: And then didn't you get to work a little bit
Speaker 2: on Red Tails?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I did some shoots. I did some stuff
Speaker 3: for them up in Sonoma for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: and then in Prague a few months later as well.
Speaker 3: So I did about three weeks work on the on
Speaker 3: the movie. And it was that was It was crazy
Speaker 3: because there was me with my little fady Mark two,
Speaker 3: and I also had a one D Mark four as well.
Speaker 3: I'd have a seventy as well, maybe a seven day
Speaker 3: camp member. I think I did had a seventy modified
Speaker 3: a peel as well, so I did three cameras to
Speaker 3: switch between. And they were shooting on Sony F thirty five,
Speaker 3: so big beasts and you know, the proper set of
Speaker 3: my crew and looks like it's just a monster. So
Speaker 3: you know that I would be there to get an
Speaker 3: angle they hadn't thought of because I was so nimble
Speaker 3: and able to just slott in and find things with
Speaker 3: my eye what I did, and I was able to
Speaker 3: be sat up and ready within like two minutes, and
Speaker 3: these guys were like forty five minutes to an hour
Speaker 3: just to repo each position, of course, So it was,
Speaker 3: it was, it was fun. It was. It's a fun
Speaker 3: drinking game watching a movie. Boy, I can't do it
Speaker 3: because I would kill myself because there's one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty shots of my film. Yeah, that's insane. I know
Speaker 3: every single one of the shots when it comes on,
Speaker 3: and of course they've braided it beautiful and you couldn't tell,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's not for what people initially thought of, Oh,
Speaker 3: you must be using it for like cockpit cameras and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, like, oh, because they're not really the cockpits,
Speaker 3: they're obviously it's a stage and they're on they're one
Speaker 3: involved and there's a techno crane and sure, yeah, so
Speaker 3: my camera was not forgetting those like small space type stuff.
Speaker 3: It was really just I was the small camera to
Speaker 3: find small spaces and get angles that they couldn't or
Speaker 3: hadn't thought of beforehand.
Speaker 2: Now you would you agree that they found you? Basically?
Speaker 2: Did they find you because of your blog and because
Speaker 2: you work at the one kind of talking about DSLRs
Speaker 2: a lot?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think, I mean, without question, it was when
Speaker 3: the five D came along, I didn't embrace it straight away.
Speaker 3: Vincent the Fray did reverie, of course in November two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, and I had played with it. I
Speaker 3: bought the nick On D ninety a month before that
Speaker 3: hated it. I was so excited by the concept of
Speaker 3: DSLRs having a large sensor to be a shoot video.
Speaker 3: But the quality of the nick Ond ninety was so bad.
Speaker 3: And then I saw the five D mark too, and
Speaker 3: when that looks cool, but I have no can glass
Speaker 3: and it only shoots thirty P and I need to
Speaker 3: shoot twenty five P and twenty four P. So this
Speaker 3: is that good to me? But I did get to
Speaker 3: try it for the first time in May and then
Speaker 3: realized you could, you can get past the lens limitations
Speaker 3: and also the fact that there was no manual control
Speaker 3: by using old nick on glass with an adapt and
Speaker 3: and also found a way of conversing the thirty P
Speaker 3: twenty five P to make it look okay. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: so I was you know, once I did, once I
Speaker 3: figure that out, I really just loved it. And I
Speaker 3: think that's kind of you know, a lot of people
Speaker 3: saw my staff and saw what I was doing and
Speaker 3: picked up from there.
Speaker 2: Now can you? Because I have I have a love
Speaker 2: hate relationship with DSLRs because I've graded I've graded probably
Speaker 2: about five features that were shot under DSLRs, and they've
Speaker 2: never shot properly. If you shoot the DSLR properly like
Speaker 2: you did on Redtails, I'm sure it looks And now
Speaker 2: I saw the movie, it looks great. But most people
Speaker 2: don't know how to shoot DSLRs properly. Gets too grainy.
Speaker 2: Like one movie I had was like in the movie
Speaker 2: in the woods at night with no light and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: why is there so much grain? I'm like, eyes, you know,
Speaker 2: it's you know we have it's not it's it just
Speaker 2: couldn't work. So what tips do you have with shooting DSLRs?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: The DSLR is also that you shot redtails with are
Speaker 2: much different than they are now with the a CPS
Speaker 2: two that can literally look into into the darkness of
Speaker 2: hell and stick stay clean. But what what kind of
Speaker 2: tips do you have when shooting DSLRs for filmmakers who
Speaker 2: want to shoot a feature or short and try to
Speaker 2: get the most out of that camera.
Speaker 3: It's funny and it has been quite a few years
Speaker 3: now since they first came out and the yeat the
Speaker 3: image quality has come on enormously. But the key core
Speaker 3: is principles that we need to stick to. Are they
Speaker 3: much the same. You need to if you're going to
Speaker 3: use a handheld, you need to have it on some
Speaker 3: some sort of rig just to stabilize a little bit,
Speaker 3: because unless you have one, you know, one of these
Speaker 3: five acts is stableized senses, then that's going to help
Speaker 3: you as well. But that's one of the first things
Speaker 3: is just to make sure if you are going to
Speaker 3: shoot handheld, just be aware of the terrible issues. We
Speaker 3: can have a rolling shutter, which is a huge giveaway
Speaker 3: for DSLRs is that horrible micro vibrations that we can
Speaker 3: really see, not just jello, not just like rolling shutter.
Speaker 3: He said that you know, you know which it really
Speaker 3: looks like, oh my god, like somebody pretty much caffeine
Speaker 3: sure while they hold it in the camera. So be
Speaker 3: careful that, you know, use an is lens, mistabilized lens
Speaker 3: if you haven't got that. But it's know what your
Speaker 3: camera performs best at with its ISOs. And yes, many
Speaker 3: of the cameras, you know, the A seven S two,
Speaker 3: you can push your camera much higher, but you still
Speaker 3: need to expose correctly. So that's one of the things
Speaker 3: that people aren't doing right. And I do not recommend
Speaker 3: shooting log format on any of the dslars with a
Speaker 3: bit codex, which is pretty much all of them except
Speaker 3: the GH five, and even then it's it's still a
Speaker 3: little bit challenging. It's a hell of a codec GH
Speaker 3: five logs. It's really hard to grade. So I would
Speaker 3: I would suggest no, you know, know how far you
Speaker 3: can push your io and then only use it for
Speaker 3: extreme purposes. It's not a replacement for lighting. It's a
Speaker 3: way of hopefully being able to film in environments that
Speaker 3: you couldn't normally film in. That's basically what DSLRs exciting
Speaker 3: to me about was, apart from the size and the optics,
Speaker 3: was just I think it was the ability to push
Speaker 3: that low light up a little bit like that. And
Speaker 3: I think when the A seven s two came out
Speaker 3: or the A seven s came out, initially it wasn't
Speaker 3: the fact that I could film in moonlight. It was
Speaker 3: the fact that I could film in street light but
Speaker 3: not wide open, which is what too many people are
Speaker 3: still doing when choosing on DSLRs. That's the other tip
Speaker 3: is just because you've got a left one point four
Speaker 3: lens doesn't mean you shoot at left one point four
Speaker 3: for every single shot. It's incredibly hard to keep focus.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: We do have some cameras coming out now with pretty
Speaker 3: decent autofocus, but it's still not necessarily the way to go.
