Rye Lane is a charming, energetic and funny romantic film that follows Dom and Yas, both twentysomethings going through bad breakups. They meet at a friend's art show and roam around South London, helping each other deal with their exes while having crazy adventures and restoring their faith in romance. The movie premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, opened wide in the UK and is set to stream on Hulu March 31. When she received the script for Rye Lane, direct Raine Allen-Miller knew s...
Mar 16, 2023•41 min
Long-time friend and colleague Jenelle Riley of Variety magazine chats with Ben and Illya for our fourth annual Oscar nominations special. With a focus on cinematography, they discuss what they liked, what will win, what should win, and their favorite movies of the year that may not have been recognized. Here’s a rundown of some of the nominations discussed in this episode, as well as great films that were not nominated this awards season. Listen to our interviews with the nominated DPs as well ...
Mar 08, 2023•29 min
The documentary Fire of Love, directed by Sara Dosa, takes viewers on a mesmerizing journey into the world of volcanology. The film is centered around footage filmed by French volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft, who devoted their lives to studying volcanoes and capturing their stunning beauty. Fire of Love is an intimate look into the Kraffts' personal and professional lives, as well as their ultimate fate, tragically lost to a volcanic eruption. Director Sara Dosa and editors Jocelyne Chap...
Mar 06, 2023•54 min
Interview with the Vampire on AMC+ is based on Anne Rice's novel of the same name. The new series changes and updates the material so that the main character, Louis, is now Black and a closeted gay man who is turned into a vampire by the Frenchman Lestat. But in 1900's New Orleans, even when he's “freed” as an immortal vampire, Louis finds that his power is still limited by racism. Cinematographer Jesse M. Feldman was nominated for an ASC Award for his work on Interview with the Vampire. He foun...
Mar 01, 2023•36 min
All That Breathes follows the story of two brothers in New Delhi, India who run a home-based bird sanctuary dedicated to caring for black kites. Black kites are a common bird of prey in the city and have adapted well to living alongside humans. But as the pollution and toxic garbage in New Delhi increases, the kites, as well as other birds, fall ill from smog and other hazards in the urban environment. Muslim brothers Saud and Nadeem, along with their friend Salik, found a passion for caring for...
Feb 22, 2023•42 min
The documentary Food and Country, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance film festival, takes a close look at the broken food system in the United States through the lens of the COVID pandemic, as restaurants closed and both workers and farmers struggled. Both director Laura Gabbert and producer/chef/food writer Ruth Reichl grew concerned about their friends and colleagues in the restaurant business during the shutdown. Laura wanted to do a short piece about how restaurants and workers were being ...
Feb 15, 2023•50 min
The dramatic film Fancy Dance follows an indigenous woman named Jax, who hustles to get by on her reservation in Oklahoma. When her sister Tawi disappears, Jax is responsible for taking care of her niece Roki. The two search for Tawi and ask for help from law enforcement who does little to help. Meanwhile, they steal cars and scam people in card games, which leads to Roki being taken out of Jax's care and placed with her white grandfather. Jax kidnaps Roki, and the two road trip to get to the st...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 4 min
We kick off our Sundance Film Festival 2023 interviews with the documentary Bad Press and the dramatic comedy, The Persian Version. Bad Press follows the battle for a free press on the Muscogee Creek Nation reservation in Oklahoma. As a sovereign nation, the Muscogee are not bound by the U.S. Constitution to guarantee freedom of the press. When local journalists for the tribal paper Mvskoke Media discover that the tribe's “Free Press Act” will be repealed, they begin demanding that freedom of th...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Yule Log is a crazy, surreal, comedic horror movie written and directed by Casper Kelly and with cinematography by Alex Allgood, made for Adult Swim and available on HBO Max. Even though it's a month past Christmas, fire up Yule Log if you haven't seen it already- it's bound to be one of the weirdest and most original movies you've seen in awhile. For Yule Log, Casper and cinematographer Alex Allgood decided to keep the camera locked off on the fireplace logs for as long as possible, so people m...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Our guest Russell Carpenter, ASC comes back for a second time on the podcast to talk about Avatar: The Way of Water. When cinematographer Russell Carpenter began working on Avatar: The Way of Water, it was much different from any other film experience he'd had. Russell had previously worked with director Jim Cameron on True Lies and Titanic, which won him the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. He began working on Avatar: The Way of Water before they even rolled cameras, testing and integrati...
