BPS 394: Lighting Big Budgets and Indie Films with Shane Hurlbut

And we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Now, Guys, today on the show, we have cinematographer and educator Shane Hurlbutt.

And you might know Shane's work for movies like Semipro with Will Ferrell, Swing Vote with Kevin Costner, the two hundred million dollar plus budget Terminator Salvation, We are Marshall Into the Blue, the Greatest Game ever played in the list goes on and on, and Shane and I go deep into the weeds on what a take to light a good scene with no budget, with a lot of budget, his experiences in the business, his journey from where he started to where he is today, how he's changed his

point of view of how to run a set, how he runs his team, and we also talk about his amazing educational products for cinematographers and so much more so, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Shane hurlbut I like to welcome to the show, Shane hurle butt.

Upstate New York area. And then when I decided to go to college, I was like you know, I don't want to really burn my parents' money. They were kind enough to say they would help me with my education. So I was like, let me test the water, so let me see if I like this. So I went to a small community college just to see if I really fell in love with radio. Well, the first year was radio. Totally loved it. The second year was television,

and the television just blew my mind. That's where it just started to open up these kind of ideas and creative inspiration and everything. And then a friend of mine was directing. He was in the USC directing program, and he came back to our hometown and he was doing a small movie that summer and I just wanted to be a part of it in any way I could. And I was a PA, and then I was a little I was a grip and I was an electric

and I was doing everything I could. And at that point I got in with a full ride scholarship to Emerson College in Boston and I went there and that was where I just fell in love with film. But the funny thing is is I hated cinematography. I thought I was going to be a producer because I could. I could convince anybody to do anything I wanted. And I was good with numbers, fair enough, right, I had

that passion. I was positive. I was like, all right, you know, I could sell anything as well, you know, so I was like all right, and you know, after about three months of me wearing my mom got me a nice three piece suit, and I was like pounding the pavement in Boston, knocking on doors, and every one of them was just slammed in my face saying, you know, no, no, no. I went back and I said, all right, let me go back to the internship that I had, which was

at a local grip electric and camera house in Boston. And that's where I started, and I started to fall in love with grip and lighting and camera, and then I got to a point where within three months, I was running the whole rental division. And then I decided that I was started to go out on jobs because I came from a farm, right, So that's my upbringing.

I was we had like a three hundred acre farm in upstate New York, and so I could drive ten ton trucks, forty footers, whatever it was, I could drive it. I started driving trucks and I was the grip truck driver, and I started going out. I was managing the rental division and also going out on jobs, and quickly I saw that the only way I was going to move up in Boston is if the guy or the girl that was above me died. So I knew it was

a very limited pool there. So I, you know, my fiance at the time, who was my high school sweetheart, Lydia, who I met at three years old. I said, Lydia, let's go to LA Let's you know, make this mission, this exodus out of the East Coast and go to

the West coast. And that's what we did. And I started right back at the bottom again, working at a small little rental house, and then I got a job that they asked me to be the grip truck driver, which meant I had to leave my job at the rental house, which was you know, I finally had a full time job, and I was starting to bring in some money. Ooh, five dollars an hour. I'm with steel toed boots and T shirts and jeans working in the warehouse. But I finally said, okay, I'm going to go for it.

So I got on this feature, and this feature was called PHANFASM two.

run me in an eighteen by twenty four flag. So I ran in the grabbed the flag off the truck and ran it in. I was going down these steps into the crematorium set and this best boy electric Brian Coin, very good friend of mine, is an amazing director of photography and director as well. He's walking up the stairs and he goes, would you be scared? And I go, Brian, what the hell are you talking about? I got to run this flag down into Terry. He goes, would you be scared? In the theater.

now that this would have never happened. But I was freaking out because the basket was moving around like crazy up there, and he's like, you know, you're not coming down. It's it's fine, you know, And I said, okay, you know, and all of a sudden, this big wind gust came up, and all of a sudden that condor just started to go no. So the thing starts slowly going and it's starting to pick up steam and pick up steam and pick up steam. And I'm just looking and I'm like, okay,

