September 12, 2024 • 56 mins
Half the Picture's second guest is Tristan Oliver BSC, cinematographer extraordinaire! Tristan joined us to chat about his experiences as a stop-motion animation DOP working with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs, making his start as an actor before switching to cinematography, shooting the iconic train chase in The Wrong Trousers and having lunch with the legendary Jack Cardiff, as well as to share advice for aspiring animator/cinematographers!
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Episode Transcript
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So thanks for joining us, Tristan, to talk about Isle of Dogs, your film with Wes Anderson,
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which you were the DP on, not your only movie, DP'ing, with Wes Anderson.
Yeah, we kind of want to start at the beginning with sort of with you and your career really,
in terms of asking you about, we know that you started off as an actor and sort of as a crew
member, you know, clapperboard, loader and that kind of thing. And then you sort of moved into
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animation through working with Aardman and then you sort of shot many of their films up through
to Curse of The Were-Rabbit. And we just kind of wanted to ask you a bit about what was that like in the
early days of sort of, you know, getting on board of this company, you kind of went on to change
the face of animation really. Yes, well goodness, that was a long time ago. Yeah, as you say, I kind
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of had an early manifestation as an actor and I got a role in a movie and I'd never been on a film
set in my life, you know, I didn't have any idea about the process at all. And within the course
of shooting that movie, I became very, very interested in the camera department and the guy
who shot it Peter Bijou, who won an Academy Award for Mississippi Burning a few years later,
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was a terribly sweet guy, was very nice to me, you know, because I was in my first big movie and he
was very kind to me and I got on with it very well. And my educational background was sort of the
perfect bonkers mix of A-levels, you know, I'd done physics, biology, chemistry, English and
theater studies A-levels. So I had kind of science and art and I was doing a drama degree at the time.
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So it kind of just changed my path really and that accompanied by the fact that acting is
a ludicrously unstable profession to be in. I mean, you know, it doesn't even matter if you're
good, you don't necessarily work, you know. So I was just something very attracted to it, you know,
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so it's these kind of bizarre sort of skitsprennict two years where I was acting a bit and working as
a camera assistant and then I decided to go to film school and at the time the union was incredibly
strong for film technicians and you couldn't really work without being a member of the union,
but it was also a terribly closed shop so it tended to consist of the sons and nephews and I
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used those genders advisedly of other crew members. But there were a couple of film school
courses that you could be accredited for with the union. So one of those was the national London
Film School London International Film School and Bristol. So I went back to Bristol where I
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done my degree and I took the film school course. My graduation film which I'd shot did very well,
I won a few cinematography prizes and then over the sort of next 18 months, two years, I was,
you know, doing the usual nonsense of shooting pop-promos for friends and short dramas that
never saw the light of day and all those things that we think are going to be significant but
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aren't, but are in fact incredibly good practice. So and then I rang Aardman one day to borrow some
lights for a pot-premo I was shooting and Aardman at that point was quite literally three guys in
a garage. It was three guys and it was a garage and that's where they shot. I knew one of them and
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he said, oh you're doing anything next week and I said no, you want to come and finish off this
commercial. You know, the way they worked was they kind of laid back, they had no schedule.
So they'd start shooting something with no idea when they were going to finish and the guy who
was shooting it had got another job. So I went in and there I was at the tender age of whatever
it was, 24 or something like that, shooting a big TV commercial on 35mm just by dint of the fact that
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they'd run out of crew. And you know, I never had any intention, I mean who would, of going into
stock-frame animation as a career choice because you know, as a cinematographer, you know, God it's
rarefied and rare and infrequent. There's not many people do it for a reason because there's not a
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huge amount of good work out there and at the time there was even less work. But I got into
Ardman at the right time, you know, and they liked me and I was enjoying it, you know, and I rather
alarmingly had a child shortly after that. So all that kind of period of my life where I should have
been clubbing and doing just grossful things abroad, never really happened because I actually had some
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responsibility I had to take care of. So I just stuck in, you know, whenever they asked me to do
work, I just, I went and did work and I became a sort of regular crew there. But what was happening
was, you know, Pete and Dave who owned the company, they wanted to do something different
with stock-frame animation because all stock-frame animation was kids TV, Pingu, Magic Roundabout,
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it wasn't quite Bob the Builder because he hadn't been invented then, but you know,
Trumpton, Camberwick Green, that kind of stuff. So it was very, very simply
photographed, you know, locks of camera, big soft light over the top. It was really just about the
animation and about the stories and there was no heart to the capturing of the image if you like
to be a bit pronsy about it. So, you know, what they were looking to do was to take it forward
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cinematically. And I was there at that point and you know, we, as we got bigger, you know, we actively
were moving towards a new look for stuff and that was primarily in commercials at that time
and the odd short film. So Creature Comforts, for instance, happened during that time and
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various other short films and Aardman started to get profile. They won an Academy Award for
Creature Comforts and they won a bunch of actors for other stuff. So it was, you know,
it was all about time and place and it being a very intensively creative place to be because
everyone was just trying to hunt for a way to make what we did a proper thing. And then,
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you know, the culmination of that really was Wrong Trousers, which was the opportunity to produce,
you know, some longish form, stock frame that actually looked like a proper film, you know,
and had that aesthetic to it that wasn't all about kids drama, but was actually about making a
beautiful image that stood up to being projected, not just on your telly on Christmas Day, but
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actually, you know, something bigger. That's a very long answer to a very short film.
That's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, just on the side of those early Aardman films and the Wallace
and Gromit films, I think in particular, I think you could probably say the same as me about this
is that, you know, those movies, obviously, you know, they're a national institution,
as you were saying earlier, to kids, to people, you know, a lot of those kids now adults in Britain.
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You know, the fact that we're actually chatting to you, you know, the guy who shot the train
chaser Wrong Trousers and, you know, all the stuff in clothes, shaving and chicken run,
and wear out, but, you know, all those, you know, it's pretty amazing, you know, the stuff that
you guys, as you say, you know, right there at the beginning of all that, the work that you guys
did together is incredible. And, you know, it's really, really fun to be able to talk to you about
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it and listen to you, sort of tell us about it. So yeah, touching on sort of the thing that you
said earlier of you went into Aardman, just sort of almost doing them a favor, essentially,
in your time when you were there, is that when you started picking up a genuine love for
stop motion animation? Because I mean, you could have gone and tried to break into the live action
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scene. Or was it slowly down to the responsibility that you said of having a young child?
Yeah, it's a difficult question, you know, I have long handkerchiefs to do something different.
And I have done other things differently. I mean, the bizarre thing is, I guess in the last 10 to
15 years, I've shot more live action stuff than I have any other time in my life, you know, and I
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now have quite a kind of nice mix, you know, I did a couple of live action feature films
just before lockdown. And, you know, I've kind of arrived at a happy place. And I do a lot of
sort of mixed media commercials as well, where, you know, I shoot the animation and I shoot the
live action because I know how that stuff fits together. But I do genuinely enjoy the animation
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now. I think you have to not be too precious about this stuff, because it's a bit like an actor who's
very good at comedy saying, I want to play Hamlet, you know, that's not going to happen because
you're very good at what you do. And I recognize that I am very good at what I do, you know,
not many people do what I do. But even so, I'm pretty up there, you know, and I'm not boasting
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about it, it's just, you know, I do big movies and I do big movies that everyone sees. So,
you know, I'm obviously doing something right. And it would be foolish of me to put myself up against
the, I don't know, five or 600 excellent live action DPs just in the UK, as a, as a contender
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at my age and this point in my career, you know, I mean, there are many, many exceptionally talented
colleagues who are much better at that stuff than I will ever be. But I do enjoy a bit of live action
now and again. And also, you know, I'm now, you know, if you do this stuff for long enough, you,
you know, you just become an expert of being a live action DP, you actually become an expert
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in the whole process of animation, you know, so I am, you know, when I do a feature film, I'm,
I'm across the storyboarding, the design, you know, I spend every day in the art department
talking to the production designer and the art director and the set guys and the set dressers,
the puppet makers and the costume makers, you know, because everything appears in front of my
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camera. So I inform what they're doing because I know what that stuff's going to look like. So if I
think something is textured wrong, or the scale of something is reading wrong, or the design of a
prop is too crude to be projected to interfere high, then that's part of my process. You know,
it's not just about shining lights and taking pictures, it's about making the entire image.