Speaker 3: It's a different thing, and I would use that for
Speaker 3: certain things like interviews and stuff like that. Other than that,
Speaker 3: it's being sensible with it being sensible, so I would
Speaker 3: say the key things are going to be don't be
Speaker 3: shooting wide open, keep your camera stable if you can
Speaker 3: as much as possible, don't push ISO too far, and
Speaker 3: don't fall into temptation of shooting log unless you absolutely
Speaker 3: have to. Proper video cameras with ten bit codecs to
Speaker 3: shoot log fantastic, but eight bit compressed codex, whether it's
Speaker 3: a drone ORLR, it's a nightmare. And you spend so
Speaker 3: much time in post just trying to hide all the problems,
Speaker 3: which if you hadn't done that in the first place,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be doing now.
Speaker 2: One thing I really do like about your work is
Speaker 2: that you are It's least it seems from your blogIn
Speaker 2: from your your YouTube channel that you are not married
Speaker 2: to any one camera. You're not like, I'm only the
Speaker 2: canon guy, I'm only a black magic I'm only an
Speaker 2: icon guy. I'm only an airy guy. You you use
Speaker 2: multiple cameras depending on your job. You can you suggest
Speaker 2: or show people how or advice on how you could
Speaker 2: pick the right camera for the right job, which I
Speaker 2: think is so so important because I think sometimes they're
Speaker 2: just trying to use a hammer to screw in a
Speaker 2: light bulb. It's like it just because you love that hammer.
Speaker 2: There are other tools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's yeah. Back in the Cannon days,
Speaker 3: I was approached to be one of our ambassadors and
Speaker 3: I said no because I wanted to I didn't want
Speaker 3: to be tied to any format. I had an independent voice.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to lose that. And also I didn't
Speaker 3: want to lose out on the fact that, you know,
Speaker 3: other people are going to make cool cameras and they're fun.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be like, oh, no, I can't
Speaker 3: use this because I'm sign signed up with these guys.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I'm and I'm always going to be
Speaker 3: like this because I I'm very fickle, and I will
Speaker 3: fall in love with a camera and then something else
Speaker 3: will come along and turn my head and go, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to use this now, and so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: when it comes to like photography, my main cameras are
Speaker 3: Pentax and Fuji cameras and so but when it comes
Speaker 3: to video, my main video cameras are Sony. But I
Speaker 3: also have Cannon ones as well, and I have lots
Speaker 3: of different types of them. And I guess I am
Speaker 3: lucky that I can be in that position of saying
Speaker 3: the right tool for the right job. And obviously if
Speaker 3: you you've only got one camera, then you are going
Speaker 3: to be a little bit stuck and kind of that's
Speaker 3: your your camera for the job. But if it's if
Speaker 3: it's important, then I would certainly try, you know, and
Speaker 3: rent it or find somebody who's got something that would
Speaker 3: be more appropriate for your job, because you're right, it's
Speaker 3: you see people using totally the wrong cameras when it
Speaker 3: could be something as simple as you can have a
Speaker 3: chuckle about it. But Soody trying to use a black
Speaker 3: magic some mini for wedding videos. I'm like, you're crazy,
Speaker 3: what are you trying to do? Yeah, well, I'm shooting.
Speaker 3: I can shoot raw, I can shoot raw. Like why
Speaker 3: are you shooting raw in the first place for a
Speaker 3: wedding video? And the camera that you can't put over
Speaker 3: eight hundred IO and a wedding video with no control
Speaker 3: of your lighting and probably no lights. Sure crazy, get
Speaker 3: yourself at a seven s two, right, you know. And
Speaker 3: so somebody who's, oh, I want to do you know,
Speaker 3: some visual effects and it's all going to be green
Speaker 3: screen and stuff like that, I'm shooting on an A
Speaker 3: seven s And I'd be like, well, why that's the
Speaker 3: wrong camera for you for in this. You should get
Speaker 3: yourself Black Magic some mini because that shoots, and that
Speaker 3: shoots ten bit progress, and that's going to be much
Speaker 3: better for you. And it's still pretty cheap. And you're
Speaker 3: it's already in it's lip, it's already lit because it
Speaker 3: has to be because in the studio and green screen,
Speaker 3: so you have to worry about the fact that you
Speaker 3: don't you can't push your eye so right, So, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's the best thing about like the
Speaker 3: Black Magics is working in lit controlled locations. They do
Speaker 3: really well with that, as long as you have to
Speaker 3: push it too far. Because they're the cheapest cameras I
Speaker 3: know of that have a terrific in built codec progress
Speaker 3: and have raw if you need it. You know, having
Speaker 3: to deal with all of these nasty compressed B frame
Speaker 3: codecs all the time eight bit ones. When you get
Speaker 3: camera that just shoots straight progress, it's like, oh no transcoding,
Speaker 3: Oh mate, this system works with it and I can
Speaker 3: grade it. It doesn't fall apart. Wow, fantastic. So that's
Speaker 3: kind of what you need to look at, is what
Speaker 3: But if you know, if you say, if you don't
Speaker 3: have the camera, then it's a bit harder. I mean,
Speaker 3: I interestingly, I read on reading Facebook today and the
Speaker 3: guy I know, and he was asking about time lapse.
Speaker 3: It's got a red epic w and he's complaining about
Speaker 3: the fact that the time lapse ability of the camera
Speaker 3: is basically lacking in that you can't do more than
Speaker 3: one frame a second, and so you can't do long exposures. Right,
Speaker 3: it's all for the right job. This is a seventy thousand,
Speaker 3: whatever it is dollar camera, right, Just get a two
Speaker 3: thousand dollar DSLR and that's going to shoot raw, shoot
Speaker 3: long exposures, shoot for everything you wanted to. Totally the
Speaker 3: right job and doesn't tie up your seventy one thousand
Speaker 3: dollar camera doing the time lapse.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that's yeah. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of times filmmakers dps, they spend seventy grand on a
Speaker 2: camera and they wanted to do everything and be perfect
Speaker 2: for everything, and a lot of times you're right, you
Speaker 2: have that ability in your work has shown it that
Speaker 2: you could just like you know what, yes, I have
Speaker 2: a seventy thousand dollars camera, but you know it's like
Speaker 2: I have a porch, but I'm not going to drive
Speaker 2: to the supermarket with the porch where I could easily
Speaker 2: either just walk or or drive my prius. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just the right tool for the right job kind
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I suppose if you have spent
Speaker 3: seventy thousand, you're kind of insistent on the fact that,
Speaker 3: my god, I'm going to get every single last penny's
Speaker 3: worth out of this camera, right. But you know, I
Speaker 3: said this in many times, and I've also got this
Speaker 3: policy now of not wanting to I'm never going to
Speaker 3: buy camera over ten thousand dollars again, and I've done
Speaker 3: that like three times now before that appen. And now
Speaker 3: it's just there's loads of great cameras sub ten thousand.
Speaker 3: Gods would do so much and if you need anything
Speaker 3: more than just rent it because it's just not worth
Speaker 3: it because they they get superseded so quickly these days,
Speaker 3: and it's just not really worth spending all that money,
Speaker 3: especially in a system that you could end up changing.
Speaker 3: You know, reds require so many bits and pieces and
Speaker 3: maybe then you'll switch to Aria, who knows. But I
Speaker 3: just think there's so many great cameras out there for
Speaker 3: the sub that and just stick with that, really, unless
Speaker 3: you're you're super rich because I bought the fifty five
Speaker 3: and that was the last time I bought a really
Speaker 3: expensive camera and I loved it. It was amazing. And
Speaker 3: then the FS seven came out and it did everything
Speaker 3: I needed it to do for documentaries without me worrying
Speaker 3: about my hugely expensive camera being potentially damaged and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So I found that it was sitting on
Speaker 3: the shelf right for like six months, hadn't really been touched,
Speaker 3: and the F seven was being used all the time,
Speaker 3: and so I sold it. And that was what I decided,
Speaker 3: this is silly, I should you know, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to buy the expensive camera again. So because the F
Speaker 3: seven did everything I needed to do, it didn't shoot
Speaker 3: raw easily, but it didn't matter because I didn't need
Speaker 3: to shoot raw. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of the black Magic.