I'm gonna and it. It's over a ledge, right, It's over like this ravine. No, and that thing is just gonna go right over it. Right. So I'm thinking to myself, Okay, that's gonna crush everyone down below me. And everything is coming down. So at about twenty feet I disconnect my safety harness and I jump, so I land, you know, and roll, you know, just to the side of the ravine so I don't go off of it, and this

lift literally comes down and parallels and everyone. It was like it was watching paint dry, even though it happened a lot faster, but it was like and then it just hung there and and then all of a sudden, it was like and then it just started gathering steam, you know, and everything. And then it just went quack like this, and the eighteen K.

amazing story. That's an amazing story. So so you, I mean, you've you've lit some very large sets and some very big action sequenceys and thinking of Terminator, how do you approach lighting these massive set pieces. I mean, these sets are massive with you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people running around the effects. You're thinking about practicals, I mean, just as a cinematographer, how do you approach mentally to to cover that and light it and then cover it?

cover from creating one big light source. Let's say so let's say Terminator Salvation for example, the processing plant that we did where you know, all those people are being pushed by that bulldozer thing that you know, I embedded these spikes in it and these lights that eruughed and it starts pushing the people and we kind of, you know, I wanted everything is all about the you know, lighting the background first, then lighting the mid ground, then eventually

the fore ground where the actors might be playing. So my big thing for that was, Okay, how can I create this incredibly you know, really scary tone in this terminator salvation processing plan. So I was like, all right, what if I get some metal haldline lights and get like sixty of them and line them up on basically

creates stadium lights. So we created these massive fifty five foot pettybones with I think it was like twenty metal halides on each one, and they were like in racks of you know, five across, four high, and we catapulted those up. And what I wanted to do, and you don't see it in the movie because they cut it out beforehand, but what these things did is they aim straight up in the air and they were all full

spot and it almost looked like a tractor beam. And that was the whole idea, is through the fog and the dirt and all that stuff, this was the guiding light for you know, the transporters to come in and settle down into the area. It was like this tractor beam. And then I racked them straight up and then as they came in and landed, these things started to tilt down and just you know, expose the whole bed of

several transporters that are dropping all these people off. So that was my first big approach for lighting something that was like five football fields long and a football field wide is just the motivation of what the emotion is, like, Okay, these are the machines. Let's go metal haldline. Let's turn it that blue green kind of nastiness. Let's inject these white beaming lights that flare the lens and are foreboding and dangerous for people.

that one big source coming from. I could go to like Greatest Game where I would take a huge grand ballroom and Copley at like the Copley Place, and it was up in Montreal, and we found this amazing ornate turn of the Sentry ballroom and it's like the the bones are there, there's beautiful warm practicals and everything. But if it's just that and just the window light it doesn't feel grand. So it's like you have to bring

that out with you know. I put a huge source on the right hand side that was out of frame, that was twelve by twelve, you know, bleached muslins and I pounded eighteen k's into them and then shaped it with siders and toppers to feel like more window light that we don't see, like the ballroom goes on forever, right right, right right, And again that's also the thing

of selling the illusion. Right, So this we still have a beautiful wide shot from the second story and we're pushing in ever so slightly, but wow, there's this light coming in, so the ballroom must be going on for even more, you know. So lighting also these elements create

the illusion of bigger locations than they actually are. So just by bringing in that kind of cold tone mixed with the warm practicals and the sconces that are on the wall, it was a very easy light in that location because it just basically was started with practicals and one huge source. I try to kiss it, keep it simple, stupid, Like the more you add lights, the more complicated everything gets. So I try to, you know, start with one big source and then slowly add on to that. And the

background is something that is everything to me. So I light that first and create all the depth and dimension, whether it's boca, whether it's you know, out of focus, other highlights or or whatever it is that plays with light and shadow back there to give it depth and dimension, that three dimensional quality. And then I slowly move to the mid ground and then to the foreground where the actors are moving. And I generally try to light an area,

not marx. One thing that Harris Savits uh taught me, and he was so spot on with this. He goes, Shane, light an area, not a mark, because you want the actors to feel that they can move in this area and that it feels not so perfect and and a little like it's beauty raw, I would say. And that's where I'd say, Ben Heutman, you know, he's a he's another amazing director of photography, and he lights exactly like that. It's imperfect, but it's still beautiful. You know, it has

that rawness to it. And Uh, and you do that by just lighting an area and not necessarily lighting marks, because lighting marks, you're gonna they're gonna nail their mark. And you can have the perfect wrap on the key light and the perfect back light and nice fill and everything. But when you have to light a larger area for them to move in, the perfections of the light actually add to authenticity and reality, and I feel it feels more organic.