Jan 18, 2023•46 min
To tell the story of Emancipation, director Antoine Fuqua and cinematographer Robert Richardson were influenced by the colors in the famous photo "Whipped Peter," whose story and the photograph of his scarred back is still one of the most famous photos documenting the brutality of slavery today. They chose to desaturate the images to a sepia-tone with just hints of color. Antoine also felt the lack of color reflected the world of a slave- it's bleak and hopeless, and he wanted the film to look b...
Jan 11, 2023•45 min
We welcome cinematographer Linus Sandgren, ASC, FSF for his third time on the podcast. On his latest film, Babylon, Linus was happy to work with director Damien Chazelle again. The two had previously collaborated on La La Land and First Man. In all of his films, Chazelle thinks musically, and camera movement is essential to his films instead of just relying on editing. Linus liked Babylon's script- though it was long, it had many fast moving pieces, and the story was told in a refreshing, unconv...
Jan 05, 2023•45 min
We welcome cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC for his third time on the podcast. For this interview, Matty, Ben and Illya have a more technical discussion about lenses, LUTs and cameras used on Don't Worry Darling, A Star is Born and The Whale. For the film Don't Worry Darling, Matty found it easy to find the right mid-century modern visual style, since the production design, costumes, hair and makeup were all influenced by that distinctive look from the 50's and 60's. Director Olivia Wilde ...
Dec 28, 2022•46 min
The film Thirteen Lives is about the rescue of the Thai soccer team who were trapped in an underwater cave in 2018 for 18 days. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who is Thai, knew that it was important to make the film seem as realistic as possible since everyone in Thailand was very familiar with the story. He liked director Ron Howard's movie Apollo 13, which vividly dramatized a real-life event, so he was excited to work with Howard on Thirteen Lives, a true story he was familiar with. Aft...
Dec 21, 2022•42 min
On our 250th episode, we welcome returning guest and longtime friend of the show, cinematographer Abe Martinez, who catches up with Ben and Illya about his work around the world for the past few years. Most recently, Abe completed the new Disney+ show National Treasure: Edge of History and a new Netflix action-comedy series, Obliterated, by the creators of Cobra Kai. Abe has been learning and perfecting his technique of using video walls for action on big sets, creating a version of “poor man's ...
Dec 15, 2022•58 min
In TÁR, Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, a fictional world famous female conductor and composer whose life takes a dramatic downturn after serious allegations are made against her. Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister and director Todd Field made a conscious choice to “not put a hat on a hat”- keeping the cinematography very restrained and still throughout most of the film. The focus remained on the music and the performances, with little camera movement save for a few orchestra scenes and the fin...
Dec 07, 2022•54 min
Unsurprisingly, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has been a huge hit, and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw was excited to join the crew. She had worked with Marvel on the Disney+ series Loki and felt her creative vision on the show was really supported there. Autumn felt ready to step into a huge movie like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever after she spoke with original Black Panther DP Rachel Morrison and meeting with director Ryan Coogler. Rachel and Autumn were friends from AFI, and Rachel wa...
Nov 30, 2022•58 min
Cinematographer Ben Davis enjoys working on both big budget Marvel movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange as well as smaller films such as The Banshees of Inisherin, My Policeman, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Ben feels that the challenges of shooting large scale movies vs. small intimate movies might be different, but each film speaks for itself and needs to be told in a particular visual style. Ben and The Banshees of Inisherin director Marti...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 9 min
As a partner and commercial agent at WPA- Worldwide Production Agency- Trevor Kossack represents directors, cinematographers, production designers, editors and costume designers. Trevor has a passion for those responsible for crafting the images that make movies, television shows and commercials. Trevor first studied medicine in college, but soon realized that he didn't want to be a doctor. He also had family in the entertainment industry and got an entry level job at the William Morris Agency. ...
Nov 10, 2022•59 min
This week we welcome Checco Varese, our friend of the podcast and 4th time guest! The Hulu series Dopesick tells the complex story of the opioid epidemic through multiple points of view over its eight episode arc. Cinematographer Checco Varese, ASC shot every single episode, and recently earned his first Emmy award in 2022 for Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited or Anthology Series. Checco decided to approach the story and its characters as a series of four concentric plot circles. At the c...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr
The new Showtime series Let the Right One In expands on the ideas introduced in the now-classic 2008 Swedish horror movie and the American remake. A man, Mark Kane (Demián Bichir) and his tween daughter, Ellie (Madison Taylor Baez) move in to a New York City apartment, where she befriends the lonely, bullied boy down the hall. But she has a huge secret that her father helps her keep- she is a child vampire who must survive on blood and can't go outside in the daytime. The series Let The Right On...
