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00:00 There's a lot of very tense, like heavy scenes
00:04 with a lot of dialogue.
00:05 A lot of the times it was about restraint.
00:09 It was about not moving the camera
00:11 and just sitting, letting the audience sit uncomfortably
00:15 in this tense, awkward, creepy conversation.
00:19 And the performances were so strong
00:21 that we, a lot of times, didn't need to do much.
00:24 But, you know, I feel like sometimes
00:26 when you don't move the camera,
00:28 you really increase that tension.
00:30 So that was a tool that we use a lot
00:32 of just practicing that restraint.
00:34 - If you've given them your seeing,
00:44 then the parents would have the knowing
00:48 of where their girls are.
00:50 They could move on.
00:53 - James, you're not thinking clearly.
00:57 If I did that, then I would never get out of here.
00:59 - You could.
01:00 What if someone could send the location
01:06 to the girls, the authorities, like anonymously?
01:09 - What?
01:12 - They just did.
01:14 Then the families would know.
01:17 They would have that.
01:18 - But why should they have that?
01:25 - Because they're probably hurting pretty bad, Larry.
01:30 (sobbing)
01:40 - James!
01:42 (sobbing)
01:44 James, James, James, you're always (beep) me,
01:49 just like Gary.
01:50 Oh my God.
01:52 (sobbing)
01:54 (sobbing)
01:56 - You gotta give these people some release.
01:58 - What did you say?
02:01 Say that again.
02:02 - Give these people some release.
02:10 - Never.
02:15 (upbeat music)
02:22 (upbeat music)
02:24 - So I was a very creative kid growing up.
02:29 I just had a lot of creative energy.
02:32 So I was always, you know, putting on plays
02:35 or circuses or puppet shows or photo shoots with my Barbies.
02:40 You know, it was always like a big production.
02:43 So when I was like 10, my parents got a home video camera
02:49 like VHS camcorder and I got my hands on it
02:53 and my head exploded and I'm like, okay,
02:56 this is another tool in the arsenal to create things.
03:00 So I started to basically take like the plays
03:05 that I was already doing, like on stage,
03:07 these like, you know, children's plays
03:09 and making them into little movies.
03:12 So it was really like from that point that really like,
03:18 it was just etched in my brain,
03:19 this idea of telling stories with a camera
03:23 and the idea of just being behind the camera.
03:25 Yeah, so basically I didn't go to film school.
03:28 I'm pretty much self-taught.
03:31 I had a pretty winding path.
03:33 My first job was at a TV station shortly out of college.
03:36 I majored in mass communications.
03:38 It was sort of the closest thing I could find
03:39 to film at the time.
03:42 And then that led to camera operating for like live sports.
03:48 And then, you know, eventually I just started
03:51 to do projects on my own, started to shoot short films
03:54 and then, you know, finally found cinematography
03:59 and started to focus on that and yeah, cut to now.
04:03 Blackbird was the start in television.
04:12 It was my first TV series.
04:15 Before that I'd shot features and commercials,
04:19 music videos, documentaries.
04:20 So Blackbird just kind of came out of the blue.
04:24 A producer that I'd worked with before
04:27 recommended me to the team and I hit it off
04:32 with the Blackbird team and we went from there.
04:35 I got the opportunity to shoot the whole series.
04:42 So I shot all six episodes.
04:45 And there's stuff from all of them that I'm very proud of.
04:48 And I picked three because I felt like
04:53 it was the most representative of the entire series,
04:56 like the look of the whole series.
04:58 We get to our main prison location,
05:02 Jimmy and Larry meet for the first time.
05:05 So yeah, I just felt like it was symbolic
05:08 of the whole series.
05:10 (upbeat music)
05:13 Restraint was a big thing of not always,
05:20 'cause I think sometimes in heavy dialogue scenes,
05:24 the impulse could be to like move the camera
05:26 because it needs something, you know?
05:28 But the idea was just to do the opposite a lot of the time,
05:31 to really increase the tension by just really sinking
05:35 into that weird, dark dialogue.
05:40 And then when we did move the camera,
05:42 whether it was a push in or what have you,
05:44 you know, it really meant something and you felt it.
05:47 And, you know, the reason that I picked large format,
05:52 'cause I felt like it was a tool that allowed us
05:55 to really immerse the audience inside those conversations
05:59 and to really make this prison world feel expansive.