this is one searching for. Bobby Fisher is one of those because and I always ask him, like, it's it's a family film. It's like, it's not grand, it's not flashy. And but when I talk to cinematographers about that film, it was Conrad, right, was Conrad Ad Hall?

But when he's lighting a face, that light is full spot and then it's scrimmed down to exactly the right level. So we were constantly like, I was like, when I walk on side, I was like, what is with all these double and triple scrim bags on the damn lights? Who the hell needs that many scrims, you know? And then all of a sudden he's like, you know, spotting the thing in and I'm like, damn, that's bright, And all of a sudden, the full house became the thing.

Two doubles in a single boom, you know, full house. It okay, another full house, and I'm like, how the hell does that even fit in there? And there, you know, grip clipping the things on the outside you know, take it down. But that was how he lit and searching for Bobby Fisher used tons of that hard shadow and hard light to really show the emotions of them and all the characters. And you know, another great one is

Road to Their Dish. You know that's all hard light, and you know the way he positions them and the you know, once working with him, my moonlight is always silver. It's like he really dialed in the silver moonlight. There was nobody that did silver moonlight like him. And that's that's something that I responded to and I've always done my silver moonlight is where it's at. And you know another person that does that very well is Bob Richardson.

Like snow Falling on Seedars is probably within the top five greatest cinematic achievements ever.

as well as wrapping the fill. And then what I'll do is I'll do this kind of kind of a J shape that goes from hard to semi hard to soft just super soft all the way around. And that's kind of you know, if I'm doing any kind of scenario where people are walking into frame or I'm lighting an area. That's kind of how I attack it. It's like, you know, it starts and then it moves around to like, you know, just a cream source with magic cloth. Nice.

Because I know cinematographers in their glass is very they're very specific about We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show what they really love.

soul of the building is the glass. And you know, I've gone like every project like let's say, greatest game ever played, right I you know, working with Bill Paxton, you know, we we stumbled onto a look of this book called Bound for Glory, which was all these reclaim aimed. They found them in some person's addict in Kansas City, Missouri. That were all these old codachrome prints from the FSA area era. And because the FSA had shot black and

white throughout the whole time. But when Kodak came out with codochrome in the late nineteen thirties, they sixteen hundred prints were struck and these were printed in this book Bound for Glory, and both Bill and I really resonated that this is going to be the look for the Greatest Game. We wanted it to feel period, but we also wanted it to have a contemporary style to camera.

So it's like we delivered a period look, but the camera we flew with the camera, you know, with the ball and went into the hole and we showed the power of each individual golfer got inside their head. And so I did a lot of search on you know, old glass, and I went to Panavision and I just dug into their archives for about three days, and I

came out with these old Zeiss ultraspeeds Mark two's. They were like made in the late sixties, and their coding was not the greatest, and when you put them down to a T two they started to really full pull point one three. There was even there was a lens that was specifically done for Stanley Kubrick, and that was a fifty mil at a T one, right, so I had I always had that one in my arsenal. I grabbed that one. I had the fifty five. We called

it the jacked up fifty or the double nickel. They were all these weird focal lanes A twenty A twenty nine, twenty nine Wow twenty nine, which was is the greatest steadycam lens on the planet. The uh it had you know, like the double nickel to fifty five, it had sixteen you know, just all these very weird focal lengths. And we did a series of tests and I it took me twenty different sets to find a matching three set right,

either yellow or just all jacked up. And they were, you know, everyone was like, why are you shooting with these things? Shane? These things were fifteen dollars a day to rent. That's it. Fifteen dollars a day.

them the vintage primes. So all the Mark twos were rehoused because one thing shooting with them, which is difficult. Some lenses said this, some lenses said that, someone said this. You know, they were all over the map, so it created all these doughnuts and all these Yeah. Yeah, they slows the filmmaking process down every time you change a lens, right, So they pee vintaged these, put a new coding on them and then rehoused them so they're all the same millimeter diameter.

love the old vintage glass. I'm not the big anamorphic guy. I know. Anamorphic is a massive craze right now, everyone's all into this thing. I couldn't be further from that. I like spherical spherical feels more real, Spherical feels more intimate. And when you get those wide angles pushed in close and really into the scene, which you cannot do with anamorphics because they cannot focus, you don't feel intimate with the actors. I always feel anamorphic lenses, you're a pedestrian.

