Lighter Darker: The ILM Podcast

Episode

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[00:00:00]

Todd Vaziri: wow, how long are they going to go at this? How long is it? When are we going to get a break? And that's where the filmmaker's going. Ha ha ha.

Yeah. I have you now. you're in the palm of my hands. but that is, uh, just get chills. Just thinking about that shot. I love that shot so much.

Rob Bredow: Welcome to the Lighter Darker Podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. We'll be sharing stories to entertain and hopefully inspire the next generation of visual storytellers to join our Thank you so much for joining us. This is our third episode, three of twenty planned for the first season, and we release every other Tuesday.

Thanks for tuning in today. Today we have with us a guest co-host, Beth D'Amato. Beth has been here at ILM for over 27 years. She started in ‘96 and her most recent project was Paint and Roto Supervisor on Postcard from Earth, which is an immersive experience that you can see at the Sphere [00:01:00] in Las Vegas. Before that, she served as an Associate Visual Effects Supervisor on the Emmy nominated third season of The Mandalorian.

So welcome to the podcast, Beth.

Beth D'Amato: Thank you, glad to be here. Thanks for having me

Rob Bredow: Great to have you here today. And as usual, my co-host, Todd Vaziri.

Todd Vaziri: Hey, I'm Todd Vaziri, Compositing Supervisor and Artist at ILM.

Rob Bredow: And our producer, Jenny.

Jenny Ely: Jenny Ely, production manager at ILM.

Rob Bredow: And I'm Rob Bredow. I'm the Chief Creative Officer of ILM and SVP of Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm. Uh, we all work together in the visual effects, animation, and immersive entertainment industries. so today's show, we've got a few questions, and then we're gonna dive into a couple of brief features.

We're gonna touch on rejection letters. We're gonna visit the misinformation corner, we're going to try to correct some misinformation out there. And then our main topic today is about camera composition and camera moves, which will be really fun to dive in together.

So, um, Jenny, do you want to get us started with a couple questions from the mailbag?

Jenny Ely: We have some really good [00:02:00] questions this week. Our first question comes from Jill who listened to episode one and has a question about a term that was used. So Todd, you said in episode one, flop the reel. Can you explain what that means?

Todd Vaziri: Yeah, the context was, we were, one way to get fresh eyes on a shot or a sequence that you've been working on for weeks and weeks or months and months, is to flop the shot. And I think in the context, it was when we were looking at a bunch of Hulk finals reels with Dennis Muren and he ran the film finals that we had all strung together Through the projector and he wanted us to look at it with fresh eyes So he flopped the film and what I should have been clearer is to say that He asked the projectionist to put the film in mirrored in reverse he flopped it

Rob Bredow: yeah, literally twist it between the intake reel and, and before it gets into the projector.

Todd Vaziri: For film, it's a long and arduous process. You got to redo the reels and everything. But, it is basically flopping it,horizontally or [00:03:00] mirroring it as some might say, and, that is a trivial thing to do with digital movie files, but it was a little bit bigger deal to do with film and it's still a really great way to look at your stuff with a new, fresh eyes.

Rob Bredow: And thank you for that question. try to make this generally accessible, so we really love the questions that are going to remind us to set the context. So thanks, Jenny, for passing along from Jill.

Jenny Ely: All right. Next question comes from Steven Bills, Steven wants to know - Practical models worth the hype? Why and why not? And be brave. Don't just say what you think the listeners want to

Rob Bredow: That's such a great question from Stephen. And Stephen, runs a really cool looking Instagram account called Star Wars Battlegrounds that you should check out. We'll link in the show notes. He does shoot beautiful Star Wars models on his Instagram page. So this does come from the perspective of a model lover and we are model lovers here too.

We have a bunch of people who grew up doing that, and who still work with us here at ILM. So, um, It's a technique that we still lean into from time to time [00:04:00] worth the hype or not. Like there's certain things that are really nice in models that I probably are a little easier to achieve than they are in digital.

On the whole, we have a lot of flexibility with digital models. And even when we do use physical models and shoot them on the stage, which we have done in, I think all three seasons of Mandalorian, we've done on a number of other shows recently. We also probably have a digital model of that ship as well for either moves that can't do, or just for production reasons, because it takes a certain amount of shooting time to get those models shot. So it really is the best tool for the job. I think we mostly lean into it because we love having the model. It's a great way to experiment with the design. It's a great way to see something in physical space and buy off on it.

And if you can also photograph it and put it in the show or at least scan it and use that as the basis for the digital model, that's always a really nice starting point. But I would say most of our models these days start and end digitally.

Todd Vaziri: Well, I would like to add, at least particularly with Star Wars, when we were dabbling [00:05:00] with the new shows, with building actual physical model spaceships and building motion control, setups for it, stylistically. to, better, fit in with the original Star Wars trilogy, which were all physical models shot against the blue screen with motion control.

There are certain, physical limitations to how they're lit and, and the camera moves that you can do with, uh, that type of workflow. And adding those limitations Immediately lends itself to a similar style. We're talking about ship flybys. We're talking about space battles. In fact on several shows we've had our animation people build rigs that That are similar to the motion control systems that we would do physically to get that feeling and what could they achieve on stage and how could we replicate that digitally.

So there's a, [00:06:00] there's a stylistic, you know, kind of like bonus. That comes with shooting physical models, especially when you're trying to tie into something that was done, say 30, 40 years ago,

Rob Bredow: Sometime we should have John on the podcast to talk through the construction of the motion control rig that he built in his garage. This is John Knoll, who built this in his garage on weekends and nights to make it possible for us to shoot this down on the stage here.