Speaker 2: I shut my feature on the two point five K
Speaker 2: Cinema and the Pocket is arguably some of the most
Speaker 2: beautiful images come out of that little camera. You know, again,
Speaker 2: right tool for the right job. You know, if I'm
Speaker 2: going to go shoot an imax, this is not the
Speaker 2: tool for you. But if you're creating this kind of
Speaker 2: almost super sixteen style film look out of the box,
Speaker 2: that that little pocket camera is amazing, and the Earths
Speaker 2: of Many is one of the most underrated I think
Speaker 2: cameras out there because it's not as sexy as the
Speaker 2: Red or the Alexa, but man, it has a bite.
Speaker 2: Would you agree?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I haven't shot anything properly myself with the four
Speaker 3: point sixth, so Mini I really liked what I got
Speaker 3: with it, though I had definitely had issues with as
Speaker 3: from a documentary background, with the fact that I in
Speaker 3: available lights. I knew it was going to come a cropper,
Speaker 3: and there were some quirks here and there which slowed
Speaker 3: me down. But I thought for the money, the image
Speaker 3: was fantastic, and I've always found it disappointing that they
Speaker 3: well they went with originally with the Earth, which was
Speaker 3: the craziest camera. The first one was Yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 3: I mean I went to trade shows, yes, and I
Speaker 3: remember the first time I picked it up, I just,
Speaker 3: you know, in front of them. They let me pick
Speaker 3: it up and I went the holy crap, and it went, yeah,
Speaker 3: we don't really consider this a handheld camera.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what what kind of world do you live in?
Speaker 3: What is that? It was every camera should be anything
Speaker 3: you shouldn't we considered this a tripod camera. I'm like,
Speaker 3: blind me, sure, studio camera is a tripod camera, but
Speaker 3: this is crazy. But I just wish that developed the
Speaker 3: pocket camera further. I wish version of that because that
Speaker 3: really is I think it's my favorite camera that they
Speaker 3: I bought from them. Yes, in size and form, but
Speaker 3: I had lots of issues as well. But what it
Speaker 3: gave you was astonishing in the package.
Speaker 2: I wish they would do four K. Like, if they
Speaker 2: could do four K in that little camera with raw
Speaker 2: and proras and handle the they have battery issue, We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after a word from our sponsor and
Speaker 2: now back to the show. Just do something better with
Speaker 2: the battery. You have to plug in the juice box
Speaker 2: or something like that. Now with the juice box it
Speaker 2: will run six seven hours. But still it's like a
Speaker 2: little bit more bulky. But God, that little camera is good.
Speaker 2: The micropour thirds opens you up to so much glass,
Speaker 2: especially vintage glass that I'm a big vintage glass guy,
Speaker 2: and it's gorgeous. It really is gorgeous. It is a
Speaker 2: wonderful camera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a shame that they didn't really I know,
Speaker 3: they just seem to just forgot it's forgotten about it.
Speaker 3: And they have their micro camera whatever they call it.
Speaker 3: It's just not the same. It's not the same thing.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if they'll ever go back to
Speaker 3: that mini Pro looks. I have never played with it.
Speaker 3: It looks like it sold as many of the operational
Speaker 3: issues they had with the previous one.
Speaker 2: So they have solved that. I shot. I shot a
Speaker 2: series with it, and I shot with the new one
Speaker 2: and the old one, uh both and they both worked
Speaker 2: like champs. But the brand new one that they just
Speaker 2: released with time code on the on the side and everything,
Speaker 2: it's solved. It's a tank now. It really is a tank.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you're right if you push it a
Speaker 2: little too, it's not I always I did a test
Speaker 2: between the Airy Alexa and the and they are so
Speaker 2: mini and I shot them down the middle, and when
Speaker 2: you shoot them down the middle, man, yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 2: damn close. It's definitely not. You can tell it's not
Speaker 2: worth spending eighty grand or whatever the Alexa costs now
Speaker 2: comparatively down the middle. You just start seeing where the
Speaker 2: Alexa is worth it when you start pushing her, when
Speaker 2: you start pushing on the darks and the highlights get
Speaker 2: clipped a little bit. So if you go a little
Speaker 2: bit up or down is where you start getting. But
Speaker 2: if you should have down the middle, oh.
Speaker 3: For your buck. Let me ask you though, if you
Speaker 3: were given somebody said I'm gonna swap out your ursas
Speaker 3: for Arietlexes HM for free, you'd go, Yeah, right, of
Speaker 3: course you would, real would, because they're amazing. But I
Speaker 3: get you're right, it's unless the only people I know
Speaker 3: who who own Alexas who are smart bought Alexas are
Speaker 3: dps who rent them to the productions. Sure, so that's
Speaker 3: those the people who should be buying Alexas. The rest
Speaker 3: of us should be renting them in and when we
Speaker 3: need them.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Now, do you have any advice on how you
Speaker 2: test a new camera? Which I know a lot of
Speaker 2: filmmakers get their cameras and they really don't know how
Speaker 2: to push it or test it or you know, put
Speaker 2: it through the through the ring or a little bit
Speaker 2: to see if it's even worth it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So for me, it's totally it's totally real world.
Speaker 3: It's it's taking out of don't I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: work in the studios as such. I do work indoors
Speaker 3: and things like that, but I don't work in the studios,
Speaker 3: So I want to see how it works with unpredictable lighting.
Speaker 3: I want to see how it operates as a camera
Speaker 3: is how slow is to figure out? I think the
Speaker 3: last camera I tested was the Canon C two hundred
Speaker 3: and I kind of I actually really like it. It's
Speaker 3: a bit of a strange quirky camera in that it
Speaker 3: has a terrific in ability to record twelve bit raw internally,
Speaker 3: and yet the if you can't do raw, then you
Speaker 3: have to do an eight bit right for coda, which
Speaker 3: is so bizarre to have no middle ground. But I mean,
Speaker 3: we all know it's a Canon protecting its other cameras issue, right,
Speaker 3: But other than that, it's actually really nice image and
Speaker 3: a really nice camera. And for me, I just wanted
Speaker 3: to see the things which that it was a selling
Speaker 3: point really, which was the raw, the auto focus, and
Speaker 3: just what the eight bit codec was like. So those
Speaker 3: are the kind of the headline features I was looking
Speaker 3: at to see what they're like, and it's like when
Speaker 3: I'm getting their hands on the EVA one from Panasonic,
Speaker 3: what I want to see is what this dual ico
Speaker 3: is going to like what sort of noise levels am
Speaker 3: I getting get? Because the setting point is that you
Speaker 3: can shoot in low light conditions by switching to different
Speaker 3: the higher native setting to want to see what that's like.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of I look at the headline features
Speaker 3: of the camera and go okay, I need to see
Speaker 3: what this actually is like, and then as well do
Speaker 3: the every day sort of bread and better type stuff
Speaker 3: to see how it actually works for real use, because
Speaker 3: obviously you need to if that it may well have
Speaker 3: a really cool feature, but if it doesn't operate as
Speaker 3: a camera well just generally, then it's a bit pointless.