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So it's kind of all encompassing process. I think maybe a bit more than live action is where
the crew as a whole just sort of tend to turn up on day one. There's obviously an enormous
pre-production process, but that number of people coming together that early on a project is quite
unusual. A big stock frame production is an intensely busy process. And what I always say is it takes a
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long time, but it isn't slow. The process is time consuming, but everyone on it is working
really as fast as they can. So you also have enormous scale to these things. So I would typically
on a feature film be running 50 shooting units. So get your head around that. That's 50 sets,
50 cameras, all shooting simultaneously. And obviously a constant turnover of set, action,
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dressing, occupying an enormous amount of real estate. So my camera crew, my assistants typically
do 10 to 15 kilometers a day around the studio space. And the, you know, the animators who are
doing this process, which seems intensely slow, are working as fast as they can. But what they do
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is incredibly complicated. And, you know, talking about being an actor, what an animator is doing
is feeding a performance through an inanimate object and bringing it to life. So in many ways,
that is as performance based and art as any piece of acting. It's almost technical, it's very
kit heavy, it's very people heavy, it's space heavy. You know, the whole thing is like a,
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I was thinking of it as like an ocean liner, you know, that once it's underway, it's,
it appears to be moving slowly, but if it hits you, you know.
Well, I mean, sort of looking back to what you just said, in terms of the length of some of these
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projects that you're working on, how do you maintain your passion and your, and your objectivity
and your creativity for such a long sort of shoot period? We know obviously in terms of
live action work, you can be in a set or out in a field somewhere shooting for, you know,
six weeks, and then you're done moving on to your next project. Whereas with your like yourself,
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it can be anything from a year to two to three to an even more. So how do you, how do you keep that
going? Yeah, well, it's the shooting period is typically about 18 months, it's about 80,
80 weeks, if you like. And I, I really love it because what you have to understand is that the,
the pre-production process continues almost to the end of the production process. So, you know,
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I am, my typical day will involve turning around, relighting, you know, maybe a dozen shooting
units, I work a couple of other guys who work for me doing a bit of lighting under my instruction,
but then I'll be in edit, I'll be in VFX, looking at the latest stuff in VFX, I will be in script
meetings, I will be in storyboard breakdown meetings, and I will be in pre-production meetings for
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what is coming up in the next six to eight weeks. And that is rolling all the way through that process.
So for me, it's very busy. But I always, I always think there's a process of learning,
learning the project, you know, when you come on, you know, you read the script, you've seen the
storyboards. But if someone mentions something, you know, you have to thumb your way back through
and find, oh yeah, that's that page. And I forgot what was happening. And then after a while, it
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just kind of gels in your head. And you've got this massive mental database of the film. And,
you know, you find that if someone says, oh yeah, that sequence 26, shot 48, you can go, oh yeah,
I know what that is. That's a two shot outside, you know, this happens. And, and, and once you're
in that kind of zone, it becomes enormously exciting because you're kind of locked into this thing,
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just powering through. And you really feel like you're making something. And, and you know, every
day, the more you shoot, the more you get. So you sit in rushes every morning, and you look at
yesterday's material, and you begin to see it cutting in to the story reel, and you begin to see
shots next to each other. And you get a feeling of what the film's going to look like. And,
especially if something's been very complicated or a massive pain in the ass to shoot, you know, to
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see it actually finished, you just think, yeah, that's great. You know, that's that, you know,
it's constant reward. You know, it's a bit of, you know, sweet, you know,
another shot.
Yeah, I suppose this sort of brings us then quite nicely onto sort of working with Wes because
so you would obviously shot with Arman for, you know, 15 years, you know, at least, you know,
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up through wear rabbit. And then there was, I was reading upon this and on the production of
Phanasmus the Fox, which is obviously the first film we shot with Wes. As the story goes,
Wes was sort of, you know, setting up production here in Britain. And you, I think is the story,
you heard about it. And you, they had already hired another DP, but then you were particularly
keen on, like, you know, you heard that it was, it was Wes making this film, and you were like,
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right, I need to get my foot in the door there. I need to, I need to be the DP on that film.
Is that, is that how it went down? Is it worth? It's almost how it went down.
Yeah. I'd like to stress for the record, but I did not know they had hired another DP until
after they hired me. That would have been an act of treachery and unprofessionalism that I would
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not have conscious, but I was as bad I got the job. Yeah, I mean, I had only say only, I had
never been on staff at Aardman. I was a freelancer. And for whatever reason, I'm not sure I even
know after Curse of The Were-Rabbit of it, that signaled a kind of break in that relationship. I still
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don't know why, but I obviously needed to work elsewhere. And I heard that this project was
going on. And I, yeah, I took my reel to the producer and she showed it to Wes and I got the
job. So that's pretty much how it happened, you know, and they're, and they're on from their own
we embarked on a curious, occasionally frustrating, occasionally exciting journey on a whole different
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way of making a movie. I mean, nothing is like that. Yeah, well, we were going to, we wanted to
ask about this because I mean, I think we're both fans of Wes's, right? And like, and if we were
curious, in terms of stop motion and animation is such a meticulous craft. And yet you're working
with a director who is known for how meticulous his craft is when it comes to the look of the films,
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how you know, how they feel the tone style, everything about them, you kind of can imagine
Wes sitting there, you know, almost with a dollhouse, putting it all together. And we were
curious, you know, in terms of working with a guy like that with such a strong vision, was it
it was it easy at times to work with? Was it was it was it fun? Was it, you know, what was that
like, that relationship? Well, on Fox, no, it wasn't fun. It was, it was, it was a frustrating process.
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And, you know, in hindsight, after years of therapy,
the reason was, you know, he'd never done Stop-Frame before, and we'd never worked with Wes Anderson
before. And, you know, what you come to realise over the years is that you don't, you don't go on to
a Wes Anderson movie and get to make anything other than a Wes Anderson movie. So the very idea
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that he would go, do you know what I don't really know about this, what do you think,
which is quite a common conversation between a director and a DP. That never happens. Wes knows
what he wants. You know, he was asking us to do stuff that I mean, really, as a crew, we felt was
not not great, difficult, you know, frustrating. But, but, you know, at the end of all that,
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we did have Fantastic Mr Fox. And, you know, you do have to stand back and go, yeah, okay,
well, a lot of people love that, maybe. You know, all the things that frustrated is about it
are things that make it the Wes Anderson movie. You know, I mean, there are,
there are physical constraints on what you can do in terms of miniature cinematography that he
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wanted us to bend and break and exceed. And I think, you know, he got to learn that you can't
always do that, because it's, it's Newtonian physics. You can't have the guy by the camera and
the guy on the horizon, both in focus at the same time. You can in live action because humans are
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human to talk, but puppets are 22 centimeters five. So, you know, we had to find new ways. But,
you know, the interesting thing about him is, you know, I learned very quickly, but you can't
actually say to him, you can't actually do that. Because what he wants is to be shown that you
can't do that. So you do actually have to take the time to do something you know won't work in order
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to say to him, this is what it will look like. And then he can process that and go, okay, well,
if I can't have that, and I have this, you know, the conversation goes on again. But when our dogs
came around, it was a substantially better experience because what you realize is that
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he loves the familiarity of people who knows and he stress tests tests you. And if you, if you get
through that, then you are, you're kind of his for life, you know, so you always see the same faces
on those pictures, whether they're live action or stop frame, you know, if you look at the production
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crew, you will see the same production assistance, the same production managers, you'll see those
names over and over and over again, because he likes that familiarity. Because once he's got
those people around him, he's completely free to do what he likes, because he doesn't have to worry
about that relationship or that relationship. Everyone understands that. And because we absolutely
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knew what we were getting on Isle of Dogs, it was a much smoother process. And our relationship with
him was so much richer, you know, and I, you know, I count him a very good friend now, he's extremely
funny, intelligent, nice guy, very high end conversation, really happy to sit in a restaurant
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and drink a bottle of wine with you and, you know, have that kind of relationship. But in the
directing environment, he's extremely exacting. And, and that is just what you do with him, you
know. And what I felt on Fox was that I was being underused and I was just kind of robotting what
he wanted. But actually, that's not what it is at all. Actually, you're just using your skillset
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in a different way, because what you're doing is trying to get what is he's head onto the screen.