Beth D'Amato: Interestingly, while we were working on Rogue One, John had us all go into the theater and study how those models were filmed back in the 70s so that we could try to replicate that with our CG models, simply because we were trying to place Rogue One back in that time frame. So we were trying to make our digital models look like practical models, even more so than any other film I've ever worked on.

Jenny Ely: Maybe we need a segment. Is it practical or is it digital? And see if people can tell the difference.

Rob Bredow: It's definitely hard to tell.

Todd Vaziri: That first Rogue One trailer came out,and we saw some of those Star Destroyer shots that we worked [00:07:00] so hard on, I loved the discussion online of, wait, did they actually build models for this? So, I, I will, I think we should absolutely do that, Jenny. But, you know, the basic question is worth the hype.

Yeah, we would love to build as many models as we can. We would love to shoot as many models as we can. If we're making a live action movie, we want to shoot as much live action as possible, and that includes models. but, with, uh, timelines, the way they are and budgets, the way they are, we don't get to do it as much as we want to,

Jenny Ely: Okay. Our next question comes from Patrick. Nan or Naan, apologize if I get that wrong, a freelance compositor in LA who asks, is it better to learn Maya or Houdini? Do more people need Houdini simulation specialists or Maya generalists? We should probably start with what Maya and Houdini are.

Rob Bredow: Sure. Yeah, if you're not familiar with Maya and Houdini, they're both 3D. applications. Maya tends to be used for a wide variety of things. Patrick is calling out that it's a good general purpose tool. you can use it for a wide variety of things. [00:08:00] Houdini is also a general purpose 3D application.

Although, as Patrick is pointing out, it's well known for its simulation abilities. it's maybe a little more technical to use. A very, very powerful package as well. It's a difficult question to answer. In part, I think you want to be driven by what kind of work you would enjoy the most. If you really are into effects simulations, you'll really enjoy using Houdini.

If you are a character animator and want to focus more on general purpose tools that are well known in Maya, then that might be your choice of tools. In terms of what the industry needs more, To be honest, Patrick, you're already a compositor, which the industry needs a lot of compositors. so you're already in a really good spot in terms of being in demand, in my opinion.

And then ranking the other two is really hard. I think in general, The two other areas we're always looking for people to help us, are in rigging and in effects animation. I've, I've rarely known someone who knows one of those [00:09:00] two skills to be wanting for work. Those are always in a lot of demand.

they're quite challenging, right? You have to, as an effects animator, you have to be able to do kind of everything that doesn't neatly fit into the rest of the pipeline.and in rigging, you have to have all the anatomy and technical skills. You also have to be very creative, have a lot of sculpting ability.

There's a wide range of skills needed for both of those areas.

Todd Vaziri: I get this question a lot in terms of compositing, like what's the best tool to learn for future employability at Nuke or after effects or, you know, insert compositing program here. and the answer is you need to be comfortable with what you like using. Cause there's definitely different UIs and workflows with each program, but the answer in almost most cases is.

Doesn't matter. You need to make great work. Your reel is, to me, more important than any one particular software package. And that goes for, for me, from my perspective, Maya or Houdini or whatever. The answer is yes. [00:10:00] Use whichever you feel more comfortable with to make great imagery. And to, to make a killer reel.

Because, a studio will take a chance on somebody who doesn't necessarily use their, in their in-house tool That or their tool of choice, if their real is really fantastic, because I, I've always contended that tools can be learned, but your taste and your style, it comes from within and you just gotta get it outta your fingers and get it through the mouse and the keyboard.

And get it on the screen so that people can see what you have inside of you. So, yeah, I'm going to say, do you use what you feel is most comfortable or, you know, Maya Houdini or blender or some other open source thing. Just get to work.

Rob Bredow: Yep.

Beth D'Amato: Yeah, in digital paint, we like to tell people to master your artwork, like become a master in the artistry and then you can pick up any paintbrush in any paint package and make it sing.

Rob Bredow: It is true across all of the apps and the time that it takes to learn a new application, although these are not simple apps, to learn the time it takes to [00:11:00] learn that is less than a time that it takes to learn the rest of the craft. And I think you're hearing that from all three. So excited to hear what you pick up next and again, or if you continue to composite.

Excited to hear about that too. Next, we want to just do a short feature,called Rejection Letters, which we did last week with Josh, focusing on the things we've learned from either our mistakes or missteps and hearing the real story before the moment the door actually opened.

And today, since we have Beth co hosting with us, we thought it would be fantastic to hear her story, if she has one, of a rejection letter of a song. Setback before the success. You've been here for 26 years. So it's been a little while since you faced this sort of thing, but I'm curious to hear about,

Beth D'Amato: Yeah, I do have one, really significant rejection letter story, and it's from a small company you may have heard of called Industrial light and Magic. I applied, I don't even remember the year, I think it was 94. I wanted to work in feature film so bad, and I had my eyes on ILM for so long, and I had an opportunity to come out to LA from the [00:12:00] Midwest, I grew up in Wisconsin, and I was at SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Convention.

And made some connections and, I ended up sending in my resume and a reel that I don't even think was looked at, but I interviewed for a T. A. position. I knew it had something to do with the computer graphics department. I knew it was entry level and I'm like, this is my chance. I'm going for it. And I interviewed with the hiring manager at the time.

I think it was Gail Curry and another artist. And they said, well, thank you so much. You know, we'll keep your resume on file. And I went home and I thought I blew it. I'm like, that is the line they tell people when they want you to just get out of the building. I'd say about maybe eight months later, I got a call from HR and they said, Hey, you know, we kept your resume and we have a position that is more geared for your skills and it's in the art department.