Speaker 3: And it takes me back to when I saw the
Speaker 3: when the SNFs came out and it was going all
Speaker 3: about all about how amazing the low light was, and
Speaker 3: they release a video and it was I watched it
Speaker 3: and I was like, Okay, that looks nice. It's nicely
Speaker 3: shot and it was like fishermen in Scotland or something,
Speaker 3: and it was all shot high ico and it showed
Speaker 3: you come exactly what it was.
Speaker 2: Something like that.
Speaker 3: It didn't look like nighttime. It looked like daytime or something,
Speaker 3: which was fine, but because it was like that all
Speaker 3: the way through I had no sense of any of
Speaker 3: what it was doing. And so I got the camera
Speaker 3: on loan from them just before it was released and went,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm going to take this down down to
Speaker 3: Bryson in in south of England and then just really
Speaker 3: just see what this is like. And so I did
Speaker 3: a video and I shot it where I did. I
Speaker 3: this is what it looks like to the eye, which
Speaker 3: is like eight hundred IESO, and then I shot it
Speaker 3: at twenty five thousand, six hundred IESO, which did turn
Speaker 3: it into like daylight. Having this to having this ability
Speaker 3: to do this transition show this is what I see
Speaker 3: and this is what this shows. And that's I mean,
Speaker 3: that's kind of a way to sell the cameras be Ablus,
Speaker 3: because you saw straight away that was like ah, and
Speaker 3: now I get it. I get it how amazing this
Speaker 3: is because I didn't get it before because everything just
Speaker 3: everything just looked okay, look fine. So it's that's kind
Speaker 3: of what I when I'm looking at cameras, that's kind
Speaker 3: of I just want to see what makes it special?
Speaker 2: Now, what are three of your go to lenses if
Speaker 2: you're on a desert island? I know, it's like picking
Speaker 2: your children.
Speaker 3: It's no, it's that question. You know, at least you
Speaker 3: didn't say one actually, one's easier, one's easier, and always
Speaker 3: you didn't tell me which size, censor, which sense we're
Speaker 3: talking here.
Speaker 2: Let's say let's say full frame, okay.
Speaker 3: All right, then that's easier. So I would say a
Speaker 3: fifty millimeter is my first lens with that question, because
Speaker 3: it's the relative field of view of what we see
Speaker 3: with our eyes. So I do love that standard field
Speaker 3: of view, and I can shoot pretty much everything on that.
Speaker 3: And then it gets really tricky because my favorite walkaround
Speaker 3: lens is a thirty five.
Speaker 2: Meal Which would brand of that? Which brand?
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't really have any you talk
Speaker 3: my focal lens or brands.
Speaker 2: Brands, brand brand, like like the canon nikore.
Speaker 3: This is getting really hard then, So if you you know,
Speaker 3: if you want really beautiful sharp images, then the Sigma
Speaker 3: Art lenses are fantastic. If you want they are incredibly
Speaker 3: But if you want some you know a little bit
Speaker 3: more character than sure, some of the older Nichols are
Speaker 3: always good for that sort of thing. Nice and cheap.
Speaker 2: Do you use a lot of do you use a
Speaker 2: lot of vintage class or do you ever play with
Speaker 2: it occasionally?
Speaker 3: Not as much as I used to. I used to.
Speaker 3: These days I tend to use a lot more more
Speaker 3: detailed sharper lenses, but I still I still do you know,
Speaker 3: when I'm doing any lens waking free lensing, are using
Speaker 3: my old glass and a lot more for stills. I
Speaker 3: do for stills as well, but for video probably less so.
Speaker 3: But I don't really know. It's a horrible question to
Speaker 3: ask because I just love really I love long telephotos
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, it's the right tool for the right job.
Speaker 2: I know, it's like it's a tough it's a tough question.
Speaker 2: Someone asked me. I have a couple of ones is
Speaker 2: that I go to all the time, But and there's
Speaker 2: a couple of fun ones that I play with, like
Speaker 2: I have Actually.
Speaker 3: Huh, Canon got a great one that I recently bought
Speaker 3: seventy to three hundred. Yes, it's not a contentt aperture.
Speaker 3: It's not their white one. It's their their non l
Speaker 3: series one. But it's new ish like last year, and
Speaker 3: it's not that expensive. It's got crazy fast, all the
Speaker 3: focus for doing stills and build quality is great. It's
Speaker 3: light and the optics are great. It gives you a
Speaker 3: huge range.
Speaker 2: So what's the how fast is it?
Speaker 3: It's three five to five six.
Speaker 2: I think, okay, so it's outdoors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an outdoor lens. But you know, if you
Speaker 3: want a lens which is you know, you're gonna limit
Speaker 3: me to three and cheap with a long, big, long
Speaker 3: zoom that's going to cover a big range. They still
Speaker 3: have a fast fifty mil for my primes and then
Speaker 3: wide angles. I love my big white angles as well,
Speaker 3: but you know, I think my biggest wide angle I've
Speaker 3: got that is not for shy is ten meal, which
Speaker 3: is ridiculous. And that's a void lander. So you have
Speaker 3: one avoid I don't know it's it's it's boy lend
Speaker 3: and make amazing glassy. But that ten mel is like
Speaker 3: I bring it with and I put it on and
Speaker 3: I take a couple of shots with it. I think
Speaker 3: I've shot video with it twice, maybe briefly because it's
Speaker 3: too wide. Well, it's just ridiculous. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: an effect lens. So my favorite actual white, my favorite
Speaker 3: focal lengths for doing white is actually around twenty four
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four mil.
Speaker 2: Around we'll be right back after a word from our
Speaker 2: sponsor and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do like wide with that, but it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it can just find myself a little bit too
Speaker 3: It can be a little bit too wide. So twenty
Speaker 3: four is a is a good sort of middle ground.
Speaker 3: Let's Sigma make a great twenty four mil point four.
Speaker 3: They make a twenty mil as well.
Speaker 2: Their eighteen or thirty five is amazing their art lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you've got for crop sensors, that actually eighteen
Speaker 3: thirty five is fantastic. Yeah, so I and I give
Speaker 3: you a twenty that gives you a twenty four to
Speaker 3: twenty four to seventy four favorite equivalent. So it's a
Speaker 3: great lens.
Speaker 2: Now, if you want to talk about why, my favorite
Speaker 2: wide I have is the Knoptic five point seven micro
Speaker 2: four thirds. But it doesn't fish. It doesn't fish eye.
Speaker 3: That's impressive.
Speaker 2: It's the it's the Kubri glens. It's what he shows.
Speaker 2: The big brother of that is the nine point eight,
Speaker 2: which is for thirty five. That one is for sixteen.
Speaker 2: So I use it with the pocket and with the pocket.
Speaker 2: It's just it's amazing, but it doesn't fish eye. So
Speaker 2: if you remember the sines from the shining in the yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all shot with the Kinnoptic, as well as the
Speaker 2: right before the rape scene and clockwork orange that was
Speaker 2: shot with the Kinnoptic. It's one of his it was
Speaker 2: one of his go to lenses in his in the series.
Speaker 2: But it's gorgeous. It's such a gorgeous lens. Sorry, we're
Speaker 2: geeking out.
Speaker 3: That's oh no, I mean I do love my white
Speaker 3: angles and say no I bought the ten and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. But yeah, it's sort of like a sixteen
Speaker 3: thirty five zoom is always a good as a good yes,
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of these things if people ask
Speaker 3: for advice and they say, what three lenses should I buy?
Speaker 3: My advice tends to be. Of course, first question is
Speaker 3: how much money you got. There's no point given them
Speaker 3: any advice because it's such a you know, it's an
Speaker 3: impossible question to answer. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: There's and lenses and what kind of what camera you're
Speaker 2: going to be using it on or what a you're
Speaker 2: going to do it shooting film or video, I mean,
Speaker 2: or photo or motion. It's yeah, it's it's a very
Speaker 2: big question has many multiple answers. Now, do you have
Speaker 2: any tips?