And that is a challenge in itself. And it, it brings with it, you know, the knowledge of various
tricks, bits and pieces that you know about. So you're, you know, you're still using the alchemy
of cinematography, you're just using it in a different way. And I've just, I've just done
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another couple of, he's just done two back to back live action movies, and we've just finished a
load of modeling unit work for him on those, you know, he'll just pick the phone up and just go,
I want you to do this. And you just, you clear the diary, because if you're not available, you know,
you'll have to go through the process of finding someone else. And that would be really fixing
for my head. It's a great sense of everyone likes to be wanted, you know, that's just true of life,
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you know, and being wanted by ways, that's a great thing.
There's that anecdote that on the Royal Tenenbaum's about what Gene Hackman said, which was that, you
know, that movie was Hackman's last or one of his last movies. And, and when was that, where's pitched
him the film, he wasn't convinced by it. And then he said, then one of the things that Wes sort of
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said to him sort of get him on side as it were was, you'll have a great time. It'll be great.
You'll have a, you'll have a, you'll really enjoy, enjoy making it. And then about halfway through
the shoot cut to sort of however many weeks later, sort of, Hackman went up to Wes and said,
I'm not having a good time. You know, you essentially, you lied to me and it was like,
you know, what can I say? But I suppose it ties what you're saying where it can be difficult
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getting that vision on screen. But the result is you get the vision and the vision is something
that's so unique and so beautifully crafted that it's, you know, the blood sweat, toil and tears,
you know, at the end of all that, you get Mr Fox, so you get Isle of Dogs and people love those
movies. You literally do sweat the small stuff. I mean, I once, I was talking to him on Isle of
Dogs about something and he, he sent me about this very funny note saying,
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that would be true if we were making a film that we wanted people to go and see.
Well, I was going to ask Tristan, like sort of in terms of that aspect of relationship building,
did you ever have an opportunity to speak to Robert Yeoman who was the DP on his live action
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film? Yeah, we were curious. I spoke to Bob at the beginning of Fox actually, and he was sort of,
it was quite a funny, quite a brief conversation. I don't really know him, but I have had a couple
of chats with him and he just said, he likes it flat. Just like that. Yeah, it doesn't really
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like he likes it. Just likes it flat. That's symmetrical. It wasn't much use as a conversation.
That was literally it. In fact, you know, I think I've learned how to push that a bit,
because I'll be honest with you, I don't like it flat. I mean, you know,
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bloody TV commercial in the early 2000s, this kind of trendy, slightly beige, flat look about it,
which everyone raved about. I just thought, you know, a horse could do that if you showed it.
I actually quite like model biting, you know, I like to ask you, I like high commas and things
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like that. So I always try and weave a bit in. And occasionally he bites. I don't think you
should always give people exactly what they think they want. You should give them, you should offer
serving suggestions, you know, some lettuce, some tomato, and some corned beef, whatever, you know,
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offer it up. If he says no, then I can say no, no, he's no, you know, there is a temple scene in
Isle of Dogs at the beginning, it is absolutely stunning set where the little Shinto priest kind
of shuffles across and rings a bell. And I lit that. And I was so pleased with myself. I took a
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screen grab of it and took it home. And the next day, he said no. I did not want it to work, I
wanted it flat. So I flattened it off. He said yes, that's great. I love it. And a couple of days later,
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I was talking about this to my girlfriend and I opened my laptop and I showed her the first
image and I went, what do you think of that? And she went, oh, that's beautiful. That's absolutely
fantastic. And then I showed her the next image and I said, what do you think of that?
And she said, oh, that's a bit flat and dull. That's what I did and that's what he wanted. And she
looked at me and she said, it looks like he took a piece of your soul out.
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And I thought that's exactly what it felt like at the time. But actually, you know,
the audience think, yeah.
So you were saying earlier about how like when you and Wes came to work on dogs, you
would really, that relationship had really solidified and you felt comfortable with each
other and there was a bit of a short hand perhaps and you guys felt comfortable with each other.
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Because you'd sort of worked that sort of relationship out. And so with dogs, the look is
so much more, it's so different to Fox. And for me, when I was watching it back, there were so
many sort of shots and framing techniques, which are so much more adventurous. They just appeared
to me to be more adventurous and more bold. And I was just, I wanted to ask like whether that was
a result of you and Wes being more in tandem, that you're more confident with each other in
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terms of what you could do with the camera and with the animation.
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, yes, to an extent, certainly. I mean, I think what
you have with Fox is a kind of intensely organic environment, you know, it's, it's hills and trees
and burrows and things like that. But the odd bit of kind of industrial chic, you know, sewers,
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things like that. Whereas I'll add dogs, you know, the formalism of the Japanese look, you know, which
borrows a lot from woodcuts and things like this and, you know, early Japanese cinema. And the
fact that, you know, they have this beautiful tradition of lack of work and calligraphy and
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all these things, you know, it's a very different palette. It's a very different geometrical sense
of shapes to put in front of the camera. So, you know, it does have that very different look,
you know, and a lot of that is to do with that, you know, it's a lot of hard surfaces, a lot of
squares and oblongs and things like that, rather than soft grass and walls and leaves.
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And because of that, the palettes were different, you know, it's a city palette
and a trash island palette. Whereas Fox is just, it's orange, you know, it's just like
one of the most orange movies ever made.
Orange and brown, yeah, it's just yeah. I mean, this is fantastic. Lighting gel
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called medium bastard amber. And I went through rolls and rolls and rolls of this stuff. It's
kind of warm dust. It's the color of the sun at dusk. It's a very beautiful color.
Wow, we used a lot of it on that job. Whereas dogs is completely different, you know, all the
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trash island stuff is meant to be kind of base white, you know, it's almost like a matte white
thing. And then you'll get the occasional kind of crazy color, but it's quite a lot of monochrome
on the islands. And then the interiors, you know, it's all about Japanese wives, like the hospital
and the lab and things like that. It's very structured, hard like a surfaces. It's a glass,
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which was great. I mean, God knows, it's fantastic to like that stuff. Beautiful, proper set piece
set building, you know, like the temple, like the sake bar, like the theater, you know, there's
all this sort of jewel like sense, which are absolutely blasts to get inside and make it great.
A very different vibe really in terms of the environment. And I think that's what gives you
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that different look. But you know, the baseline is still the same, you know, there's lots of very
symmetrical framing in it, you know, everything is framed on the middle, the third, the quarter,
the fifth, the seventh. And we check that with a grid on the screen. It's not approximate,
it's exact. And if it isn't, let's see. You know, there's that, the very deep depth of field,
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very wide lenses, little signature quirks, like small, tiny dots of light on the horizon,
just a dot of light somewhere at the back of the image, just for no reason,
just like a point of light there or there, you know, anywhere, just something like that.
He'll always ask, I'll have it ready now, because I know he'll want it. We have a nighttime scene,
(30:41):
and he'll just say, just put a dot of light on the horizon.