Why don't you come back for an interview? I conducted myself differently. I [00:13:00] panicked. I cried. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is the only last chance I'll get. And I interviewed and was hired as the art department production assistant. And at the time, I was doing graphics and animation in Wisconsin, but I didn't even care.

I wanted a foot in the door at ILM, and I knew this was the chance I had. And that's where I learned, you know, paintwork that I utilize every single day in my job now. I learned so much from the art directors and, but anyway, when I got that job offer, I cried again cause I was like, okay, I didn't blow it this time.

Like my dream job has come true.

Todd Vaziri: Let that be a lesson to everybody. Sometimes they do keep your resume on file. It can happen.

Beth D'Amato: It's not just a line.

Rob Bredow: amazing.

And here we are 26 years later, you've done a wide variety of jobs here at the company. Starting in the art department, doing paint and roto, and for those of you who aren't familiar, like when you hear about paint and the kinds of things that are done, like you know that it's a lot of magic making, but here at ILM it's [00:14:00] It's leaned on more than I've ever experienced anywhere else.

There's a lot of pretty substantial visual effects work done in the paint department. In addition to cleaning this up because I have to replace this part of the plate, which is also very challenging and very challenging work to do on its own. But, your department gets leaned on a lot.

Todd Vaziri: I'm going to, I'm going to interject here and say the reason why it's leaned upon so heavily here at ILM is because of the amazing, talented, talented paint artists that we have. We have people who paint magic folks. I cannot tell you there are challenges. Beth knows this quite certainly.

Sometimes we are a little bit too busy and we have to look at maybe outsourcing certain bits of our paint work. And other facilities will look at that paint work and say, this is literally impossible. We cannot even give you a bid. And, of course, it comes back to Island, and, and we, and we end up doing it with some of our amazing people. to be unusually coy and say that Beth, in particular, [00:15:00] just did something on this show that we're working on right now that I will not name, that I didn't think it was even possible. It was a thing that was going to take a lot longer than anybody would have expected through the typical pipeline, doing a simulation, doing lighting, doing rendering or whatever.

And she painted it in, I don't know, a few minutes, Beth, and it's completely convincing. Maybe we can revisit this in a future episode and I could tell everybody what it was, but it is the, the, the, this is. Standard operating procedure here at ILM, where we just ask the impossible of our paint artists and they just do it.

And Beth is one of those people.

Beth D'Amato: Gosh, thank you so much. I'm a part of a department of several people who can do this. We call ourselves paint animators, actually, because we are going in and animating a 2D image and making it move. And what's funny is I was going to say exactly what you said, Todd. Worked on so many shows where I've, I've literally had somebody say to me that absolutely cannot be painted.

And [00:16:00] that's exactly the kind of thing we jump at. I'm like, watch me paint it.

Rob Bredow: It's great.

Jenny Ely: I'm writing down all the new segments. Like we need a cryptic corner now where we go back and address all the vague things that Todd said and referring to shows we can't talk about yet.

Beth D'Amato: Or a show on invisible effects. If I do my job well, you have no idea I did it at all. I didn't paint anything, no.

Rob Bredow: That's actually kind of a perfect segue to Misinformation Corner, our next feature. The idea here is we're going to find misinformation out on the internet and we want to debunk it and talk about what really happened with real facts. and Todd, you read the internet from time to time.

Did you bring us anything from Misinformation Corner?

Todd Vaziri: One could say I'm terminally online. Here's the deal about misinformation about Hollywood movie making. Mythology and, fake news about how movies are made are as old as cinema itself, from the, insertion of, of [00:17:00] gossip into the, to the newspapers about what stars are doing, whatever, just to, just to drum up publicity to, an offhand comment that, a crew member can make, and that gets blown up way out of proportion and it becomes, Lore it becomes, the truth.

This happens all the time and it's been happening for literally a hundred years. so, you don't have to really work too hard to find misinformation. Uh,it comes at you. but one in particular that I see up a lot and it comes up, I don't know, like every six months or so, this, this type of thing comes up.

It is really interesting too. And from a, from a movie fan point of view to find out when certain moments in a movie were improvised on the day or the idea came as they were shooting with the lights on with, you know, recording or an actor step back and said, wait, wait, wait, why don't I do this?

Or, for example, one real story, is from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The, the big, [00:18:00] battle, where Marion is, is, is in one of the, baskets and Indy doesn't know which baskets it's in and he's looking for, and then the crowd parts, and there's a swordsman there, and Indy just takes out his gun and shoots him.

Great moment, amazing moment, iconic. And that was something that was come up on the day between Spielberg and Harrison Ford, because almost everybody, all the actors in the crew were sick and they had a huge choreographed fight between the swordsmen and Indiana Jones, and they even shot some of it, but, Harrison Ford apparently just said to Steven, you know, why don't I just shoot the guy?

And Steven went, Oh, Oh, okay. And it came up with that. That is true. That is real. That actually happened. But one that keeps coming up is a moment in an absolute masterpiece called The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger, as the Joker, is leaving the hospital that he has rigged up to explode, that has been evacuated and everything.

And he comes out, in full makeup, and he is walking calmly, and [00:19:00] he's got his little detonator, and he pushes the detonator, and the explosions start happening behind him. And then the explosions stop behind him. And he looks at his detonator. And he kind of rattles it and there's a really funny sound effect like the batteries are and he's like, well, this is obviously not working.