Why would you want that? Now? Of course there's tons of movies that don't feel like pedestrian that have been shot on anamorphics that are awesome. This is just my point of view. This is how I look at lenses and how I feel because I'm much more of a person that not a long lensier, stand back and lens in. I like to be much more immersive. Not really started

with all the sports movies. I started to do because I felt, you know, getting inside the action and inside the game was much more powerful than showing the audience what they've already seen on television right from the outside. Now, what you have to do is a beautiful balance of lensing from the outside to show geography and getting into the game. You can't just do in the game because nobody knows where the hell you are on the field, So you do those outside in shots and that's something

where I call it the inside out right. It's like I try to first take apart the scene from doing it all inside inside the game so you feel completely intimate, and then you say, what do you need to tell the story? Geography, and that's what you use from the outside. So it's not like, Okay, let's establish it. You know, it's not outside in, it's inside out. Now.

out for a second. I got the sixteen I got the sixteen millimeters version of that, which is a five point seven and connected into the Black Magic Pocket ten eighty and it's stune. I shot my last feature with it. It's done. It's just no, no, no fish eye. But you need light. It's great for outside, inside you gotta

pump some light into it. But it's I always thought some of dps about that, and they're like, you mean no fish eye, Like it's such an old lines that it's it's I call it the Kubrick because Stanley loved, love shooting with that. Have you ever shot with it?

at all the Panavision glass, Panavision were Lights glass. It was not Panavision glass, it was Light's glass. So and that's what I really responded to coming up in my career, I was all about the Panavision Primo Prime. So when the new Sumicrons and sumaluxes came out with the Laikas, I did tests on both and I found that, you know, the Suma luxes with the one three give you an amazing you know, shallow depth of field and much more

of a flatter field. They're very clinical. But the Sumicrons at a T two and basically ten thousand dollars less a lens, they have more of the imperfections, and they're better with skin, and they they don't flatten out a face. The face has dimension.

good contrast ratio. So yeah, it's it's it's really per project for sure. And I think, you know, I was I was interviewing for a project recently, and I was like, there were kind of two differ worlds, and I was looking at a lot of tests with the az News those new Premiere primes that came out, and that glass has a slight magenta to it. It's got a slight softness in the center and it creams out beautifully. So I was going to use that for this area of

the movie. And then the more kind of you know, raw and gritty I was actually going to do, like the Zeiss signature primes that have much more of a bold, contrasty look. So just using glass to tell the story and not necessarily your color correction. Pay.

all went down. We went to the airfield where the plane crashed, We went to the university and took all that flavor in And there was a scene that we did out in the middle of nowhere on this lone road where Matthew Fox, who was Red, who did not hop on the plane, he drove and it was my dad had come down with pancreatitis. And I've never had to leave a movie, and I had to. They told me he was going to die. So I went to mcg and I said, Mick g I need a week off.

I gotta go see my dad. He's on his deathbed. So I flew back to Syracuse, New York, and stayed with my dad for a week and he actually turned around. And when I flew back. The first shot I did was this lone road with the isolated gas station in the middle of nowhere, and I just remember coming up and I'm like, you know, all right, let's encircle that

thing with yellow fluorescence around the exterior. Let's put a metal halide back behind to glow those trees, and let's put one loane, you know, two twenty four light dinos, one hundred and twenty foot condor, and just bring moonlight down the street, wet it down so it has that glisten, and I just put the camera. The camera didn't even

have to move. It was just like bam, and we see that lone car with the headlights and he pulls over in the gas station and it was like, those are one of those iconic moments where my god, I thought my dad was going to die. I, you know, stumble on set basically got off the plane right, you know, in Night Exterars, So I had to turn myself around into Nights and you know, this was the first frame that came out of me after all that emotion that I had gone through, and that was like a very

defining moment. And then recently I worked on this movie that was like a teen rom com and it was with a director Emily King, and it was she was from Hong Kong and she had amazing pitch deck on the movie and her vision was very strong and we just completely bonded shot listing and coming up with this thing.