Speaker 3: Wet good, Yeah, I just I mean just with the
Speaker 3: five D, it just it's it hasn't really changed. It's
Speaker 3: in five D. It's simply you have the three three zooms.
Speaker 3: You're sixteen thirty five or twenty four to seventy seventy
Speaker 3: two hundred. That covers everything, and then you have a
Speaker 3: fast prime for everything else. You're fifty one point four
Speaker 3: and that's kind of what you need to go. But
Speaker 3: that's thousands, you know, it's you if you're shooting documentaries,
Speaker 3: you kind of want that flexibility. If you're shooting features
Speaker 3: and narrative type stuff, then you can shoot on primes
Speaker 3: and not because the joy of a zoom is the
Speaker 3: speed which you need when you're shooting documentary, you don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about that. Then you can you can
Speaker 3: go with cheaper, more vintage primes. So it's a massive question.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a whole podcast in itself. Now, let's talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about your masterclass. You knew the new
Speaker 2: course that you put together for m Z.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about what the course is about and
Speaker 2: what students can expect in the class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I would say, it's pretty much my twenty
Speaker 3: seven years of experience and knowledge as much as possible,
Speaker 3: just distilled into effective what it's like nine episodes, one, three, one,
Speaker 3: and eight main episodes, it like runs to like nine
Speaker 3: and a half hours or so, and it's I just
Speaker 3: want to Initially m Z asked me to do something
Speaker 3: about drones, and I went, yeah, cool, but I don't
Speaker 3: think that's going to be There's no way I can
Speaker 3: possibly feel much more than you know, a couple of
Speaker 3: hours just on that, And I said, then I made
Speaker 3: the mistake suggesting what if I did it about everything,
Speaker 3: everything that I do, every type of filming style that
Speaker 3: I do, And it went yeah cool. And so then
Speaker 3: I realized just what I was letting myself in for
Speaker 3: because I started breaking it down before. I should have
Speaker 3: done that before I suggested it to them. Initially it
Speaker 3: was going to be a six hour course, and by
Speaker 3: the time I started editing, I was like, guys, it's
Speaker 3: going to be a lot longer than six hours, because
Speaker 3: I knew that when I was filming it that it
Speaker 3: was going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, because
Speaker 3: once you start talking about a subject, you realize you
Speaker 3: need to go down a path. So when I was
Speaker 3: breaking it down in pre production, is what we needed
Speaker 3: to do and figure out which episodes, what topics we
Speaker 3: should cover. That was kind of you know where I realized,
Speaker 3: you know, it was a very good thing to actually
Speaker 3: make discipline wise, because it did require a lot of
Speaker 3: pre production. Otherwise it just was not going to be
Speaker 3: a practical thing to shoot because it's big enough as
Speaker 3: it was. And so I went through the topic that
Speaker 3: I really wanted to cover. The first one is that
Speaker 3: the first episode is quite dull in respect because it's
Speaker 3: just me and my kitchen, but it's me explaining all
Speaker 3: of the stuff you actually do need to understand before
Speaker 3: you go out and shoot, which is all the technical stuff,
Speaker 3: a little bit of history, is why we're using these cameras,
Speaker 3: and some of the flaw the problems we can have
Speaker 3: with them. So it's going through everything you needed to know.
Speaker 3: It squeezed into an hour and twenty minutes, and then
Speaker 3: I went out and then I realized that the next
Speaker 3: episode was okay, and I've got all that stuff out
Speaker 3: of the way, I can just focus on being creative.
Speaker 3: And then it was I've never really competition is one
Speaker 3: of these things that's been very natural to me, and
Speaker 3: I've always been asked how can I improve my composition,
Speaker 3: And I'm always like, well, you can always read books
Speaker 3: and to understand how what you're looking for a competition,
Speaker 3: But then you need to then you need to experiment,
Speaker 3: and then you need to watch movies and TVs shows
Speaker 3: and see how they do things and see what you like.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of why the first episode. So
Speaker 3: the second episode was all about showing what different lenses do,
Speaker 3: and showing how cool a long tele photo can be
Speaker 3: on a subject and bringing a background closer to a
Speaker 3: person and the effect it can have compared to say
Speaker 3: a standard lens and a wide angle lens, and then
Speaker 3: showing people how to move the camera, when not to
Speaker 3: move the camera, showing all these toys that can distract
Speaker 3: you when to use them. I mean, it was just
Speaker 3: so much in this course, and I think it's one
Speaker 3: of these things that if you look at the list
Speaker 3: of the topics that only really explains half of what
Speaker 3: you're learning, or not even that from just what it is.
Speaker 3: So like people will say, oh, there's no episode on lighting.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well no, because lighting is in every single
Speaker 3: every episode, same with sound sounded in every episode. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to do one because it's all filmed on
Speaker 3: location to tackle things real world, much like I've always
Speaker 3: I always want to do my reviews, and it was
Speaker 3: like an extension of that I wanted to show. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to did this episode is about interviews,
Speaker 3: So this is how you deal with going to location
Speaker 3: and you know you don't have the right room. You've
Speaker 3: got to work with the light. What are the issues
Speaker 3: with the lights, what's the problems with the sound we
Speaker 3: have here? What could our background be? And it was
Speaker 3: really trying to take things as realistically as possible and
Speaker 3: and literally having real problems that I had to solve
Speaker 3: during the actual shoots and showing them how I would
Speaker 3: deal with it. So that was kind of what I
Speaker 3: was trying to get with it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to watch it myself, and I'll definitely
Speaker 2: put all the information in the show notes for this
Speaker 2: episode for everyone to.
Speaker 3: Take a look at.
Speaker 2: Now, I have a few more questions. If you have
Speaker 2: some time, sure, yeah, sure, you've traveled pretty much all
Speaker 2: over the planet at this point in your career. Do
Speaker 2: you have any travel hacks for filmmakers in what respect,
Speaker 2: in the words of traveling, packing, getting things through, I mean, like,
Speaker 2: you know, getting cheaper deals, or even just even be
Speaker 2: able to pack all your gear, what gear to bring with,
Speaker 2: don't overpack everything like there's a bunch of stuff. Any
Speaker 2: tips at all, because I know in today's world travel
Speaker 2: traveling with a bunch of gear and keeping it safe,
Speaker 2: and you're walking around with twenty thousand bucks on your backpack,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like.
Speaker 3: It's pretty It's the worst thing about my job by
Speaker 3: far is the traveling. It's not that it's not it's
Speaker 3: the traveling bit itself. It's not being in other places
Speaker 3: that's the coolest bit. Sure, it's the getting there is
Speaker 3: the worst bit. And it's the most stressful thing is
Speaker 3: packing and figuring out what you need your weight allouantism.
Speaker 3: Whenever I'm booked on jobs, you know, I need to
Speaker 3: look at flights routes and see who flies there, because
Speaker 3: I know which airlines have the better baggage policies. Your
Speaker 3: new lucky. You live in the States and you think
Speaker 3: you have bad baggage policies there, you do not. Yours
Speaker 3: are great. Even your worst baggage allowance. Positive policy with
Speaker 3: an airline is amazingly compared to what we have to
Speaker 3: do with here. There's like two airlines that fly out
Speaker 3: that out of the UK airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic,
Speaker 3: who charge you per bag. Everybody else charges you per
Speaker 3: kilo ah, so that is where things start getting crazy expensive.
Speaker 3: So I think the most I've ever spent on excess
Speaker 3: baggage probably about three and a half thousand pounds each way.