He taps it and then as he taps it for the second time or third time The big explosions start and the entire hospital collapses and then he gets into a bus and they drive off well, of course the behind the scenes is that that was a building in chicagoland area that was scheduled for demolition and the filmmakers got in touch with the people and they made it for the movie.

They did it for the movie. They had one take and that was Heath Ledger out there doing it with the first, the special effects explosions, and then the real detonation and additional special effects explosions, the floor effects explosions. But the moment that he stops and tries to, you know, sees what's going on, the lore, the mythology is that there was a problem on set.

[00:20:00] That the explosions were not working properly. And Heath Ledger, amazing performer that he is. improvised that moment as opposed to breaking the scene and saying, Hey, what's going on? that did not happen. This was in the script. This was planned. It was supposed to be the first set of explosions.

And then, Joker you know, I was wondering what's going on. And then the whole thing happens after that. It's a remarkable bit of choreography, coordination amongst many, many departments. And it's an amazing moment with an amazing performer. But it happened by design.

Rob Bredow: Well, and the fact that people feel like it's improvised is another credit to the excellent choreography that was done and the remarkable acting in a single take. One continuous camera move, and we're actually going to talk about camera moves next. I mean, that is a very, very gutsy way to shoot that scene.

And boy, did they pull off the illusion.

Todd Vaziri: It's a feat. That movie still is such a home [00:21:00] run. It is remarkable. I love it so much,

Jenny Ely: I didn't know that wasn't real. I definitely heard that myth.

Todd Vaziri: You know, whenever you hear anybody say it, say that's not real. That's not

Jenny Ely: I like the other version better.

Todd Vaziri: But that's the thing. it sparks the imagination and we want it sort of to be true. And as Rob said, it's so authentic. It's an authentic moment, but that was planned.

Rob Bredow: But they really blew up the place for real. So it's a real explosion. Yeah. It's real, yeah, it's great. Well, that's a perfect transition to talking about composition and camera moves, because that particular shot you're talking about is one of those very bold, long camera moves that draws out in, when you only have one take, it really matters that you get everything right.

And some of the kind of camera moves we often focus on are those kind of oners, those, those long camera moves. And sometimes they can be incredibly. powerful visual storytelling tools. And sometimes it can feel very gratuitous and call attention to itself. So let's spend a few minutes on our main topic, talking about what makes a great camera [00:22:00] move. And what makes great camera composition? I don't know if we want to start with a couple of examples or what comes to mind first.

Beth D'Amato: When you told me the topic of camera moves, my mind immediately went to tracking moves. I'm a big fan of long tracking moves. And there is a film I rewatched recently by Olivia Wilde called Booksmart. I don't know it, but one of my favorite camera moves of all time is towards the end of that film.

The two main characters are friends. to a party the last night before graduation. And these two characters have had a codependent friendship for years. at this party, they have their first big blowout argument.

And it starts with one of the characters in a swimming pool. She sees something that tells her, I need to leave, I need to get out of this party. She gets out and the camera starts off slowly, slowly zooming in on her and then following her aher thoughts, gathers her things and goes into the house.

And as she gets more [00:23:00] frantic to find her friend to say, we got to get out of here, the camera starts to get more frantic. And it follows her so closely as she goes down every hallway and looks in every room, you feel like you're going to bump into her. And then we, we go through the entire house, go through the entire party.

Then we suddenly are at her point of view, and we see her friend across the room. They meet, and they continue, they have their conversation, but then they start to argue. And the camera never cuts. It follows through the whole house, and then now that we're there, the camera almost becomes another person in the room rather than a window for us.

You know, typically we think of the screen as a view into the action. This camera starts to follow their conversation, and it's kind of doing the cutting for the editor. It's just slowly rotating back and forth between them. And as the conversation gets worse and their desperation gets worse, the camera slowly zooms out and you realize, oh, they're still at a party, they're in a public situation.

And you slowly start to see people at the party attending, [00:24:00] looking at them and listening. Then their cell phones come on and you see the lights on the camera, you realize it's being filmed. Olivia Wilde talked about this moment and she said, she was going to cut and show what was being filmed on the cameras, but the camera itself was capturing what was happening.

So much of the humiliation of having a public argument and all of the emotion that we can feel that she just decided to not cut. And she actually lowered the volume of their conversation as the argument went on because the camera did so much of the storytelling. It just takes you into their desperation and their humiliation.

So it goes from this frantic follow through to this glide back and forth. You get the volley of the argument and you get. The scope of just what's happening between them and it's a four minute shot. That is just for me. Absolute cinematic perfection.

Todd Vaziri: One of the things that's so great about oners like that, is that have to heighten the emotion of a scene, because I, if I remember right, that's like an emo, an emotional zenith of the movie. That is a huge peak in the, in the film of, [00:25:00] of intensity is that when the oners are done for that effect, the very fact that it just, the shot just goes on and on and on, it plays on emotional vocabulary of movies where we are expecting a cut, and the cut kind of cuts, literally cuts the tension for a moment. You get a new fresh perspective, you get a new angle on the situation. But when you're watching a scene, when you're watching two people argue, and it just keeps on going, and it's one thing to watch people argue, and you know, some people have a deep emotional reaction, like to cringe, like, I can't even watch this.

These two people are just, this, this argument. It's hitting home too close to home, but there's a part of you that's like waiting for that cut and it never comes and the tension just keeps building and building and building and building. So it's not just the craft of blocking and getting the right angles and making sure the eye lines are right and making sure they're cheating toward the camera.