And the last three days of the film were our big dance numbers because they did the musical Bye by Bertie and I and Emily and the production designer did not want to do it like most high school musicals would have done it very literally. We wanted to take a very kind of surreal take on this and very abstract and the lighting and then working with the dance, the dance team and the choreography to be able to put all these lights in and how they positioned and

moved with the dancers. And I'm just telling you, I was at that monitor and when the shit all came together, it was apps loop magic and it was like one of those kind of moments where you just look back and you say, my god, I just I'd love when you know it's all the departments just all you know, fueling on twelve cylinders. It's like you got production design just knocking out the set and the abstract nature of it. You got my lighting team that is just bringing the

excellence and precision. You got the dancers delivering every single time, no matter how many times I said, Okay, we got to do it again. And it's like the eightieth time, and they were like saying, you know, Shane, we see so much of your passion and what you're in. When you told us we had to do it for the eighty first time, we were all in, even though we

were spent, you know. And it's like that kind of positive nature and seeing it all happen on screen, and then the wave of accolades from the choreographer to the dancers to everyone saying that they just felt like, you know, this small little unit was was making everything so special and we cared so much that they were represented so beautifully, And I don't know, it's just just one of those kind of moments where you kind of just you sit back and you say, God, I love what I do.

I absolutely love what I do.

I'll never forget my first gaffing gig. I was doing a Barbie commercial and we had we had started outside day exteriors, so I had set my meter at fifty ASA and I was out there exposing film and all great, and then we came into the sound stage. Well I forgot to oh, oh, so we're lighting this thing, the whole thing. And then I went up to the DP and I said, I just want to tell you I've been rating this at fifty ASA and he freaked out. You know, that was two and a half stops over exposed.

He was worried with the Barbie and the client shot, but.

You got to put yourself out there and you got to know you're going to fail and and uh and I just that's my whole mantras, like I just want to continue to challenge myself, push myself out of my comfort zone. You know there's even as in my career right now, I make mistakes. You know, I try new things and I'm like, god, what was I thinking with this? You know that didn't work, But you know, you pick yourself up since those suspenders and you.

listen while you're doing stuff. Why are they using this type of filter or why are they why are they setting the camera up this way? I'm going to mental note on that. And the same with a grip and electric house. You know, I started out at a rental house. So on Terminator Salvation and the big mine escape, you know where they go through the landmine and it's all one shot, you know, beautifully Tory Graft who we're going

with them and all that stuff. We had a Xenon four K xenon on a scaffolding tower is our quote unquote searchlight. Right when we were about ready to go, the light goes out. Well everyone's scrambling and they don't know what's happening and all that stuff. And I had this duster jacket. They called me the crow across and the thing flipped in the wind, you know, and I run to the xenon and I pop out the side panel and the fuse is blown, and I take it.

I grab some aluminum foil, I wrap it around the damn thing, jam it in there, hit the transformer and boom the lighting nights and I run back and they're like, holy shit, how did you know how to do that? And I'm like, well, these were workarounds in the rental house when you know, we we wanted to see if the light fired and we didn't have the fuse, and these fuses were a specific one that necessarily we didn't

carry all the time, and this was the workaround. So it's like I'm constantly at even to this day where you know, there's so many new people coming up the ladder and with this tax incentive, States and Atlanta just exploding, and there's not enough crew there to really support the movies. So a lot of people are just walking off you know, farming community and construction sites and all of a sudden, you know, right to work. They're gripping electrics. So I'm

constantly trying to you know, teach this. You know this this new age of people that were quote unquote did not go to film school. They just are doing it for the money. That's that new regime that I'm seeing through the dustry. That's been a big shift that I started feeling in twenty and eighteen when I went up to Canada and all the all of my electrics were on permits and they had all been on oil dykes just a month earlier, so they.