And is he doing all this on the set, sort of over your shoulder, sort of pointing it out? Or is he?
Yes and no, I mean, you know, the legend of his absence is true, but he's there because of,
you know, the internet. I got immediate access to him all day long, you know, he's just not physically
(31:04):
present, which on Fox was a nightmare. I mean, that's the biggest thing that kind of freaked us out,
you know, how did we get hold of him? Because we didn't have as good communication in whatever
we started that job, 2007, as we did when we did dogs. But on dogs, you know, I could send him a clip
(31:26):
or I could send him a frame and he'd be back to me within 30 seconds. And he'd either email me
or what's that mean, or he'd call me. And we'd talk stuff through, and he'd normally email,
unless it got very tricky, in which case he would pick the phone up.
But he was never absent on the communication front, you know, and he, you know, we would get in at,
(31:51):
I would get in at about 7am in the morning, and I knew he'd be there when we would just talk to him.
And he would be online until the end of edit, which was about 9am. So it's 14 hours.
I don't know, probably weed in a bucket, but you know what I mean, it's just, it's present,
(32:13):
it's very present. So I mean, that sort of leads me to actually a question from what you're saying
right now, that's what popped into my mind is, in that instance, do you as the DP sort of take over
the ship, running the ship as it were on a day to day basis? Because as you've said earlier, I mean,
you are there almost from pre-production, looking at all these different teams and
(32:37):
looking at every element almost. So do you feel like you're, as well as cinematographer Tristan,
are you also putting on several other hats to make sure that the ship is righted, if anything were to go wrong?
It is one vessel, but within the vessel, you know, you have kind of triumvirate of people who are
(33:01):
kind of guiding the process. So you have your production designer and art director. So you have
the art department, which is massive. It's fine with the biggest part of the crew. You know,
there are over a hundred people in the art department doing stuff. The camera department,
we're me at the top. And then you have the director, you know, and then you have edit and
VFX that fit around that. And everyone informs the process. You know, what I have is I have 30
(33:25):
years of experience. So I can see stuff coming that's going to go wrong. And I have an opinion
that generally on everything if needed. But the real person who drives a feature film and any
feature film, stop frame or live action is the first AD. If the first AD isn't good,
(33:50):
literally don't get a movie. It's all there. You know, I have quite enough to do running my
department, lighting stuff and you know, making stuff look great without doing that as well.
So it's almost like the dogs in the film where everyone is like an alpha, but it's a democratic
(34:11):
Everyone takes a vote. Everyone takes a vote. Yeah, if you've ever watched that documentary
Lost in La Mancha about Terry Gilliam trying to make Don Quixote, like the one point of sanity
is the first thing. He's the guy who is trying to hold it all together. Super human strength.
(34:36):
As the entire universe collapses around it. There's this guy and he's like Thor.
That's absolutely what a good first AD is like. They are there to make the film.
Going a bit more in depth with dogs then, because as I was watching it back, there were just so
many moments. I mean, you probably have heard this an awful lot since the movies come out,
(34:57):
but like there are so many individual shots and moments where you just kind of want to
you want to freeze it. You want to go, hold on, let me just print that.
And let me just look at it for a bit. And there were so many moments when I was wondering like,
how the hell did you guys do that? Because when I was researching the film and how you guys made
it, it sounded like it was very, very tactile. CGI and VFX weren't resorted to as much as on
(35:17):
other animated films. Some of the ones that Armand had put out are obviously, even other
stop-motion films. The VFX are used to fill in the gaps. So specifically, I don't know if you
could tell us about it, but the shot where they inject Chief, the dog with the flu vaccine,
and there's that amazing moment where it sort of becomes an x-ray shot and you see the serum
(35:39):
doing its work on him. And you're looking at them going, how? I mean, it's gorgeous. You're
looking at it, just going like, how the hell did they pull that off? So, I mean, that is the
quote, how the hell did you guys pull that off? Yeah, I mean, there's such a world of pain involved
in that shot. Pulled out the world of pain shot there. That was originally going to be a VFX shot
(36:08):
because it's staggeringly difficult to do in camera, but Wes was very, very insistent and
once he digs his heels in, you have no chance. So they made a transparent dog with all his organs
inside, like those old anatomical models. I think Damien Hirst did a kind of big version of one of
(36:32):
those. So it was based on one of those models that you could take apart and take all the organs
out of. It had to look like that and have all these tubes in it. What you can do is the animator
animates the puppet and then takes a frame. Okay, and then they have to move the puppet again to
take the next frame, but they don't move the puppet. You can then, you can take that frame again
(36:54):
with in a different lighting state and you can take it again in a different lighting state and
again in a different lighting state. And we quite often do this. So we have multiple lines of exposure
for every frame and they all sit in a different file. We use a file system. The animator has no
part in this. They just press the button and they stand aside and the lights do what they have to do
and the camera does what it has to do and then it just goes okay. You can do your next frame. And
(37:17):
the animator just sees the line they're working in. But what it gives us is the opportunity to have
different lighting states which we can then utilize and blend together in order to give us a kind of
magical feel. So to get the kind of glow and, you know, very specific kind of tiny lighting effects,
(37:37):
we can actually just take a frame with just those lights on or just one element turned on.
And then what the effects do is they take those and they layer them all together. So they're not
actually creating the effects. They're creating a composite, if you will, that doesn't technically
involve creating anything just blending. But obviously there's a little bit of
(38:03):
the effects in there because it's impossible. But yeah, so that dog, they had to make this
bloody transparent dog which just it makes it incredibly difficult to make a transparent dog
that's only 20 centimeters high that has high clarity to the prospects that you've made it from.
(38:25):
That is in every detail the same as the dog underneath. And then working out a way of
subbing it in so that it looks like that's happening. We had a similar but much cruder thing in
Fantastic Mr Fox where Fox reaches out to touch his wife and says there's a certain glow about you
tonight and Wes wanted her to look like a child's lamp. So they made a mold of the puppet out of
(38:51):
hard pink plastic and then painted it really crudely and they've got a light bulb inside it.
And so when he turns to her and goes, there's a certain glow about you, she's actually like a
little lamp. That's what he wanted. He wanted that comedy moment of this rather crude 1950s
bakelite light fitting. So yeah, he's keen on that. But it's the night now. I mean,
(39:14):
registration of those things is terribly difficult just getting everything to wind up.
But we do it. You know, and I mean, you pulled it off. I mean, more brilliantly.
How long does something like that take to plan? Is that something that you intended or like you said,
Wes said, you know, Douglas Hillsen. So was that something that then had to be gone back to the
(39:40):
drawing board? And well, I mean, this comes back to this kind of rolling pre-production process
really. So you know, we would have confronted that full on about six to eight weeks out from
shooting it. And at that point, the conversations would have been had, and people would have gone,
well, we're going to do that in VFX, aren't we? And everyone would have gone, yeah.
(40:02):
Okay. And then we prepare a document to send to Wes and Wes would have gone, no,
this is not what I want. I want to do it like this. And then everyone would have gone,
oh, especially the puppet department who are absolutely ran. So an Isle of Dogs, you know,
they made over 600 puppets. Just consider the implications of that. So every one of those
(40:25):
puppets has a steel and brass fully articulating armature inside. And then they are skinned,
and then they are costumed, and then they are roofed, and then they have all their facial
replacements for speaking. So and they are, you know, key characters of which you make several,
so that you can work across multiple sets with those key characters, you know, the dogs
(40:45):
are every single hair on those dogs is punched in by hand into a silicon necklace.
