Episodes

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 79: Yance Ford and Alan Jacobsen Yance Ford's powerful documentary, Strong Island, is about the murder of his brother, William Ford Jr. in 1992. The man who killed William, who is white, claimed self-defense when William, who was black and unarmed, confronted the man over shady car repairs. The decision by an all-white grand jury not to prosecute caused Yance's family even more devastation. The film conveys the personal agony and visceral grief in tight closeup...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 78: Bradford Young, PART 2 Bradford Young continues our conversation from his busy household. One lesson he's learned is that the cinematographer's job is to make the director happy. Bradford was drawn to the science fiction film Arrival because it had an intimacy and a perspective about who we are that many sci-fi movies lack. Arrival takes us on a journey of discovery while keeping the human experience at the center of the film, with the camera following Loui...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 77: Bradford Young, PART 1 Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young feels every story has a personal connection to tell and translate through the language of images. As an African American, telling the story of Selma was very important and close to him. He'd heard the story of Dr. Martin Luther King's march from Selma and the fight for civil rights from his aunt and grandparents as a kid. He sees the essence of his existence coming from those struggles. G...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 76: Suzie Lavelle Irish cinematographer Suzie Lavelle loves to be very hands on and involved in visual storytelling. From a young age, Suzie had an interest in photography, went to art school and was accepted into the renowned National Film and Television School in London. She began working on short films and features, one of which, The Other Side of Sleep, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Shortly after, Suzie landed her first television job shooting an e...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 75: Trevor Forrest A note: We were sorry to hear of director Lynn Shelton's passing. Her most recent directing and executive producing project was the Hulu series, Little Fires Everywhere. Her death is also a huge loss to the independent film community. Trevor Forrest leads off the episode with a tribute to Lynn. Trevor Forrest grew up in England and the Bahamas, and went to art school to study painting. He began making photo compositions and moving into fashio...

The Cinematography Podcast Bonus Episode: Xiaoding Zhao Illya sat down with cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao and Shadow producer and translator Ellen Eliasoph at Cameraimage 2019 to discuss the film Shadow. Director Zhang Yimou and Zhao worked together to create a very distinctive color palette, wanting it to appear to be like a Chinese ink brush painting. The costumes are also all in gray or black for the same ink washed look. It also enabled the color of red blood to show bold and bright against ...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 74: Toby Oliver Toby Oliver was an experienced cinematographer in his native Australia for a few decades before moving to the U.S. and establishing himself as a DP. He worked with fellow Aussie director Greg McLean on Wolf Creek 2 and other horror genre movies for Blumhouse Productions such as The Darkness. When shooting any genre or time period, Toby believes color palette is important and enjoys working with production designers to fine-tune the look. This wa...

Special: The Cinematography Podcast War Stories Vol. 2 It's our second War Stories Special! Each of our featured guests shares an insightful, interesting, humorous or crazy story of an experience they had while on set. Walt Lloyd, ASC still remembers a crazy nightmare he had during a shoot, Shana Hagan on getting locked inside a prison while shooting the documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, Byron Werner recounts shooting in Colombia at a very dangerous time, Claudia Raschke describes her experie...

Illya sat down with producer Natasha Gregson Wagner and director/producer Laurent Bouzereau at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to talk about their documentary, Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. As the daughter of famous actress Natalie Wood, Natasha Gregson Wagner wanted to tell the story of her mother's life, while working through her grief and loss over her mother's tragic death at the age of 43 in 1981. Natasha and Laurent discuss their approach to the film, which is full of personal photos,...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 73: Carlos González Venezuelan-born cinematographer Carlos González graduated with a degree in architecture before attending film school at AFI in Los Angeles. While attending architecture school, he designed some film sets, and still enjoys collaborating closely with production designers. Carlos says that the experience of discovery when walking into a room as a cinematographer is very similar to the way an architect thinks, but focused on lighting placement a...

Special: The Cinematography Podcast War Stories Vol. 1 It's our first War Stories Special! Each of our featured guests shares an insightful, interesting, humorous or crazy story of an experience they had while on set. Russell Carpenter talks about shooting the iconic “I'm flying” scene from Titanic, Jakob Ihre tells the sobering story about working in Lithuania while shooting HBO's “Chernobyl,” Ellen Kuras shares a funny story from the set of The Mod Squad, David Mullen on avoiding a landslide w...

Jeff Cronenweth comes from three generations in the film business and followed his father, cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner) into a career as a director of photography. Growing up on film sets and working alongside his father enabled Jeff to take a hands-on role in the camera department. He started as a loader and camera assistant, getting into the union while attending USC. He met David Fincher while working on the Madonna music video "Oh Father" as a camera assistant. Fincher ga...