they are like, ah, I got this. Or the people that aren't they take it and a lease. They have some kind of of infrastructure and awareness to like what things are called and how to use stuff.

and you try your best to work with it. But I've kind of, you know, set a positive spin on it because I do love teaching as well, and so I've I try to set it up so they're learning as much as they can, and I take the time when I can to h to kind of educate them and get them up to speed.

are really sensitive. I mean you really, I mean you could get a lot out of some of these low budget cameras.

camera and PLoP it down. I call them shit sticks, right, so they're like, you know, those little carbon fiber kind of plasticky sticks, and I slapped the camera on it, and I would not light the room until that camera was up and turned on because the Gemini, that Canon, the Venice and the Panasonic they see light that and add contrast that your.

I love clamp lights. I still use them all the time. I'm I'm using clamp lights all the time. I'm uh I'm putting you know those under cabinet lights U gorgeous, Yeah, you know, from home Depot. I'm using the LED strips to stick underneath things, you know, I I I tend to uh, I like like the old dust to dawn fixtures, the metal halie and sodium vapor.

So you know, let's be real, let's let's deliver the light. That's reality, you know. So I just screwed some shot fluorescence to the ceiling and put them up, you know. So it's there's a whole plethora of DIY tape tips, you know, with the with the clamp lights, with those fluorescence, with the new led uh sticks and strips and led ribbon forget china balls, yeah, always using china balls. And

then I shape them with you know, black tablecloth. You know, plastic tablecloth works beautifully every You don't have to use doubatine. You can use black tablecloth because black tablecloth doesn't have the sheen of viscuen. It's matted, so it's very much like doubtine, just not fire retardant and and obviously stick

and heavy. So the black tablecloth works beautifully to shape lights in different locations and ceilings where you can't you know, be ringing these big toppers and everything because you can't compromise the location, some good frogs, tape and black tablecloth, and you're off to the races.

to be with me for a week. And we were sitting in bed one night and I was planning out my shot list for the next day and she goes, you know, Shane, what you're doing with this DSLR platform and how you have kind of spearheaded this revolution. We need to talk about this. We need to share your knowledge and really ignite a revolution. I was like, what

the hell are you talking about to shooting. He goes, I'm I'm a cinematographer, and she goes, I'm going to brand you, right, and I'm like cinemat I'm a cinematographer, not a brand, and sure enough with her vision and forward future thinking ways, she you know, said let's start this blog and let's share knowledge. And I was like, okay,

sounds great. So we started this little blog and the blog just exploded during the DSLR revolution because I was doing things that everyone was like, what, you know, You're shooting a major feature film that's going to go in nine thousand theater screens on a DSLR still camera, right, And I'm like, yeah, and this is the settings that make your camera cinematic, and this is what iso you want to shoot at to have the lower noise, and this is the lenses that you want to fabricate to

you know. So it just like exploded, and based on that, they wanted more and more and ask for more and give you know, let's start your writing is writing is great, but we want video content. So then in twenty fourteen, we launched Shane's Inner Circle and that was our first stab at a membership platform, and we really didn't know

what the heck we were doing. All I knew is I had passion and I had this god given talent to really inspire people and teach and I just wanted to throw gasoline on anyone who wanted to be a part of it, to just you know, fuel that flame. And so we started out and we said it was going to be like the Netflix for filmmakers. You know, we made it super cheap because I didn't want all the way to the world on me to produce all this content.

If it was really expensive, then the weight of the world was going to be on me, and I wasn't going to be able to be a cinematographer. So we started out with this little longer blog posts and more depth and going down rabbit holes, and then we just started video content. And when the video content hit and we saw how people responded to it, it was like, all right, let's start to structure where I can be a cinematographer and then do my movie and then come

back and start shooting and creating this content. And we just started to do it at the grandest scale. We started forty footers, fifty men and women crew, you know, full on catering and production and all the stuff to be able to put this together. And it blossomed into what the Hroban Academy is right now, which is you know, basically our tagline now, which is going to be the

Filmmaker's Academy very soon, is master your Craft. And we basically with this platform, we're bringing all my friends and all my loyal you know, vendors and everyone that have have helped shape me as a cinematographer. I'm now inspiring them and finding the ones that really want to teach and give back. And now we're going to get this team of a listers together and we're just gonna really come out swinging. And you know, the Filmmaker's Academy is going to be all about that top level that you

aspire to. Right It's like, I, as much as I love the DIY tips and kind of the popsicle sticks and gaffers tape stuff, you know, if I teach at that level, where do they have to aspire to? You need to teach at the highest level. And it's their their learning and their experience that's going to scale it. Because if I do it at their level, then I've already filled in the blanks and I've already done their job.