Speaker 2: Three and a half thousand pounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was it was a job in Japan
Speaker 3: and the client had insisted on flying via Amsterdam with
Speaker 3: KLM kalem charge per kilo and I told them this
Speaker 3: is expensive, and they didn't listen to me, and then
Speaker 3: they had to pay it. And so you choose the
Speaker 3: airlines for a reason. It's it's worth if you're flying
Speaker 3: internally in the US. So if so, if I fly
Speaker 3: to the US, you get like two bags as a
Speaker 3: minium allowance.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: But if you fly anywhere else from from London, you'd
Speaker 3: get one bag. So I guess you guys are just
Speaker 3: managed negotiate a better thing.
Speaker 2: And we think it's horrible. It's absolutely true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's worth if you can get some media
Speaker 3: creditation because there's a number of airlines which give you
Speaker 3: better deals. Southwestern, Delta, United, a couple of others. There's
Speaker 3: a few of them out there, which you know, if
Speaker 3: you've got proper media creditation, can save you a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean Delta will also, you know, are quite good
Speaker 3: in that they will let you. I think it's like
Speaker 3: fifty bucks. It will probably change like fifty bucks per
Speaker 3: bag up to one hundred pounds, which is crazy. But
Speaker 3: just remember that the important stuff always has to be
Speaker 3: carried with you and were supposed to carry out o
Speaker 3: lithium ion batteries carry on luggage. So know your rights
Speaker 3: with the airlines, because I guarantee you they don't know
Speaker 3: your rights, so you will. They will tell you something
Speaker 3: and like actually know if you look at the policy
Speaker 3: on your website, this shows you what you're allowed and
Speaker 3: they go, let me check on my then they go
Speaker 3: and then they'll confer with somebody else. So this happens
Speaker 3: all the time. So you need to understand what you
Speaker 3: are allowed and what you can't do. If you know,
Speaker 3: it comes to batteries. You've got to be careful about
Speaker 3: the what hours you have on some of the drone batteries,
Speaker 3: some of the larger camera batteries you can you can
Speaker 3: take like two per person, so make sure you fly
Speaker 3: with somebody else who can help you out with that.
Speaker 3: I do check a lot of expensive stuff. You have
Speaker 3: to because of you know, you carry on limits what
Speaker 3: you can take sure. And I don't don't use Pelly
Speaker 3: cases of Pelican cases. The simple reason being is yes,
Speaker 3: they offer great protection, but they look expensive yep and
Speaker 3: stealable yep. And so my luggage looks really unfilmed gear
Speaker 3: like it's still really protected inside, it just doesn't look
Speaker 3: like it looks like average luggage. And if you know,
Speaker 3: if you can get the pinkest, most colorful, garage looking
Speaker 3: luggage with Hello Kitty stickers on, do it, do it
Speaker 3: because it doesn't look valuable and nobody's going to steal it.
Speaker 2: That's great advice. Actually, that's awesome advice.
Speaker 3: I really think Pelly should Pelicans should make a series
Speaker 3: of Yeah, you know, when I have had to fly
Speaker 3: with with the hard cases, whether it be like for
Speaker 3: Moby or a drone in an Inspire, then I of
Speaker 3: them with stickers like superheroes and stuff like that. Really
Speaker 3: do those hard cases got Superman stickers on everything? It
Speaker 3: just doesn't look like professional film go anymore. Trying to
Speaker 3: disguise it as much as possible, got it. It's there's
Speaker 3: it's a big old topic and it's a difficult one
Speaker 3: and it's and then you get because certain countries will
Speaker 3: need you if you're taking professional film gear in to
Speaker 3: be to have a proper document a karne, which costs
Speaker 3: a lot of money, and you need to have everything
Speaker 3: itemized and listed. But some countries won't accept that, and
Speaker 3: you have to negotiate with them beforehand or find out
Speaker 3: what you needed to have there. And this is why
Speaker 3: sometimes it's it's really nice just to go with a
Speaker 3: small d S last style camera and just try and
Speaker 3: not be obvious. If if it's difficult, it's going to
Speaker 3: be all too expensive to have that, then it's try
Speaker 3: and go in. But you are always going to have
Speaker 3: a risk if you are doing a paid job and
Speaker 3: you're trying to trying to cut corners and not get
Speaker 3: a karne and go as a tourist and not get
Speaker 3: the correct visa and you your gear gets stopped and
Speaker 3: doesn't get brought in that's your fault. And it's just
Speaker 3: one of these things. If you're doing it for a client,
Speaker 3: you have to pass on these costs to them, explain
Speaker 3: to them, Okay, well we're going here and we need this,
Speaker 3: and it's just one of the things. Flying is just
Speaker 3: absolutely horrendous, and you know, there's I'm really got every day.
Speaker 3: You know, there's always a new story about how the
Speaker 3: FAA or where it is are going to change what
Speaker 3: we can check, you know, the saying anything with any
Speaker 3: lifting mind battery cannot be checked. Uh and then you
Speaker 3: and then no camera can be checked, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like no professional electronic gear can be checked. And
Speaker 3: like at some point soon if this goes down this road,
Speaker 3: I don't think we'll ever be able to fly abroad
Speaker 3: without gear anymore. We'll just have the era of the
Speaker 3: rental company is going to be there because everybody, they're
Speaker 3: gonna have to have a major rental outlet every single city,
Speaker 3: in every single place because we can't fly with anything,
Speaker 3: which terrible if that ever happens. But yeah, it's I
Speaker 3: hate it. I hate it so much. I always bring
Speaker 3: too much, always brings too much, So make it. The
Speaker 3: best advice I'd say is just make a list beforehand
Speaker 3: and just bring what you need, maybe you know, a
Speaker 3: couple of backup things as much as possible, like a issue.
Speaker 3: I always have a second camera just in case. But
Speaker 3: the kind of the obvious stuff really.
Speaker 2: Okay, batteries always bring bad extra batteries. Oh god, chah, batteries,
Speaker 2: betteries batteries. Now what advice would you give a filmmaker
Speaker 2: wanting to break into the business today?
Speaker 3: Uh, I guess the first question is why do you
Speaker 3: want to as long as you doing it for the
Speaker 3: right reasons, and that's great. It's not you know, you
Speaker 3: know very well, it's not a business to get rich
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 2: I was gonna says, it's not rich and famous. That's
Speaker 2: not the reason why to get in.
Speaker 3: No go and become a banker or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3: You if you just want to do something creative and
Speaker 3: you because you get into it because you want to
Speaker 3: be creative. So that's my best advice to start with.
Speaker 3: And it's a tricky thing. It's one of these things
Speaker 3: that and I think this is kind of partly why
Speaker 3: it's so good to have this course that I've done
Speaker 3: with m z is. It's whilst it's not a film
Speaker 3: score replacement, it condenses all of my knowledge into this
Speaker 3: one thing. So people watch it then they can get
Speaker 3: You're not going to become a filmmaker from watching this,
Speaker 3: but you're going to get a lot of knowledge from it,
Speaker 3: and hopefully use that knowledge to find your own style
Speaker 3: and voice and know how to do things a bit better,
Speaker 3: because that's what you're going to need to do. You're
Speaker 3: going to need to be patient, which a lot of
Speaker 3: people aren't these days. There's too much like wanting stuff
Speaker 3: to happen overnight. I think my best example of this
Speaker 3: was a guy did so I do this, I do
Speaker 3: some private tuition with people. I remember this guy emailed
Speaker 3: me saying he wanted to get to make a short
Speaker 3: film to be entered into next year's can Film Festival,
Speaker 3: and he wants some training for that. I'm like interesting,
Speaker 3: so I asked him to tell me. It's a really
Speaker 3: strange way of actually wording things anyone else. I want
Speaker 3: to make sure.