The Cinematography Podcast BONUS Episode: The Sound of Silence director Michael Tyburski It's a very special Shelter In Place episode as we dig into our archives to bring you some past podcasts you might have missed. Illya sat down with director Michael Tyburski during 2019's Sundance Film Festival to talk about his film, The Sound of Silence (in a rather noisy setting!) The movie is about a “house tuner” in New York City- a fictional job he made up for the film. Peter Saarsgard plays the house ...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 71: Brendan Davis Producer Brendan Davis tells his story about fleeing China before it was shut down for coronavirus Brendan Davis has been producing film and television for the Chinese and U.S. market in Beijing for the past few years. He was in the midst of developing the feature film My Favorite Season and was planning a trip back to the U.S. when he got word from a doctor friend that the city would be shutting down and a stay at home order was imminent. Fea...

BONUS EPISODE: Jeff Sengpiehl, chief technologist at Key Code Media, gives tips for remote editing and other post production options from home Finding the right technologies and new ways to work from home is becoming a necessity right now. Jeff Sengpiehl discusses ways to remotely access your work edit bay from your computer, edit from the cloud, consolidating the project onto hard drives and physically taking it home, and how to proxy edit from your editing facility. In this episode: Hewlett Pa...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 70: Michael Dallatorre As an immigrant kid growing up in South Central L.A., Mike Dallatorre joined his high school's performing arts group called Colors United. He was a featured performer in the Oscar-nominated documentary Colors Straight Up. Seeing a documentary crew in action made Mike realize that being behind the camera could be a legitimate career choice, so he started studying film at Los Angeles City College. Mike landed a job in the shipping departmen...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 69: Laura Merians Gonçalves As a kid, Laura Merians Gonçalves would play around with a Super 8 camera and make visual collages. But it was only for fun, and she had a degree in philosophy and was planning on traveling and studying martial arts in Japan when she got a summer job in Florida working as best boy electric on Bully, directed by Larry Clark and shot by Steve Gainer. The film unionized and Laura was able to make a career in movies as a best boy and ele...

The Cinematography Podcast Bonus Episode: Director J.D. Dillard It’s another very special Shelter In Place episode as we stay home and dig into our archives to bring you some past podcasts you might have missed. Enjoy our show and these films from the comfort of your safe space. One of Illya’s favorite movies at Sundance in 2019 was J.D. Dillard’s midnight movie, Sweetheart. The horror/thriller movie stars Kiersey Clemons (Hearts Beat Loud, Dope) as a woman who is stranded on a desert island and...

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 68: Stefan Ciupek Stefan Ciupek became interested in film while growing up in East Germany, but his options were limited in what was then a Communist country. His family managed to escape to Poland, and movies became a refuge from difficult times. In fact, Stefan and his mother were able to pirate Western films and re-sell them as bootlegs. His family managed to move to West Berlin, and by the age of 16, Stefan had a videocamera and started studying film in Ger...

It's a very special Shelter In Place episode as we stay home and dig into our archives to bring you some past podcasts you might have missed. Enjoy our show and these films from the comfort of your safe space. Illya sat down with director Jason Orley and DP Andrew Huebscher during 2019's Sundance Film Festival to talk about their movie about arrested development, "Big Time Adolescence." Starring SNL’s Pete Davidson, Griffin Gluck, and John Cryer, the story follows a teen whose idolization and fr...

Cinematographer Kira Kelly had years of experience before director Ava DuVernay approached her to shoot her documentary, 13th. For 13th, DuVernay was interested in creating artful, composed shots rather than the typical “talking heads” of most documentaries, and pushed Kira and the team to get creative about how it was framed. The film examines the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, yet the mass incarceration of African-Americans continues to this day as its own kind of slavery. 13th was no...

Jakob Ihre believes that making movies is very personal, and it's important to create a connection to the material that the audience can feel. He graduated from the National Film and Television School in London knowing that he wanted to do smaller, quality projects that told personal stories. Jakob collaborated with fellow NFTS graduate Joachim Trier on several films, including Reprise, Louder Than Bombs, Oslo, August 31 and Thelma. The 2015 film, The End of the Tour, about writer David Foster W...

Sundance 2020 Special Part 3: Coming of Age Beast Beast explores the lives of three different teens who cross paths with tragic results. Director Danny Madden handles each character with sympathy and nuance. He and cinematographer Kristian Zuniga used different camera looks for each character, staying wide and documentary-style for some sequences and tight and controlled for others. The film came to the attention of Alec Baldwin who came on board as an an executive producer who helped fund its d...

Sundance 2020 Special Part 2: Location, Location, Location These two very different movies both had striking locations that set the tone for the films. The Night House director David Bruckner and writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski enjoy working in the horror genre, and wanted to explore making a film that doesn't make you “feel safe” with many dense layers. The film deals with the horror of grief, loss and loneliness faced by the main character, Beth, played by Rebecca Hall. The Night House...