So those dogs are conservatively 20 to 25 grand a piece. So it's a very expensive,
ultra time consuming, ultra specialized thing. And the puppet department are writers, you know,
(41:06):
they're just like, we're going here, we have to have this ready by this day. And then suddenly you
go, oh, by the way, can you make an anatomically perfect transparent dog? You are throwing. And
by that point in the production, you've probably got every decent puppet maker on the planet working
in your public department. It's the United Nations on these jobs. It really, you know,
(41:29):
people come from every corner of the world. I had Japanese woman motion control operator on
our laptops. I had another Japanese girl in the electrical department,
I had a Turkish woman on the camera crew, you know, I had in the camera crew alone, which is
probably one of the smaller departments. I had people from nine different countries. So,
(41:50):
you know, you gather talent. So when you throw something like that at them, you really are
pushing the boundaries. And then, you know, they start, they come in at the weekend, and they come
on their holidays, and they all look like that. I was going to say, on a thing like that, on a
project like that, do you keep any sort of souvenirs? If there's 600 puppets, is there two or three
(42:12):
in a space in your home somewhere? On Wes films, Wes gets everything at the end. He's
got an enormous archive, which is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But
he did give dogs to all the key crew. And I did get a dog. And I got the best dog. I got Black
(42:34):
Chief. Hey, Chief, before he becomes White Chief, he's under a glass dome in my house in Pride of
Plates. Wow. Wow. That's a 20 round puppet. That was a good gift to get. Because you were
describing how much blood and sweat went into that shot of the transparent dog and the flu
injection. We were wondering, are you actually able to sit down and actually watch a movie that you
(42:59):
worked on and look back at it, objectively? Or do you just see the mistakes or the pain, as it were,
that went into making it? You do see the mistakes and the pain because you're looking out for them.
But there's a kind of fantastic chemistry that takes place when the mixed soundtrack goes on.
(43:22):
And you don't, the crew don't see that until the film is finished, finished. So, you know, even
when I'm grading the movie, when I'm sitting in the DI, you know, I'll probably watch the completed
movie 40 or 50 times during that process until I'm sick to death of it, but I watch it mute. So,
(43:44):
I probably know what it sounds like with the vocal track on, but I've got no idea how it is with the
orchestra or the folie or the effects, you know, everything. And it's so transformative. I mean,
really, sound makes such a difference to picture. It really, really does. It is unbelievable.
(44:05):
And it kind of smooths over a lot of stuff, which is hard, isn't it? So, there's kind of audio
plaster on the bits of the image that don't quite work. And I think it's because it helps
the cuts so much, you know, you can drive a cut through with a piece of music that wouldn't otherwise
(44:25):
work on a purely visual basis. So, there is that kind of delight, but they're always a bit painful.
I've just got to the point where I can watch Chicken Run and go, that's a really great film,
because I've forgotten how we did a lot of it, which is fantastic, because you then think,
look at that, we did that. How do we do that? That's great. And the thing about Chicken Run,
(44:50):
there are no VFX in it. It's all in camera, you know, all those daytime exteriors, that's
in front of the camera, all that stuff, that's all set and painted backdrop, right there. There's no
green screen, there's no digital set extension, nothing. It's all there. It's all on 35 millilinks
(45:12):
of film. And I can now look at it and go, yeah, that is a piece of work. Well done,
us. We did a good job. And also, ParaNorman, which I'm very, very proud of. I think of
everything I've shot. I know very few people have seen it, but for me, from my point of view,
cinematography on that is the best thing I've done. I got to do my thing on that job in a way
(45:36):
that's very rarely gifted to you as a cinematographer. Speaking of, well, cinematography
again, we know that you had a chance to meet Jack Cardiff, legendary. Yeah, we were doing our
research for this. And we found, came across that little anecdote you said where you met him,
and it was just kind of amazing. Because obviously, we've seen The Red Shoes, we've seen
(45:57):
like those Powell and Pressburger movies he did, where the cinematography he did is like,
so ahead of the curve, and it looks amazing, it still looks incredible. And we were just kind of
wondering what that experience was like meeting this sort of legend of cinematography, like,
this British sort of icon in a way. Yeah, well, he was a legend. I mean, he must have been
(46:19):
about 90 when I had lunch with him. And he was just full of anecdotes, which is always fun.
I mean, he could just talk about stuff he'd done. I mean, if you've ever read his book, Magic Hour,
boy, he had a life. He had a saucy life. You know, I think he, they did a lot of significant
(46:42):
actresses in his time, and as well as shooting a lot of great films. And he was only about five
foot four, you know, twenty gold teeth. Yeah, still talking about stuff that is kind of
annoyed in years and years ago, he was talking about shooting Anna Karenina, which was directed by
King Vidor and Audrey Hepburn played Anna Karenina. And he was, he was moaning on about this scene
(47:06):
where she gets into a carriage and sits back and Jack had wanted her to sit back and go into complete
darkness as he felt that it spoke to the plot rather well. And King Vidor wouldn't have it.
He said King just wasn't brave enough to let that happen. He wanted light on her face.
So I had to put light on and still annoyed him. This is what you were talking about,
(47:30):
isn't it? With like, you know, with some of the directors you worked with, like, you know,
you want to do one thing, then they're like, they dig the hills and they're like, no,
it's got to be this way. Yeah. I mean, some directors just don't direct cinematographers at all.
You know, you just kind of turn up and you go,
and they kind of get, yeah, yes, fine. What about if I did this? No, it's fine.
It's fine. Sometimes feedback is good, you know, just have a conversation about it.
(47:57):
I've done this. What do you think? You know, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this.
You know, this is just a suggestion. But some people's heads are just in the action.
That's all they want to think about. It's funny. It's funny. Like the best directors
are people you can have a dialogue with. I mean, so I'm shooting commercials, you know,
you work with some absolute mentalists, but they are, they are better by far at the end of the day
(48:19):
than the person who doesn't know what they want or just thinks everything is fine.
There's actually, you know, the more mental just pushing you towards something different.
You know, and they recognize that in themselves, you know, they go, you know, I know, I know this
is going to take us ages. We'll be here till 3am, but I just want to see if we can do it.
(48:42):
And you go, okay, yeah, I get that. Let's do it. You know, a bit of mental doesn't hurt when you're
being creative. You know, you don't want a committee and you don't want indecision. You want,
you want a decision, whatever it is. So at least you can go, that's wrong. Let's not do that.
Ask for what you want. I think that that is the key to being a director. Ask for what you want.
(49:06):
And don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Because generally, if people like you,
they will try and do it. Even if everything about it seems ridiculous, they will try and do it.
Because they can see in you that quality that suggests that you can see something they can't.
(49:26):
You know, it's an interesting dynamic that is serving the director, which is what we're there to do.
If as a cinematographer, I think I'm the director, I shouldn't be on that job.
So we're talking from Ravensbourne University, which has a lot of animation
students and a lot of film production students who are no doubt wanting to get into cinematography
(49:47):
and also break into animation in some form. And we were just wondering, what kind of advice would
you give just for people who want to break into the field that you're working in?
Well, of course, animation and cinematography are not necessarily the same thing.
If you're an animator, you need to show real. You need to be able to show what you can do.
(50:14):
And you need to be more than willing to start as low as it gets. So,
you know, luckily places like Aardman do run training schemes. They have the Aardman Academy.
If you want to go into animation direction, then you should be looking to go to the national,
because at least there your stuff will be seen by a suitably large audience.
(50:36):
But I know people, I work with people who've been to Ravens Forum, you know,
and there are some hardware decent animators who've come out of there. So, you know,
that's obviously working, you know, it's about innate talent and it's about getting that down.
But as in anything visual, audio describing what you've done is not going to cut it. You need to
be able to show stuff you've done, you know, so make sure you finish your graduation film.