And you, you sense a connection between the [00:26:00] two actors or what's happening in the foreground and background, but it's, It's like, wow, how long are they going to go at this? How long is it? When are we going to get a break? When are we going to break? And that's where the filmmaker's going. Ha ha ha.

Yeah. I have you now. you're, you're in my, the palm of my hands. but that is, uh, just get chills. Just thinking about that shot. I love that shot so much.

Beth D'Amato: And you never get the classic over the shoulder in this either. That's what I meant about it being like another person in the room. Because if you're witnessing two people argue, it's not like you're going to run around behind one of them and then go to the other like you would in a cut conversation.

You're going to stand there and just turn your head and go, I can't believe what's happening. And the camera takes that on for us in this argument. It's just

Rob Bredow: Really hard to pull off an ambitious shot like that and not make it draw attention to itself. But that's a really great example because I think you watch the first minute and a half of that shot without realizing it's a one er. Because it just feels very natural, fits right into the show, and as the tension builds, as you're describing, Todd, [00:27:00] and, and you get into that point where you realize, oh, they're not going to cut and it's going to, you know, Pan left and pan right to pick up the dialogue.

At least when I'm watching the movie, I'm more aware of it. It's more palpable, but by that time you're completely committed and you're watching this amazing performance and you're watching the composition and it's just all coming together to build the tension, which is so, that's a great example of an intentional camera choice.

Beth D'Amato: And I love that she took the audio down and then it's suddenly really about the camera move capturing the actors and their emotion and you see them arguing but you're not really hearing it and it still has the impact.

Rob Bredow: Another oneer that came to mind when I was thinking about great camera moves, great compositions, is the oneer in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they just get the good news, That they're going to be able to go on the mission to get the Ark. And it's a scene that takes place. Two people in the room.

It could just be a talking scene. Could have just been an average cutting around scene. And it's done in a oner. Indy walks in the door. They have this [00:28:00] conversation. And during this, there's so many beautiful choices made, compositionally. Like when he's packing, you know, when he, when he first sets his luggage down and opens it up, he had, that happens in the foreground of the shot, setting up the importance of what's happening there.

And then visually telling you I'm packing my bag to go on this adventure, but they're continuing this dialogue. They move into medium and closeups back and forth. So you get different closeups in a continuous shot. The editor, Vasi Nedomanski, if I'm saying his name correctly, has a really nice breakdown of the shot on Vimeo.

We'll leave, we'll provide a link to it in the show notes where he shows how the track was probably laid out in the room and how actually the camera move itself is quite simple. There's a push back and forth. It's quite minimal. And so much of the composition is done by that blocking and the acting position.

And then of course the shot famously ends when we raise the tension again, he gestures to his gun, then he tosses his gun into the luggage, which is in the foreground of the shot, you know, emphasizing its importance against [00:29:00] them. And of course, setting up the fact that this isn't going to just be an archeological journey.

We're going to have some adventure on this trip. I mean, it just does so many things so beautifully.

I mean, it's just the perfect oner to kick off that movie.

Todd Vaziri: And one of the genius things about the Spielberg oners, which are totally different than all the other flashy ones that we may ever talk about are the ones that make the top 10 list is that a lot of it creates intimacy between characters. It's not necessarily tension. Brody, if I remember right, you know, he's trying to warn Indy.

This is not a normal adventure you're about to go on. This is something important. and he even gets his single, but so much of the shot is seeing one, one character in the foreground and one character in the background, and then connecting on that level. And in a very short amount of time, you know, that Brody and Indy have a long history.

And that's how you can build camaraderie, in a very efficient way. Another director that does this very well is. Robert Zemeckis, one of, you know, Spielberg's disciples, if [00:30:00] you will, where he plays with foreground and background. If you look at Back to the Future, there's so many shots of Marty going into the foreground and Doc in the background, and then they switch places.

You know, strengthening their bond. They're always in the frame together, but they're, they're, it's not boring at all. It can be used for tension, but also for intimacy.

Rob Bredow: Another thing, just logistically, when you're talking about covering a scene like that and getting the over the shoulders that Beth was referring to, and doing all that coverage, that takes a lot of time on a production day. I mean, you've got all those setups, all those relights, and I don't know whether, again, it's lore or truth, but, I heard that Spielberg was asked about that shot and, you know, how much in advance he planned it out because it's so beautiful and masterful.

I heard that his answer was, no, we were running low on time that day, so we had to do it in a oner, that was the only way. Now, you look at the way he blocked that scene, and how masterful the back and forth is, and how each of the lines corresponds to where they are in the right moment. I mean, that is just some [00:31:00] incredible filmmaking, and probably did take a few hours to get blocked and shot.

But, that was the whole scene in that one camera set up. So you don't have to do all the rest of coverage. You don't have to, you can move very, very quickly through the production.

Todd Vaziri: the one I'm bringing to the table, is not an elaborate camera move, and it's not necessarily typical Hollywood narrative filmmaking where, you know, The camera in for the most part is supposed to blend into the background and not be that subjective.

It shouldn't be another character in the scene, but I will never ever forget watching Taxi Driver for the first time in 1978. Martin Scorsese, there, Travis Bickle, our main character, is socially a little bit inept, and we get to see him kind of fumble around with his colleagues, with people he's trying to make connections with.

And [00:32:00] in one particular scene, it's a very straightforward shot of him in a phone booth. And you see him on the phone, and I think he's trying to get a date with Cybill Shepherd, or recall what happened on their last date. It's not going well, and we've all seen movies where, and TV shows where you see some character is either leaving a long voicemail, or you only hear their end of the phone conversation, and it is cringe.