Speaker 2: I'm a similar to the askers. It's similar to the askers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like to win an Oscar, so I'd like
Speaker 3: to do some training with you, like I have not
Speaker 3: won an oscar. So I'm the wrong person, so don't
Speaker 3: come to me. But I said to him, so what
Speaker 3: do you want to do? What do you want to
Speaker 3: learn from? So? I want to get a grounding of, like,
Speaker 3: you know, things which can help me make be able
Speaker 3: to make this film. So what experience do you have? None,
Speaker 3: I've never used a camera, I've never made a film.
Speaker 3: Oh good, but I've seen lots of films. So I
Speaker 3: then said to him, well, I don't know how long
Speaker 3: you're expecting training wise from me, but.
Speaker 2: You got ten years past.
Speaker 3: What sort of how long do you expect? What do
Speaker 3: you want from me exactly? And he said maybe how
Speaker 3: much would it cost for two hours of training?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you gotta be kidding, I replied.
Speaker 3: To him, And when you know that's not going to
Speaker 3: be enough? And then he replied saying all about four.
Speaker 3: And that's where the conversation. I felt it felt like
Speaker 3: a practical joke, but it wasn't. It was been deadly serious.
Speaker 3: And it's one of the things you've got to be
Speaker 3: so patient with And you've got to work your ass
Speaker 3: off for years, two for years, for years, yeah, absolutely
Speaker 3: years before you're you know, I when I left Sky,
Speaker 3: I was senior cameraman, and you know, I couldn't go
Speaker 3: any further at the company without going to management and
Speaker 3: leaving the camera behind. And then when I left, I
Speaker 3: didn't want to do news anymore. So I had to
Speaker 3: start completely again from the bottom. And it took me
Speaker 3: four years to start getting the work that I really
Speaker 3: wanted to.
Speaker 2: Do, even after being seventeen years and another aspect of
Speaker 2: the business exactly.
Speaker 3: So it's and now there's a huge amount of more
Speaker 3: competition than there was even eleven years ago. So you've
Speaker 3: got to be really patient and you've you've got to
Speaker 3: be obviously, you've got to have talent. You've got to
Speaker 3: have the ability to sell yourself as well. And it's
Speaker 3: not something to be embarrassed about and talk about, not
Speaker 3: talk about. You know, it's a business, after all, Any job,
Speaker 3: any job where you are selling yourself and your skills,
Speaker 3: it's a business, and you have to be able to
Speaker 3: sell yourself. I remember I work with this guy who
Speaker 3: was such a talented director and filmmaker, but wasn't doing
Speaker 3: anywhere near the work he should be because he just
Speaker 3: was a terrible salesman. So you've got to have that
Speaker 3: skill as well, find good people to work with. Try
Speaker 3: and network as much as you can with people.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure you know a Facebook group is not
Speaker 3: the same as proper networking. Whilst it can be useful,
Speaker 3: it's just there's so much noise on there. Everything it
Speaker 3: has become so diluted. It's much much much harder to
Speaker 3: find clear voices. Yep, listen to. But at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, if you can make it in this
Speaker 3: as a business then as a career, then fantastic, because
Speaker 3: it is for me. It's the greatest thing in the
Speaker 3: world to be able to be able to do what
Speaker 3: I would do if you weren't paying me, and pay
Speaker 3: me for stuff as well, that's great, but you've got
Speaker 3: to understand that most of the time that you get paid,
Speaker 3: you won't like what you're doing. You won't like the
Speaker 3: work that you're producing. Yes and that, and let it
Speaker 3: go and then do stuff for yourself to have that
Speaker 3: creative fulfillment. Because when you're doing a corporate for some guy,
Speaker 3: you're gonna you know, you're gonna look at it, oh God,
Speaker 3: and they're going to tell and you're working for them.
Speaker 3: You're not. You're not. They're not hiring you to make
Speaker 3: a Philip Bloom film. They're hiring you to make a film.
Speaker 3: They're they're the client. You make it for them, and yeah,
Speaker 3: you've got to make it as good as you possibly can.
Speaker 3: They probably come to you because they've seen something that
Speaker 3: you've done right. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you are going to find that you are not going
Speaker 3: to love what's been done with your what you may
Speaker 3: necessarily or what's been done with your work again, and
Speaker 3: you just have to accept that and move on now.
Speaker 3: And you always still give everything to it, just because
Speaker 3: it is not just so crappy thing. Still give everything
Speaker 3: to it, because you can still be you can still
Speaker 3: be created, you can still get so much out of
Speaker 3: it yourself. And when you get home, you don't feel like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what a terrible day. I had to
Speaker 3: film this worst call center ever. It was awful lighting
Speaker 3: and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: That's fine. But if you've made an effort and made
Speaker 3: it look good, then you can come home and go
Speaker 3: and you put yourself in a drink and go, I
Speaker 3: deserve this because I made that look good and you're happy.
Speaker 3: You want to come home and feel bitter?
Speaker 2: Ever, oh god, yes, And there are a lot of
Speaker 2: bitter filmmakers out there with our question because they've fallen
Speaker 2: into that trap. And when I spoke to I worked
Speaker 2: with Robert Forrester, and he gave a great piece of advice,
Speaker 2: which is like, no matter how small the job, give yourself,
Speaker 2: give it one hundred and ten percent because you never
Speaker 2: know who's watching. You never know who's on set or
Speaker 2: who will see that work and maybe hire you for
Speaker 2: another job somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Even then, even that client, they may give you this
Speaker 3: really terrible job. Yep, and then they see, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this was really bad, and I can't believe how good
Speaker 3: you made this. You're perfect for this job that we
Speaker 3: have for six months in the schells right, oh right?
Speaker 3: Great in that you never know, you never know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you never know what you're gonna get.
Speaker 2: Now, what's the lesson that took you the longest to learn,
Speaker 2: whether in the film business or in life.
Speaker 3: Oh, don't kill yourself with work. Take set yourself time.
Speaker 3: Where you stop now my edit suite is I have
Speaker 3: a home edit Suite, which is financially convenient and obviously
Speaker 3: nice and handy. There's no commute for me when I'm editing.
Speaker 3: But that divide between work and life is really it's difficult.
Speaker 3: And so when I am editing, apart from I mean
Speaker 3: when I was cutting the MZ series, mind you, I
Speaker 3: had to break this most times because I was working
Speaker 3: stupid long hours editing. But for most jobs I kind
Speaker 3: of set myself. You know, if it's a six stay
Speaker 3: at seven pm, I'm like, okay, then we'll work after
Speaker 3: seven and be disciplined about it. Discipline that your start time,
Speaker 3: disiplinned about your finished time, and make sure you give
Speaker 3: yourself time to see your your girlfriend, your wife, boyfriend,
Speaker 3: your husband, your friends, your children, make sure you have
Speaker 3: a life. I very rarely work weekends now unless the
Speaker 3: shoot demands it or you know, I have to go somewhere,
Speaker 3: so I will down tools that weekend. Yeah, you still
Speaker 3: find me with a camera, You're still find me flying
Speaker 3: a drone or taking photos somewhere. But that's me. That's
Speaker 3: my own time. And if you can find yourself a
Speaker 3: girlfriend who likes doing it with you, that is good.
Speaker 3: And Sarah Loves Loves shooting and she loves all that
Speaker 3: stuff as well, So that really does help. But I
Speaker 3: think it's really important to get your work life balance right.