(51:02):
Because no one wants to see a graduation film that's got cards in it with unfinished written on them,
or, you know, black space. God knows, I've seen plenty of those. In terms of cinematography,
I don't know, I mean, this is the key question, you know, I think, you know, the advice I always give
(51:25):
is it just seems like the coolest thing you could possibly do. And in many ways, it is quite a cool
thing to do. But it's incredibly hard work. You have to be very, very good at it. And it ain't
just about making things that pretty, you know, the amount of people management you have to do, the
amount of just daily dicking about with production and, you know, everything that being the head of
(51:52):
something brings with it. It's, you know, we are not left in monk like peace to perform our art to
the best of our ability. Because there's always a schedule, there's always a budget, and there's
always someone who wants to go and do something to take you away from that. There's always someone
in your way, you know. So it's just about, you know, like animation, it's about doing enough to
(52:17):
show you can do something. And getting, making sure you make the most of your opportunities, you
know, so shoot whatever there is to shoot, you know, work for your mates, shoot short films for
your mates, shoot pop moments for your mates, shoot whatever classes for a pop program in this
day and age, you know, digital content. You know, use your phone, you can shoot 4k on your phone,
(52:44):
for goodness sake, imagine, you know, if I'd had that when I was 15, I'd have shot 10,000 times
more stuff, you know, we were shooting on 16mm, which was 100 pounds a tin. So, you know, you've
essentially got all your filmmaking tools free in your hand. And if you're halfway decent with a
camera, you can make something that looks halfway decent. So it's about having stuff to show.
(53:10):
You know, showing willing is good. Showing interested is good, but showing stuff, that's
what we've got. And also, you know, there is a progression within the camera department. And I
think people think they can get around that. They can kind of go college, DOP. But actually,
that's great. You know what, you might have some heaven sent talent, you know, some enormous
(53:37):
heaven sent, you might be absolutely brilliant. But what you need to remember is you need to do that
every day. You'll get up in the morning and you will feel like dead warmed up, you'll have flu,
proper flu, and you will have to go and shoot a £850,000 commercial, which you've got one day
(54:02):
to get it right. And you need to be able to go in there and do it. And all your heaven sent talent
is going to count for nothing if you haven't got the experience to just run on autopilot.
And just be able to go in and go, okay, I basically can't think I don't know what my name is. But I
do know that if I do this, this, this and this, I use this camera, this set of lenses, and I do this,
(54:25):
it'll look okay. Because my experience is all, you know, and I have trainees,
I don't need a CV 10 pages long from a trainee, I know when you're 21, that you haven't done very
much. But at least show me what you have done, you know, and don't waste anyone's time. And my
(54:47):
number one piece of advice, if you're applying for a traineeship in the camera department,
do not write the word direct photography at the top of your CV. Because if you are a director
of photography, why you're applying for a traineeship, if you're a trainee, why are you calling
(55:08):
yourself a director of photography? Write trainee at the top. And then someone will read it. But if
I read a trainee CV as director of photography at the top, it goes in the bin. Because I'm the DP.
It's a fair point. It's a very fair point. Very fair point. Thank you so much for talking to us,
(55:32):
Tristan. This has been an absolute pleasure. And, you know, it's been great, you know, talk about
your work. And for me, for, I think for both of us personally, talk to the guy who shot all these
movies, which have meant so much to us over the years since we were literal good kids. It's a
great pleasure and a privilege. So, you know, thank you for both of us for chatting to us. But
it's been great. You are welcome. I always love to hear that stuff. It always makes me feel incredibly
(55:56):
old. Yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking, I forgot this, but I was thinking before we said,
like, do I mention like that? I've forgotten that. I'm afraid. One of you is younger than
wrong trousers, I think. No, I'm not younger than wrong trousers. 92 we shot wrong trousers.
Yeah, no, I was about, I would have been about two. I suspect you weren't born. That is, that is
(56:22):
probably possible. Yeah, that is correct. You do know when you were born, don't you?
Yeah, yeah, more or less. Most of the time. I mean, his close shave was 95, wasn't it?
So yeah, something like that. Okay, that's not even go there.
So thanks for joining us, Tristan, to talk about Isle of Dogs, your film with Wes Anderson,
(00:04):
which you were the DP on, not your only movie, DP'ing, with Wes Anderson.
Yeah, we kind of want to start at the beginning with sort of with you and your career really,
in terms of asking you about, we know that you started off as an actor and sort of as a crew
member, you know, clapperboard, loader and that kind of thing. And then you sort of moved into
(00:25):
animation through working with Aardman and then you sort of shot many of their films up through
to Curse of The Were-Rabbit. And we just kind of wanted to ask you a bit about what was that like in the
early days of sort of, you know, getting on board of this company, you kind of went on to change
the face of animation really. Yes, well goodness, that was a long time ago. Yeah, as you say, I kind
(00:47):
of had an early manifestation as an actor and I got a role in a movie and I'd never been on a film
set in my life, you know, I didn't have any idea about the process at all. And within the course
of shooting that movie, I became very, very interested in the camera department and the guy
who shot it Peter Bijou, who won an Academy Award for Mississippi Burning a few years later,
(01:13):
was a terribly sweet guy, was very nice to me, you know, because I was in my first big movie and he
was very kind to me and I got on with it very well. And my educational background was sort of the
perfect bonkers mix of A-levels, you know, I'd done physics, biology, chemistry, English and
theater studies A-levels. So I had kind of science and art and I was doing a drama degree at the time.
(01:37):
So it kind of just changed my path really and that accompanied by the fact that acting is
a ludicrously unstable profession to be in. I mean, you know, it doesn't even matter if you're
good, you don't necessarily work, you know. So I was just something very attracted to it, you know,
(02:00):
so it's these kind of bizarre sort of skitsprennict two years where I was acting a bit and working as
a camera assistant and then I decided to go to film school and at the time the union was incredibly
strong for film technicians and you couldn't really work without being a member of the union,
but it was also a terribly closed shop so it tended to consist of the sons and nephews and I
(02:27):
used those genders advisedly of other crew members. But there were a couple of film school
courses that you could be accredited for with the union. So one of those was the national London
Film School London International Film School and Bristol. So I went back to Bristol where I
(02:48):
done my degree and I took the film school course. My graduation film which I'd shot did very well,
I won a few cinematography prizes and then over the sort of next 18 months, two years, I was,
you know, doing the usual nonsense of shooting pop-promos for friends and short dramas that
never saw the light of day and all those things that we think are going to be significant but
(03:12):
aren't, but are in fact incredibly good practice. So and then I rang Aardman one day to borrow some
lights for a pot-premo I was shooting and Aardman at that point was quite literally three guys in
a garage. It was three guys and it was a garage and that's where they shot. I knew one of them and
(03:37):
he said, oh you're doing anything next week and I said no, you want to come and finish off this
commercial. You know, the way they worked was they kind of laid back, they had no schedule.
So they'd start shooting something with no idea when they were going to finish and the guy who
was shooting it had got another job. So I went in and there I was at the tender age of whatever
it was, 24 or something like that, shooting a big TV commercial on 35mm just by dint of the fact that
(04:05):
they'd run out of crew. And you know, I never had any intention, I mean who would, of going into
stock-frame animation as a career choice because you know, as a cinematographer, you know, God it's
rarefied and rare and infrequent. There's not many people do it for a reason because there's not a
(04:29):
huge amount of good work out there and at the time there was even less work. But I got into
Ardman at the right time, you know, and they liked me and I was enjoying it, you know, and I rather
alarmingly had a child shortly after that. So all that kind of period of my life where I should have
been clubbing and doing just grossful things abroad, never really happened because I actually had some
(04:54):
responsibility I had to take care of. So I just stuck in, you know, whenever they asked me to do
work, I just, I went and did work and I became a sort of regular crew there. But what was happening
was, you know, Pete and Dave who owned the company, they wanted to do something different
with stock-frame animation because all stock-frame animation was kids TV, Pingu, Magic Roundabout,
(05:19):
it wasn't quite Bob the Builder because he hadn't been invented then, but you know,
Trumpton, Camberwick Green, that kind of stuff. So it was very, very simply
photographed, you know, locks of camera, big soft light over the top. It was really just about the
animation and about the stories and there was no heart to the capturing of the image if you like
to be a bit pronsy about it. So, you know, what they were looking to do was to take it forward
(05:41):
cinematically. And I was there at that point and you know, we, as we got bigger, you know, we actively
were moving towards a new look for stuff and that was primarily in commercials at that time
and the odd short film. So Creature Comforts, for instance, happened during that time and
(06:01):
various other short films and Aardman started to get profile. They won an Academy Award for
Creature Comforts and they won a bunch of actors for other stuff. So it was, you know,
it was all about time and place and it being a very intensively creative place to be because
everyone was just trying to hunt for a way to make what we did a proper thing. And then,
(06:27):
you know, the culmination of that really was Wrong Trousers, which was the opportunity to produce,
you know, some longish form, stock frame that actually looked like a proper film, you know,
and had that aesthetic to it that wasn't all about kids drama, but was actually about making a
beautiful image that stood up to being projected, not just on your telly on Christmas Day, but
(06:49):
actually, you know, something bigger. That's a very long answer to a very short film.