You just want them, you're just begging, just hanging up, just stop, just stop what you're doing, you're doing it all wrong. So the camera is, just like a profile of him at the phone booth and it's, it's static. It's just, you're just watching him and letting the scene play out. And as he's talking, the camera trucks to the right to reveal an empty hallway.

He's in the lobby of a building or something. We hear the conversation continuing. You are looking, the camera's looking down an empty hallway. It's [00:33:00] as if the camera operator was like, I can't even watch this anymore. It's extremely subjective. It's as if, you know, the, the, the director's doing you a favor.

You're still going to hear the awful, you know, socially awkward conversation, but I'm going to truck over and see this empty hallway. And eventually the phone conversation ends and Travis Bickle enters the frame and walks down the hallway away from us. And I'm like, you can do that in a movie? It's astounding.

It's not typical. It's not classic Hollywood filmmaking. But it is so effective. And even if you're just going like, what the heck is going on? I mean, taxi driver. It's that kind of movie. What the heck is going on here? and so that, that's a non traditional way of moving the camera in a way that fits the movie.

And the other thing I wanted to say is that, you know, when a lot of people say a movie, a camera moves gratuitously or it just doesn't. They're basically saying, [00:34:00] something happened in the movie, a camera move happened in the movie that is out of place for the rest of the movie. It's out of stylistic place.

If the movie is mostly shot on tripods, shot, reverse shot, maybe an establishing shot, cut into some close ups, and then all of a sudden you have a camera that zooms through the mug, the coffee mug that's on the table, and then comes right back out and snaps out. And that doesn't happen anywhere else in the movie.

You're gonna say, that was a weird show offy shot and camera move, and I don't know why that was in the movie. And that's what puts people off. If it's appropriate for the movie, and if plenty of movies are worth something like that, it is appropriate. people don't mind. But if it's just, if it's disparate from everything else that they've seen, They're going to, they're going to have an adverse reaction to it.

Rob Bredow: Yeah, that's one of my favorites. ways to constrain ourselves when we're doing visual effects shots is to ensure that we learn the cinematic language of that particular film and [00:35:00] show and make sure that the visual effects shots blend in seamlessly. And some people, you know, So, you know, when you think of a gratuitous camera move, you sometimes you think of those big CG camera moves where when the camera is swooping through an environment in a way that seems like it would be impossible to do with a helicopter or the right kind of rig.

And sometimes those stand out just because it's breaking the rules that have been established by the rest of the film. I remember. just working on Solo, that was one of our constraints when we were shooting in a blue screen stage on the top of a train that was supposed to be moving down the side of a mountain.

The question we always asked ourselves was if we wanted to put the camera here and we were really on a train instead of on a blue screen stage, how would we have mounted this camera? And if we couldn't mount the camera on a, on a platform that was just mounted to the side of the train, or if we couldn't have been far enough away to where it's a long lens with a helicopter, if it's in that in between zone where there would have been no way to get a chopper that close.

But it's too far away to be on a, on a platform right next to the train that had been rigged up to do that, then maybe we shouldn't put the camera there because it [00:36:00] might subconsciously pull people out of the sequence and feel too, too objective, too perfect for what the sequence needed.

Beth D'Amato: You're bringing up a conversation, actually, that we had with James Mangold a while back when he was working on, Ford vs Ferrari. He said pretty much that exact thing when he's working with a CG camera, a computer generated camera. He insists that it should never be placed where he couldn't put a real camera.

But what's interesting is that it provides Great artistry and a great challenge to a director. But does it also deprive us? Because some of my favorite shots and films over the years have been those crazy camera angles where, you know, a camera could never be. I'm picturing Pearl Harbor when the bomb flies through the air.

We follow it all the way down into the water, and then it goes directly to the USS Arizona. You know, a camera would never follow a bomb or a torpedo that way, and it made for a really exciting shot. So, I guess it matters to, what film and how you're gonna use it, I guess is

Rob Bredow: [00:37:00] Well, and Pearl Harbor is such a great example of a movie that stylistically is pushed in such a way, like every shot is, is, is a beautiful glossy shot that belongs in a commercial and feels like it looks like a hundred million dollars. So then when you do a more dramatic, you know, camera move like that, I'm here for the ride.

Let's go, because I'm loving these, these planes are ten feet from my head, and I'm five feet behind this bomb, like, I'm in the middle of the action, and this is what I'm expecting, because I got, I got prepared by the language, the film language, throughout the film. we shouldn't leave composition and camera moves without, Referencing this meme that's been going around that provides a camera movement guide.

Now, maybe many of you have seen it. we'll post a link to it in the show notes. It talks about the different ways you can move a camera and we'll, maybe we'll talk through those very briefly or let you just look at it in the show notes. But then it says the client camera movement guide and has all of the same moves, whether it's dolly or booming and jibbing or trucking or panning, as you've heard us use these different terms, in terms of how we move the camera.

[00:38:00] And then for the client camera move. Guide, it just has them all listed with pan, six pans in a row. You can pan left and right. You can pan up and down. And of course, pan is supposed to be reserved for the left and right, but that is not always how it's referred to. but you can, you can sound

Todd Vaziri: Then we pan in, then we pan out, then we pan up and then we pan down. No, you don't.

Rob Bredow: So technically you tilt up and down. That's right. You tilt up and down, you pan left and right. If you want to, if you want to roll the camera, you're going to be banking the horizon left and right.

Jenny Ely: That's a good tip for any aspiring filmmakers out there. Don't get around other people and say pan up or pan down because you'll end up being made fun of on a podcast.