Oct 26, 2022•52 min
The comedy Bromates is about buddies Sid (Josh Brener) and Jonesie (Lil Rel Howry) who are both going through a breakup, so the two move in together. During a night out at a bar with a group of friends, nerdy Sid meets a woman from out of town. The guys convince Sid to go after her, and head out on a road trip to Texas together, encountering crazy situations and adventure along the way. Court and writing partner Chris Kemper wanted to do a story about guys moving in together and helping each oth...
Oct 19, 2022•39 min
Cinematographer Charlie Sarroff loves to shoot horror movies, and he knew when he read the script for the horror film, Smile, that it would be fun, gory and dark. This week (10/12/2022) Smile is still the number one movie in America, with the biggest opening of September and the highest box office take overall for its second straight week. Charlie and Smile director Parker Finn first met at a SXSW event, where each had movies showing at the festival. They found they had similar tastes and sensib...
Oct 12, 2022•58 min
The six part HBO documentary 100 Foot Wave is the story of big wave surfer Garrett McNamara, as he learns about the biggest waves in the world in Nazaré, Portugal. Then, with help from the town of Nazaré, he and his team set up a safety and support system and invite surfers to come from all over the world to surf. The series captures the amazing power of the ocean, and the passion of surfers chasing big waves and putting themselves at risk of serious injury and death. Surf and ocean cinematograp...
Oct 05, 2022•47 min
Cinematographer Alicia Robbins' work on the Netflix show, Keep Breathing, was quite challenging as they had location scouts at seven different remote forests in Vancouver, Canada near Whistler. The crew had to off-road it for miles, and they filmed in some locations that had never been shot before. Keep Breathing is about Liv Rivera, a high-powered attorney whose private plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Alone, she must conquer her inner demons and struggle to survive while finding her w...
Sep 28, 2022•54 min
At long last, we welcome longtime friend and multi-hyphenate filmmaker, Kays Al-Atrakchi to the Cinepod! Kays feels there are film composers who love music and composers who simply love movies. He himself absolutely loves all things film. Born in Florence, Italy, Kays started to get interested in music as a kid and picked up a soundtrack to Dario Argento's Inferno in a local record store because he liked how the cover looked. It didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard before, and he decided t...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Cinematographer Brendan Uegama, CSC enjoys shooting many different genres, from romantic comedies such as Moonshot, to horror movies such as Child's Play (2019). He enjoys changing his approach to each project depending on the needs of the script. Brendan feels that a good filmmaker knows that the cinematographer is there to serve the story and builds trust with the DP to create the look and feel. As a kid, Brendan was always into photography and art. He and some high school friends shot skate v...
Sep 14, 2022•53 min
Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul is a satirical dark comedy and mockumentary about Trinitie Childs, (Regina Hall) the “First Lady” of a Southern Baptist mega church and Lee-Curtis Childs, (Sterling K. Brown) her pastor husband. The pastor is accused of sexual misconduct and the two are struggling to relaunch their megachurch in the face of the controversy. As part of their public relations campaign, Trinitie and Lee-Curtis consent to a documentary crew following them. Adamma was the writer and dir...
Sep 07, 2022•42 min
The Wheel is about a young couple whose marriage is in crisis. They decide to retreat to a house in the woods to try to work out their differences, where they meet another couple who seem to have it all figured out. As they get to know each other, all four characters prove to be flawed and complicated. The Wheel is the first romantic drama Steve Pink has directed. He's known for his work on comedies such as High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank and Hot Tub Time Machine, and he was thrilled for the ...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Cinematographer Cybel Martin believes that great cinematography comes from a place of trust between the director, DP and crew. Great art can be created when someone says: this is my vision and I trust you to make it happen. Cybel especially loves horror movies, because it's the best genre for cinematographers to try out visuals that are not based in reality. The opening scene always establishes the visual rules, no matter how weird. You start from scratch and play with how you see the story, and...
Aug 25, 2022•58 min