Speaker 3: And it took me probably a twenty years or so
Speaker 3: to start realizing how off it was. Yes, and now
Speaker 3: I work way less than I used to, Right, I
Speaker 3: probably work I probably worked half as much as I
Speaker 3: used to two years ago. So yeah, I earn a
Speaker 3: lot less, but I'm a lot happier, and that's really
Speaker 3: that's it is priceless. It also makes my work better
Speaker 3: because I'm happier.
Speaker 2: Yes, very illescent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's probably the best thing I've learned.
Speaker 3: It took me a long time to learn it. I'm
Speaker 3: very stubborn, but eventually figured it out.
Speaker 2: I feel you one hundred percent. I try to I
Speaker 2: do exactly all those things. I don't work weekends, and
Speaker 2: I have a specific time I come in and a
Speaker 2: specific time I come out every day. Because everyone always asks,
Speaker 2: how do you create so much content?
Speaker 3: How do you? You know?
Speaker 2: Run this this, you know this big blog and do
Speaker 2: all the stuff you do and have twins and have
Speaker 2: a family and all this, Like you got to you
Speaker 2: got to do exactly what you said, got to be
Speaker 2: very strict with yourself, and I repressed.
Speaker 3: I mean you've got kids. I mean I haven't got
Speaker 3: kids yet, and I don't even know how I'll cope
Speaker 3: with having kids as well, apart from my probably just
Speaker 3: filmed them a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes, they were probably the most documented children in history.
Speaker 3: With our question, I think they probably will. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And last question, what are three of your favorite films
Speaker 2: of all time?
Speaker 3: Oh? I think that's an impossible question just today today?
Speaker 2: What do you feel like today?
Speaker 3: Oh? I still want to go with Empare Strikes Back
Speaker 3: is always in my top three.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it was.
Speaker 3: That was one of the first films I ever saw
Speaker 3: as a kid where I still remember the emotional reaction
Speaker 3: I had coming out of that, and it's still watch
Speaker 3: it today and I still feel, Wow, this is incredible.
Speaker 3: I'm also a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, yes, and find
Speaker 3: it difficult to pick a favorite, but again, I think
Speaker 3: for the emotional impact and maybe I'm it's another film
Speaker 3: with a downer ending that's Vertigo, but it's just such
Speaker 3: an incredible film in every way. I think I'm just
Speaker 3: thinking of all my favorites, all such downer endings. I
Speaker 3: don't know why I actually like happy endings of films.
Speaker 3: I like things that I want to I don't want
Speaker 3: to feel like like I felt at the end of
Speaker 3: seven Every time I see a film just like, I mean,
Speaker 3: that's finisher for Gone Girl, I'm like, totally crap. You know,
Speaker 3: the worst date film of all time.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's actually the worst film.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: Attraction and your break up Attractions.
Speaker 3: Break up Now, Yeah, that's not a good one as well.
Speaker 3: And I guess, oh, I don't know. I think maybe
Speaker 3: something more recent. I don't know. But of the films
Speaker 3: I've seen recently, another one that had a really good
Speaker 3: emotional impact on me was Then You Be on Those
Speaker 3: Arrival last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was actually really interesting. That's such an interesting
Speaker 2: film to watch.
Speaker 3: It's not my favorite film, but was my favorite film
Speaker 3: of the year. And you know, I saw Blade one
Speaker 3: of twenty forty nine last week, and that's again incredible.
Speaker 3: He's an amazing filmmaker. But I always tend to go
Speaker 3: back to the same films I ended up watching again
Speaker 3: and again and again, whether it's the original Planet of
Speaker 3: the Apes, Sure, I love my sci fi very much,
Speaker 3: and then Raiders Raiders Lost Dark of course, can't get
Speaker 3: more perfect film than Raiders.
Speaker 2: Raiders is It's perfect.
Speaker 3: It is a perfect film.
Speaker 2: And since you're a Hitchcock fan, have you seen the
Speaker 2: new documentary seventy eight to fifty two?
Speaker 3: No, I have not.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of it?
Speaker 3: No, I have not. I just found out.
Speaker 2: I just found out about it the other day. It's
Speaker 2: on iTunes. I watched it yesterday, and it is an
Speaker 2: entire documentary about the shower scene in Psycho.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And they go through every shot and they talk to
Speaker 2: everything and the impact of Psycho. But they literally break
Speaker 2: down everything about that shower scene, which is arguably the
Speaker 2: you know, ninety seconds, the most important ninety seconds in
Speaker 2: film history, honestly some of them. Yeah, I mean what
Speaker 2: he was able to do in that shower sequence. But
Speaker 2: someone put together arguably a really good documentary shot in
Speaker 2: black and white. By the way, it's gorgeous. It's on iTunes.
Speaker 2: You definitely should watch if any film gig definitely Hitchcock fan.
Speaker 3: We'll love it. Yeah, anybody who has not seen Psycho,
Speaker 3: what the hell are you doing?
Speaker 2: Why are you listening to us? Wat psychoer?
Speaker 3: You have to watch this film. That is, if you
Speaker 3: if you take the sections which obviously date the film,
Speaker 3: which is the beginning the anything that take anything outside
Speaker 3: of just at the motel. Hm, it is it stands
Speaker 3: up completely today. It could have been made. It's just
Speaker 3: so incredible and I just some of the it's the
Speaker 3: most innovative filmmaking you'll ever see. And you know we're talking.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: And now back to the show nineteen sixty it's we
Speaker 2: could we could do a whole episode just on Psycho
Speaker 2: with that question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'll watch it tonight.
Speaker 2: Now can Where can people find you and your work?
Speaker 3: So my website is Philip Bloom dot net. So it's
Speaker 3: p h I l I p b l M and
Speaker 3: my blog is there and that is the same Philip
Speaker 3: Bloom is what I have for all of my social media,
Speaker 3: whether it's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, it's.
Speaker 2: Just my space, my space GeoCities.
Speaker 3: Sorry, you know it probably is still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, minds is too roughly.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I think I haven't really used it as
Speaker 3: such the things I do have, but yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: it's pretty simple to find me, and I'm quite active.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty active on them. And it is a real
Speaker 3: mixture of photography filmmaking and personal stuff. I put some
Speaker 3: I do put personal stuff on social media, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of another it's a whole podcast is about, you know,
Speaker 3: your whole dividing line between this sort I think, and
Speaker 3: I think it's important to be to be to be
Speaker 3: you on social media, and that's why I always say
Speaker 3: in my bio silly grumpy. So depending on how I'm feeling,
Speaker 3: I will be like that and I put some personal
Speaker 3: stuff up there, and I put some everything I try
Speaker 3: to make as nice as possible. I have a nice mix,
Speaker 3: and I just try and make it feel as as
Speaker 3: as me as it is, you know, like the MZ course,
Speaker 3: it's me. What you see is a very very different
Speaker 3: to anything else you'll ever see training wise, because it's
Speaker 3: it's very personal. And I kind of think that's this
Speaker 3: just kind of sums me up ready and how i'd
Speaker 3: like to share things.
Speaker 2: Philip Man, thank you so much for taking the time out.
Speaker 2: It's been an absolute joy speaking to you man.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what an absolute thrill and pleasure
Speaker 2: was to talk to Philip and you know, after reading
Speaker 2: his blog for so long and listening to him on YouTube,
Speaker 2: and I mean, if you need to know about camera
Speaker 2: gear and reviews about camera gear and things like that, man,
Speaker 2: I definitely check his website out. I'm going to leave
Speaker 2: all his links in the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting
Speaker 2: dot tv, Forward slash four zero three. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening, guys, as always, keep on writing no
Speaker 2: matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.