Todd Vaziri: That's true.

Rob Bredow: The trickiest one.

That's right. That's right. It happens all the time. I don't think, I mean, people don't religiously only use the right word. And I don't think anybody's laughing. But it is nice to know the right word because sometimes it's more descriptive. I think the trickiest one is whether you're dollying in or zooming in.

Because those are actually very different things. Terms and actually is a [00:39:00] very different style if it's actually zooming with the lens, which is just adjusting the crop, right? And that's a that's especially in like movies in the 70s You see that a lot where they're actually using the zoom in the storytelling to focus the attention There's some snap zooms in episode 7 There's zooms in a lot of movies But a lot of times when you're getting when you're making things bigger You're doing it by dollying and you're doing it by getting closer to the action with a fixed lens And those two things are not interchangeable, and sometimes people use those words interchangeably, and that's a, that's a one that causes a lot of confusion if you don't use the right word, I'd say.

Todd Vaziri: If you say pan up or pan down, we know what we mean. But if you confuse Dolly with zoom, that's a, that's a real issue because it's a huge difference.

Rob Bredow: in the area of composition and camera moves? There's so many more things we could talk about. I don't know, Todd or Beth, was there any last comments you had before we move into our martini?

Beth D'Amato: I came prepared with some examples of composition. You know, I mean, you can interpret it so many ways. [00:40:00] you can have compositions that convey suspense. You can have a composition that says, you know, pause on this frame and it's a beautiful painting. And I just wanted to give a nod to Greta Gerwig for her composition.

The end of Lady Bird, there's some shots,and it's like a little bit of a love letter to Sacramento. And it's cut between Lady Bird herself driving through Sacramento and it's supposed to convey that, you know, the mom has done this a million times.

The daughter is doing it and appreciating it for the first time. And we cut between them. They're not doing it at the same time. It's like, you know, kind of a present day for the daughter. And, you know, many thousands of times the mother has done it. But she frames these shots in the same way for the driver.

But you're suddenly seeing Sacramento differently throughout their window. And it's just each. The shot is absolutely beautiful and it becomes a love letter between the relationship between the mother and daughter just based on how she composes it and captures their emotion. And then I could just say Barbie is a master class in composition.

[00:41:00] There's so many things going on in every single shot but Greta masterfully guides you where to look. You never miss the moment that she wants you to focus on. So those are different ways of interpreting composition and I just wanted to toss

Rob Bredow: I love those examples, boy, Barbie is such a good example that with so many things going on yet,You never miss the action.

You never miss the thing you're looking for. And that's a lot of color composition. Sometimes it's depth of field. there's so many different tricks used so brilliantly by Greta in that film.

Todd Vaziri: The ones I wanted to talk about with camera movement are two of Catherine Bigelow's movies, Point Break and Strange Days, both,to slightly different effects. But Point Break, which has one of the most amazing action scenes ever, a foot chase between, uh, Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze and the way she uses the camera there. You know, you are running alongside these characters and going through the gauntlet of all of the, the, the going in and out of houses, in and out of, backyards over fences and the camera is an active [00:42:00] participant in it, but never taking you out of the movie and never making it feel like it's, an artifice.

It's absolute genius how she's able to do all that and edit it all together into such an amazing. bit of cinema there. And then she takes that a little bit further in strange days, which is an amazing movie that has extended sequences from the point of view of somebody where it, the whole cab, conceit of the movie is that there's a technology that you can record your, what you see and play it back for somebody else.

So people are frequently. Playing back recordings of what somebody went through and like walking through or robbing a restaurant or eventually falling off of a building and other horrible things in an extremely R rated movie. it touches on the things that we've talked about were super long shots, building the tension, but like what Beth was saying, always understanding the relationships between the characters.

So, you know, what's going on. You're not confused. You're not disoriented, unless it's purposeful. yeah. Catherine Bigelow, the camera and [00:43:00] editing, just her, her, her, her whole, filmography is just amazing.

Rob Bredow: I love this. I love talking about composition and the, and the, the handshake there is between all the departments to make these things come together. It really is the lighting, it's the camera position, but it's also the set decoration, it's the action blocking, it's all these things coming together to create these illusions that you're talking about.

It's really, really fun. Well, I think that takes us to our martini. That is the last shot of the day on set. It's the last segment in our show today. Todd, do you want to get us started with your martini today?

Todd Vaziri: Sure. I was trying so hard not to mention lighting, because lighting is a key component to all of this composition and camera moves and stuff. So I'm going to mention it here. I'm going to say a really great. one two punch of learning a little bit about cinematography in regards to lighting or watching two Black and white movies, back to back from separated by many, many decades.

So [00:44:00] I'm, I'm talking about The Third Man from 1949, Carol Reed's movie, that takes place in, you know, post-war, Vienna. The lighting in this movie is so outrageous. The silhouettes, the shapes, the, It is a master class in black and white photography, and most of the shots are just lockoffs.

So you don't have the camera movement to create emotion. It's purely in the lighting. And it's also fun to just watch it and go, okay, a lot of this movie takes place at night. At night. There's an amazing chase sequence through Vienna. And you're like, no, at no point do you go, why are there so many lights?

Around here. This is a bombed out city and they're, they're literally crawling around rubble and stuff. You don't think about the lights because you're thinking about the action and what the characters are going through. Separated by many, many decades is the Netflix series, Ripley, which is shot by a former ILMer Robert Ellsworth.