That's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, just on the side of those early Aardman films and the Wallace
and Gromit films, I think in particular, I think you could probably say the same as me about this
is that, you know, those movies, obviously, you know, they're a national institution,
as you were saying earlier, to kids, to people, you know, a lot of those kids now adults in Britain.
(07:12):
You know, the fact that we're actually chatting to you, you know, the guy who shot the train
chaser Wrong Trousers and, you know, all the stuff in clothes, shaving and chicken run,
and wear out, but, you know, all those, you know, it's pretty amazing, you know, the stuff that
you guys, as you say, you know, right there at the beginning of all that, the work that you guys
did together is incredible. And, you know, it's really, really fun to be able to talk to you about
(07:33):
it and listen to you, sort of tell us about it. So yeah, touching on sort of the thing that you
said earlier of you went into Aardman, just sort of almost doing them a favor, essentially,
in your time when you were there, is that when you started picking up a genuine love for
stop motion animation? Because I mean, you could have gone and tried to break into the live action
(07:58):
scene. Or was it slowly down to the responsibility that you said of having a young child?
Yeah, it's a difficult question, you know, I have long handkerchiefs to do something different.
And I have done other things differently. I mean, the bizarre thing is, I guess in the last 10 to
15 years, I've shot more live action stuff than I have any other time in my life, you know, and I
(08:22):
now have quite a kind of nice mix, you know, I did a couple of live action feature films
just before lockdown. And, you know, I've kind of arrived at a happy place. And I do a lot of
sort of mixed media commercials as well, where, you know, I shoot the animation and I shoot the
live action because I know how that stuff fits together. But I do genuinely enjoy the animation
(08:44):
now. I think you have to not be too precious about this stuff, because it's a bit like an actor who's
very good at comedy saying, I want to play Hamlet, you know, that's not going to happen because
you're very good at what you do. And I recognize that I am very good at what I do, you know,
not many people do what I do. But even so, I'm pretty up there, you know, and I'm not boasting
(09:10):
about it, it's just, you know, I do big movies and I do big movies that everyone sees. So,
you know, I'm obviously doing something right. And it would be foolish of me to put myself up against
the, I don't know, five or 600 excellent live action DPs just in the UK, as a, as a contender
(09:31):
at my age and this point in my career, you know, I mean, there are many, many exceptionally talented
colleagues who are much better at that stuff than I will ever be. But I do enjoy a bit of live action
now and again. And also, you know, I'm now, you know, if you do this stuff for long enough, you,
you know, you just become an expert of being a live action DP, you actually become an expert
(09:54):
in the whole process of animation, you know, so I am, you know, when I do a feature film, I'm,
I'm across the storyboarding, the design, you know, I spend every day in the art department
talking to the production designer and the art director and the set guys and the set dressers,
the puppet makers and the costume makers, you know, because everything appears in front of my
(10:15):
camera. So I inform what they're doing because I know what that stuff's going to look like. So if I
think something is textured wrong, or the scale of something is reading wrong, or the design of a
prop is too crude to be projected to interfere high, then that's part of my process. You know,
it's not just about shining lights and taking pictures, it's about making the entire image.
(10:35):
So it's kind of all encompassing process. I think maybe a bit more than live action is where
the crew as a whole just sort of tend to turn up on day one. There's obviously an enormous
pre-production process, but that number of people coming together that early on a project is quite
unusual. A big stock frame production is an intensely busy process. And what I always say is it takes a
(10:59):
long time, but it isn't slow. The process is time consuming, but everyone on it is working
really as fast as they can. So you also have enormous scale to these things. So I would typically
on a feature film be running 50 shooting units. So get your head around that. That's 50 sets,
50 cameras, all shooting simultaneously. And obviously a constant turnover of set, action,
(11:26):
dressing, occupying an enormous amount of real estate. So my camera crew, my assistants typically
do 10 to 15 kilometers a day around the studio space. And the, you know, the animators who are
doing this process, which seems intensely slow, are working as fast as they can. But what they do
(11:47):
is incredibly complicated. And, you know, talking about being an actor, what an animator is doing
is feeding a performance through an inanimate object and bringing it to life. So in many ways,
that is as performance based and art as any piece of acting. It's almost technical, it's very
kit heavy, it's very people heavy, it's space heavy. You know, the whole thing is like a,
(12:11):
I was thinking of it as like an ocean liner, you know, that once it's underway, it's,
it appears to be moving slowly, but if it hits you, you know.
Well, I mean, sort of looking back to what you just said, in terms of the length of some of these
(12:32):
projects that you're working on, how do you maintain your passion and your, and your objectivity
and your creativity for such a long sort of shoot period? We know obviously in terms of
live action work, you can be in a set or out in a field somewhere shooting for, you know,
six weeks, and then you're done moving on to your next project. Whereas with your like yourself,
(12:57):
it can be anything from a year to two to three to an even more. So how do you, how do you keep that
going? Yeah, well, it's the shooting period is typically about 18 months, it's about 80,
80 weeks, if you like. And I, I really love it because what you have to understand is that the,
the pre-production process continues almost to the end of the production process. So, you know,
(13:20):
I am, my typical day will involve turning around, relighting, you know, maybe a dozen shooting
units, I work a couple of other guys who work for me doing a bit of lighting under my instruction,
but then I'll be in edit, I'll be in VFX, looking at the latest stuff in VFX, I will be in script
meetings, I will be in storyboard breakdown meetings, and I will be in pre-production meetings for
(13:42):
what is coming up in the next six to eight weeks. And that is rolling all the way through that process.
So for me, it's very busy. But I always, I always think there's a process of learning,
learning the project, you know, when you come on, you know, you read the script, you've seen the
storyboards. But if someone mentions something, you know, you have to thumb your way back through
and find, oh yeah, that's that page. And I forgot what was happening. And then after a while, it
(14:05):
just kind of gels in your head. And you've got this massive mental database of the film. And,
you know, you find that if someone says, oh yeah, that sequence 26, shot 48, you can go, oh yeah,
I know what that is. That's a two shot outside, you know, this happens. And, and, and once you're
in that kind of zone, it becomes enormously exciting because you're kind of locked into this thing,
(14:31):
just powering through. And you really feel like you're making something. And, and you know, every
day, the more you shoot, the more you get. So you sit in rushes every morning, and you look at
yesterday's material, and you begin to see it cutting in to the story reel, and you begin to see
shots next to each other. And you get a feeling of what the film's going to look like. And,
especially if something's been very complicated or a massive pain in the ass to shoot, you know, to
(14:56):
see it actually finished, you just think, yeah, that's great. You know, that's that, you know,
it's constant reward. You know, it's a bit of, you know, sweet, you know,
another shot.