Or what I want them to do is exactly what I did when I was a cinematographer, coming up the ladder. I looked at Roger Deakins and Bob Richardson and Emanuel Lebenski, and I was like looking at the style of light and how they softened it and everything, And that was my mantra even when I was doing like the low budget music videos and little commercials and all this stuff where I didn't have the big eighteen k's and everything that they had. I just in my mind I had

to scale it. And that shaped me as a cinematographer. So I'm like, this is how we educate. We educate at the highest level, and but we do it in a way that's very fun. It's kind of you know, entered, what do we call it, we.

doing all this so you see every finesse. And that's when it all started to happen for me as an educator, as I saw, oh my god, we when we shoot this like a live sporting event and there's like six or seven cameras, you see, you feel like you're on my shoulder and you're immersive. And that's what That's the way I make my movies is being right with you and very immersive, and the camera moves and flows with you.

So I wanted the same thing with our education, and that's that's when we really started to kick at yes and to take off.

I gave him an hour long phone call. Nice and called me from Australia and he had heard my advice way on the blog talking about going to a rental house. So he was at a rental house and I said, okay, so how long have you been at the rental house? And he says five years? And I said, you've been there four years too long? And he goes, what are you talking about.

All right, okay, perfect. So you being the lead prep tech, you want to go into the marketing guy and you say who's coming in and obviously you'll see the list who it is, and you call up that first a C and you say, hey, Alex, how you doing today? I am you know, John Doe, I am your lead prep tech at this rental house, and I was just wondering, you know, is there could we go get cart for you? Is there any place that you're storing your carts and I can have the truck come and get your carts?

And are you a coffee drinker? Do you like coffee? And what do you like for breakfast in the morning? And he brought that stuff in. He started to do all those calls and then I said, and also take note of what you see them do. So if they are labeling the cases, then you label them the cases before they get there. Label them with the millimeters, the close focus, and the tea stop of every one of them.

You know they do that. You know they're going to do velcro filter tabs, you know what their filter is. Start making those in your home. And he was like, boy, that's a lot of work. I said, these this is what you need to do to set yourself apart from all the other people that are trying to do what you want to do right And literally this advice I gave him and he was out of the rental house in less than a month and he's been working in

the field ever since. Good for these is just small little nuances and it's not brown nosy at all, just preparing yourself to is this is exactly what you're going to do on the set when you're a digital utility. What are you doing. You're getting a guy coffee, You're getting the guy lunch. You know, You're you're doing everything to set him up. You're coming in early, getting the

carts off the truck, getting it all organized. This is you're showing him or her that you are already in that mindset that you know exactly what is going to be demanded of you, and you're not going to be the quote unquote just rental house, prep tech and these are the things that set you above. It's the same way I did when I got out of the Grip and Electric. I was just like a guy who stacked,

you know, grip shelves and trucks. The only reason that I got hired on Phantasm too is because the guy, the producer was making the deal where that they with the rental manager, and they happened to look out the window and they saw me running back and forth from the grip truck to the warehouse and back. And the guy goes who is that guy and they go, ah, that's that guy from Boston that just came in. His name Shane. He is a scrapper man. We offered him five dollars an hour and he took it and he

just run circles around everyone. Well where was I? I was out of that place immediately.