One of the great [00:45:00] cinematographers working today, similar deal where the mini series is, mostly lock offs, and it's about shot composition. it is presented in black and white, and it is stunningly beautiful. and, and the same kind of lessons about how to draw the eye. Where, where are we supposed to look?

What's in the foreground, what's in the background? Another masterclass in, stunning lighting, emotional lighting. And that's what you can do more in black and white than you can with color because you're with so many vectors removed, the huge vector of color, you can get away with a lot more, fanciful things in an, in an ostensibly realistic, project.

So, yeah, The Third Man and Ripley, those are my recommendations.

Rob Bredow: Love it. Thank you, Todd. Beth, what do you have for the martini?

Beth D'Amato: My martini is one of my all time favorite obsessions and it didn't even occur to me until I thought about how I [00:46:00] was going to present this that it completely coincides with camera move and that was unplanned but my obsession forever has outside of feature films has been the show The West Wing.

The new book came out, it's called What's Next? And it's been touted as a backstage pass into everything about The West Wing.

The creation of it, the production of it, the cast, and all of their civil service outside of the show.

I'm in the middle of it right now. And what's so appropriate is for television, Aaron Sorkin and John Wells and Tommy Schlamme, the producers, were groundbreaking in their camera moves. They're known for the walk and talk, the tracking shots that follow the characters through the hallways of the West Wing.

And I just thought it's pretty hilarious that I was just like, you know, I'm going to talk about this book. It's like my favorite thing about my favorite obsession. I'm like, wait a minute. And a tracking shot. So it's. The perfect, uh, olive in my martini, I would say.

Todd Vaziri: Great.

Rob Bredow: That's great. We'll make sure to link to that in the show [00:47:00] notes. Jenny, what did you bring today?

Jenny Ely: I have a TV show that I'm going to talk about, but I also love The West Wing. It is just. It's probably one of my favorite all time shows

Okay, so my martini this week is a Netflix series that I just binged and it is Unsolved Mysteries season four. So I love Unsolved Mysteries. I loved it when I was a kid. It was terrifying. Growing up in the 80s and 90s when you couldn't go on the internet and see if these great People had been caught or what was going on.

You just lived in, in constant fear and, you know, your parents threatened you. You know, if you stay out too late, you're going to get abducted and end up on unsolved mysteries. Robert Stack was scary. The theme song is scary. The executive producer is Sean Levy. who's the director of Deadpool and Wolverine.

They brought it back with new unsolved mysteries, and I will sit down, I've done this every season, I'll sit down and say, I'm gonna watch one episode, and then it's four o'clock in the morning, and I have watched every single episode. And as someone who regularly cannot [00:48:00] find their glasses, car keys or anything else important when unsolved mysteries comes on, I become an internet sleuth, you know, I, I'm like, okay, these are unsolved, but now I'm watching.

So clearly I'm going to figure this out. So, every season has been really good. This one though, there's five new episodes. I think there's going to be a next part to the season where they're going to have more, but the final episode in season four is about the Mothman, which just happens to be my favorite cryptid.

So if you're into cryptid mythology and you love Mothman, as I do, I highly recommend this. It's super fun. It'll freak you out. It's scary. And you can quit your day job and go on the internet and solve crime.

Rob Bredow: Let us know if you solve any of these. My martini for today is Derek Delgado's In and Of Itself directed by Frank Oz. It's on Hulu. If you haven't seen it, it's absolutely delightful. movie, or documentary about the play.

Rob Bredow: It's, it's so well done. And if you've never seen the play, you don't have to have seen the play to enjoy [00:49:00] this. It really is a different thing. It's built on the play. It's presented so cleverly, and I don't want to spoil anything. You should just see it, but Frank Oz directed this. And Frank Oz also helped creatively on the show.

If I were to say it's a, it's a magic show, that would be a very, that would be a very confusing way to say it, but there is magic involved in this presentation, but it's much more than that, and the tricks are fantastic, but, the emotional resonance, I think, of the storytelling is really where it's at, and Frank Oz is a genius.

You should watch everything he's done, but Derek DelGaudio's In and of Itself is a highlight that I got to watch recently.

Thank you for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast. If you have a question for the show, we'd love to hear from you. We've been getting great questions at lighterdarker@ilm.com

Or you can contact us on social media, Todd, you're at.

Todd Vaziri: I'm at tvaziri.com. All the links are there.

Rob Bredow: And, Beth, where can we find you? Can we find you on Instagram?

Beth D'Amato: Yeah, I'm on Instagram at BDAmato.

Rob Bredow: Excellent and Jenny.

Jenny Ely: I am on Instagram at [00:50:00] instajennyely.

Rob Bredow: On most socials or you can find me at robbredow.com for all the details there. The show notes are going to be at ilm.com slash lighterdarker. You're going to find this episode and all episodes there. And thank you to ILM visual effects supervisor Hacho Orfali who delivered a sting that you heard at the opening.

And Pablo Hellman has provided a second outro track for today's episode. You can find Pablo on SoundCloud under the Surfwood Circle band. Uh, we want to thank Industrial Light & Magic for hosting this podcast. The show is produced by Jenny Ely and myself. Today's episode has been edited by Chris Hawkinson.

Thank you, Chris, for all the hard work. And we want to thank everybody on ILM's PR team, led by Greg Grusby, who, of course, Are working really hard behind the scenes to make sure word gets out on this podcast. the initial response has been fantastic. So we want to thank you for giving us the thumbs up and the ratings and all the clicks that you have.

It's really gone a long way towards keeping things moving forward and keeping people finding the podcast. So [00:51:00] thank you so much for listening and participating in a lighter, darker podcast, and until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.