06:04 And also to sort of create a kind of like landscape,
06:09 if you will, with the characters' faces.
06:12 So you could really feel like every subtle expression,
06:16 every reaction that Jimmy had to Larry, you know?
06:19 'Cause he had to play, Jimmy had to play a lot of that down.
06:23 You know, he couldn't really react
06:25 the way he really wanted to, or he would be caught, you know?
06:29 So it was really letting the audience feel
06:31 those small, subtle, nuanced things.
06:34 (gentle music)
06:36 You know, there were many challenges, you know,
06:41 being the only cinematographer across six episodes
06:46 was a challenge in and of itself.
06:49 And we did not shoot, you know, by episode.
06:54 We pretty much block shot the whole series.
06:58 Making sure everything was, you know,
07:02 matched and very, you know, consistent throughout
07:07 and that I was able to track all the visual arcs.
07:11 Yeah, that was a challenge over just such, you know,
07:15 a long amount of time.
07:17 And it was like six or seven months on this project.
07:21 And shooting, another one that sticks out
07:24 is just shooting in a prison, a real prison for that long.
07:28 And it was not operational.
07:30 It was a jail in New Orleans.
07:32 We shot all this in New Orleans.
07:33 And this jail closed down after Hurricane Katrina.
07:37 So it hasn't been operational since then.
07:39 But still real nonetheless.
07:42 And a lot of just restrictions
07:44 of how we could rig lighting and such.
07:46 So we had to come up with a lot of workarounds, you know,
07:49 to be able to light things in a certain way
07:53 and get control of the lighting
07:56 in the way that we wanted to.
07:59 And then it's just, you know, physically,
08:00 like in those cells, it's just very small.
08:03 You know, it's not like, you know,
08:04 when you're on a stage, you can fly out a wall.
08:07 We had a couple of camera portals, one in each,
08:10 one in Jimmy's cell and one in Larry's
08:12 that we could stick the camera through.
08:14 But other than that, you know, when the camera's in there,
08:16 it's really in there and it's, you know,
08:18 it's crammed up, it's tight.
08:21 And finding ways to make that really look good
08:24 and feel elevated, but still natural
08:27 and maintaining that texture and grittiness.
08:31 'Cause the cells are just like four white walls, you know?
08:34 So that in and of itself is always, you know, a challenge.
08:38 (gentle music)
08:41 It feels great.
08:45 It feels, it's really surreal.
08:48 You know, I had to check the webpage a few times
08:52 and make sure I was seeing things right.
08:55 But yeah, I'm just really so honored, you know,
08:59 that my first TV series, I would get an Emmy nomination.
09:03 And, you know, I, yeah, I'm just excited about it.
09:08 And, you know, I attribute a lot of this work to the crew.
09:13 I had such a phenomenal crew by my side
09:15 and yeah, I'm nothing without them.
09:19 So yeah, I'm just really, you know,
09:21 proud of the work and excited about it all.
09:24 (gentle music)
09:27 I actually just wrapped a film about a week ago,
09:33 shooting in New York.
09:35 It's a film called "The Shallow Tale of a Writer"
09:39 who decided to write about a serial killer.
09:41 So another serial killer movie,
09:44 but quite the opposite of "Blackbird."
09:46 This isn't true crime.
09:47 It's a dark comedy starring Steve Buscemi
09:50 and John Magaro and Brit Lauer.
09:53 And I think it'll be out sometime next year.
09:56 So currently I'm just decompressing from that
10:00 and taking a break and reading scripts,
10:04 seeing what's next.
10:06 So many things.
10:13 I love just being able to discover
10:21 and create a new visual language for each project.
10:25 I just think that's just so exciting
10:28 to try to find new ways to tell new stories
10:32 and how each project is so totally different from the next.
10:36 And you know, what really gets me off too
10:40 is just, you know, finding ways to transform emotions
10:45 to imagery and using the tools of cinematography,
10:49 like focal lens framing, color, lighting,
10:53 all of those things to express emotion
10:57 and make people feel a certain way
11:00 and maybe put them in another perspective
11:03 that they hadn't experienced before,
11:05 see life in a new way.
11:07 And that really just keeps me going
11:12 and that's why I keep coming back.
11:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]