my way or the highway. And you know, it took me a long time to realize that that I need to lead much better. And that was It's like I said, it took me probably fifteen years to learn that, and that was way too long. And now I have crews that will go to the end of the earth for me because I set the tone in a way that they are all part of the mission and no one is talked down to, and we are all in this together. And I try to wear my heart much more out on my sleeve because I had to bury it so

far down when I was bullied. I was just tortured so much that I just buried that heart. I buried that compassion. I buried all that, and now I finally have come out of my proverbial shell and have really through the education. And this is a testament to my wife because I think really in two thousand and nine, in twenty ten to twelve, that was the lynchpin to really start to be a better leader. And trust me, I've failed even along that process. In twenty eighteen, I

failed on a movie. And I'll I just want to be very transparent. These are things that you go through as a creative. You know, there's a lot of pressure on you. There's a lot of you know, things that are are brought to the forefront, and you need to understand how to unite that team and take care of that team, and under and listen to that team as well as listening to production and having their best interests

at heart, and then listening to the director. I call it the thirty three point three because before it was one hundred percent whatever the director wanted. And that's where I was not a good leader, because no matter what the director said, I just made it happen. Even if I had to push it through a dime size hole,

that thing was pushed. And now I look back at my career and I was like, you know what, now I see that it's thirty three percent is the director's vision and thirty three percent is the production is taking care of them and their budget and making things work, and not just you know, saying this is what the director wanted, This is what the director wanted, This is what the director wanted, more like, Okay, how can we reach a compromise that worked for production and the director

feels very good about And it's supporting your team and being there for them and thinking about the safety, and especially in these COVID times, I mean being scared down in Atlanta just recently where they just kept on getting four positive covids every other day and us just shutting down. I'm like, guys, the protocols aren't working. Everything that you've

put in practice is not working. The people that we've hired obviously are not understanding it either, because you don't go out to block parties with thousands of people and then go in and start working on the lead actors. Right, This is not the way you move and push forward in this climate. Right, And that's a mindset. The COVID, if it's taught me anything, we have to stop being the me generation and we have to start becoming the we. It's thinking about everyone and how your actions are going

to affect everyone, not just yourself. And that was the biggest takeaway. I just saw everyone being so narcisstic and whatever they wanted to do, if they wanted to go out and drink and party, it didn't matter that they were doing the hair and make up on number one on the call sheet, they just did it. Well, that cannot happen. That's not the days are gone in that regards. We need to think about everyone and the compassion and

caring of each individual. And I constantly you know what I never did is I never put myself in the shoes that I was barking the orders out to. And that's the biggest switch for me. It's like, Okay, if I'm going to bark these orders out to somebody, how is that going to feel if I'm the recipient of it? Am I going to feel good when I tell them me that, you know, I call them out in front of everyone.

during our prep. I saw how much you read all the manuals and made all my systems that nobody knows how to work. You made that all happen. So I see that you love what you do. You can't be late, and I'm going to give you one more chance. I've given you three. But what you need to do is you need to come in thirty minutes earlier, because you know what I'm here. I'm usually here an hour before the camera trucks even open up. Why why am I there?

I'm taking my time. I walk through the sets, I'm looking at the sheets, I'm envisioning the light, I'm envisioning the blocking. I'm doing all that. So you come in an hour early, you open up the trucks. You get all the gear ready for everyone, You get my monitors all set up, you get the comm system set up, so when I walk in and the crew walk in, you're handing everyone their comm system and communication is key.

And that dude turned around the next day. So it's like it's tough love at some point, but also carrying in compassion and trying to inspe fire them by seeing their best attributes and really kind of fueling that and then guiding them in a way that has some kid gloves.

I never let it go to my head. I'm sitting there talking to them about, you know, what they did this weekend, and you know, they're They're part of my team. It's not me being the hierarchy, even though that's how it's set up. But I treat everyone equally and I want them and I want to toss gasoline on anything that they have passion about and trying to kind of flip the switch to them. Even the people that have come off of the oil dike or just come off

the construction site. I'm trying to fill them with that filmmaking passion that I had when I came into film school and started to have these aha moments and everything. I'm trying to bring that to them through the Hurban Academy and through you know, just being on set as a cinematographer, as somebody that just wants to continue to educate the future filmmakers of tomorrow.

say that I change. And even though that I'm at my fifty seven years old, I still feel like I'm a five year old out there and absolutely love what I do. And you know, I've created a long, successful career as a cinematographer and I want to keep on going.