Yeah, I suppose this sort of brings us then quite nicely onto sort of working with Wes because
so you would obviously shot with Arman for, you know, 15 years, you know, at least, you know,
(15:20):
up through wear rabbit. And then there was, I was reading upon this and on the production of
Phanasmus the Fox, which is obviously the first film we shot with Wes. As the story goes,
Wes was sort of, you know, setting up production here in Britain. And you, I think is the story,
you heard about it. And you, they had already hired another DP, but then you were particularly
keen on, like, you know, you heard that it was, it was Wes making this film, and you were like,
(15:42):
right, I need to get my foot in the door there. I need to, I need to be the DP on that film.
Is that, is that how it went down? Is it worth? It's almost how it went down.
Yeah. I'd like to stress for the record, but I did not know they had hired another DP until
after they hired me. That would have been an act of treachery and unprofessionalism that I would
(16:05):
not have conscious, but I was as bad I got the job. Yeah, I mean, I had only say only, I had
never been on staff at Aardman. I was a freelancer. And for whatever reason, I'm not sure I even
know after Curse of The Were-Rabbit of it, that signaled a kind of break in that relationship. I still
(16:27):
don't know why, but I obviously needed to work elsewhere. And I heard that this project was
going on. And I, yeah, I took my reel to the producer and she showed it to Wes and I got the
job. So that's pretty much how it happened, you know, and they're, and they're on from their own
we embarked on a curious, occasionally frustrating, occasionally exciting journey on a whole different
(16:51):
way of making a movie. I mean, nothing is like that. Yeah, well, we were going to, we wanted to
ask about this because I mean, I think we're both fans of Wes's, right? And like, and if we were
curious, in terms of stop motion and animation is such a meticulous craft. And yet you're working
with a director who is known for how meticulous his craft is when it comes to the look of the films,
(17:13):
how you know, how they feel the tone style, everything about them, you kind of can imagine
Wes sitting there, you know, almost with a dollhouse, putting it all together. And we were
curious, you know, in terms of working with a guy like that with such a strong vision, was it
it was it easy at times to work with? Was it was it was it fun? Was it, you know, what was that
like, that relationship? Well, on Fox, no, it wasn't fun. It was, it was, it was a frustrating process.
(17:44):
And, you know, in hindsight, after years of therapy,
the reason was, you know, he'd never done Stop-Frame before, and we'd never worked with Wes Anderson
before. And, you know, what you come to realise over the years is that you don't, you don't go on to
a Wes Anderson movie and get to make anything other than a Wes Anderson movie. So the very idea
(18:06):
that he would go, do you know what I don't really know about this, what do you think,
which is quite a common conversation between a director and a DP. That never happens. Wes knows
what he wants. You know, he was asking us to do stuff that I mean, really, as a crew, we felt was
not not great, difficult, you know, frustrating. But, but, you know, at the end of all that,
(18:36):
we did have Fantastic Mr Fox. And, you know, you do have to stand back and go, yeah, okay,
well, a lot of people love that, maybe. You know, all the things that frustrated is about it
are things that make it the Wes Anderson movie. You know, I mean, there are,
there are physical constraints on what you can do in terms of miniature cinematography that he
(18:58):
wanted us to bend and break and exceed. And I think, you know, he got to learn that you can't
always do that, because it's, it's Newtonian physics. You can't have the guy by the camera and
the guy on the horizon, both in focus at the same time. You can in live action because humans are
(19:18):
human to talk, but puppets are 22 centimeters five. So, you know, we had to find new ways. But,
you know, the interesting thing about him is, you know, I learned very quickly, but you can't
actually say to him, you can't actually do that. Because what he wants is to be shown that you
can't do that. So you do actually have to take the time to do something you know won't work in order
(19:40):
to say to him, this is what it will look like. And then he can process that and go, okay, well,
if I can't have that, and I have this, you know, the conversation goes on again. But when our dogs
came around, it was a substantially better experience because what you realize is that
(20:00):
he loves the familiarity of people who knows and he stress tests tests you. And if you, if you get
through that, then you are, you're kind of his for life, you know, so you always see the same faces
on those pictures, whether they're live action or stop frame, you know, if you look at the production
(20:22):
crew, you will see the same production assistance, the same production managers, you'll see those
names over and over and over again, because he likes that familiarity. Because once he's got
those people around him, he's completely free to do what he likes, because he doesn't have to worry
about that relationship or that relationship. Everyone understands that. And because we absolutely
(20:42):
knew what we were getting on Isle of Dogs, it was a much smoother process. And our relationship with
him was so much richer, you know, and I, you know, I count him a very good friend now, he's extremely
funny, intelligent, nice guy, very high end conversation, really happy to sit in a restaurant
(21:04):
and drink a bottle of wine with you and, you know, have that kind of relationship. But in the
directing environment, he's extremely exacting. And, and that is just what you do with him, you
know. And what I felt on Fox was that I was being underused and I was just kind of robotting what
he wanted. But actually, that's not what it is at all. Actually, you're just using your skillset
(21:27):
in a different way, because what you're doing is trying to get what is he's head onto the screen.
And that is a challenge in itself. And it, it brings with it, you know, the knowledge of various
tricks, bits and pieces that you know about. So you're, you know, you're still using the alchemy
of cinematography, you're just using it in a different way. And I've just, I've just done
(21:48):
another couple of, he's just done two back to back live action movies, and we've just finished a
load of modeling unit work for him on those, you know, he'll just pick the phone up and just go,
I want you to do this. And you just, you clear the diary, because if you're not available, you know,
you'll have to go through the process of finding someone else. And that would be really fixing
for my head. It's a great sense of everyone likes to be wanted, you know, that's just true of life,
(22:15):
you know, and being wanted by ways, that's a great thing.
There's that anecdote that on the Royal Tenenbaum's about what Gene Hackman said, which was that, you
know, that movie was Hackman's last or one of his last movies. And, and when was that, where's pitched
him the film, he wasn't convinced by it. And then he said, then one of the things that Wes sort of
(22:36):
said to him sort of get him on side as it were was, you'll have a great time. It'll be great.
You'll have a, you'll have a, you'll really enjoy, enjoy making it. And then about halfway through
the shoot cut to sort of however many weeks later, sort of, Hackman went up to Wes and said,
I'm not having a good time. You know, you essentially, you lied to me and it was like,
you know, what can I say? But I suppose it ties what you're saying where it can be difficult
(22:59):
getting that vision on screen. But the result is you get the vision and the vision is something
that's so unique and so beautifully crafted that it's, you know, the blood sweat, toil and tears,
you know, at the end of all that, you get Mr Fox, so you get Isle of Dogs and people love those
movies. You literally do sweat the small stuff. I mean, I once, I was talking to him on Isle of
Dogs about something and he, he sent me about this very funny note saying,
(23:23):
that would be true if we were making a film that we wanted people to go and see.
Well, I was going to ask Tristan, like sort of in terms of that aspect of relationship building,
did you ever have an opportunity to speak to Robert Yeoman who was the DP on his live action
(23:44):
film? Yeah, we were curious. I spoke to Bob at the beginning of Fox actually, and he was sort of,
it was quite a funny, quite a brief conversation. I don't really know him, but I have had a couple
of chats with him and he just said, he likes it flat. Just like that. Yeah, it doesn't really
(24:08):
like he likes it. Just likes it flat. That's symmetrical. It wasn't much use as a conversation.
That was literally it. In fact, you know, I think I've learned how to push that a bit,
because I'll be honest with you, I don't like it flat. I mean, you know,
(24:29):
bloody TV commercial in the early 2000s, this kind of trendy, slightly beige, flat look about it,
which everyone raved about. I just thought, you know, a horse could do that if you showed it.
I actually quite like model biting, you know, I like to ask you, I like high commas and things
(24:50):
like that. So I always try and weave a bit in. And occasionally he bites. I don't think you
should always give people exactly what they think they want. You should give them, you should offer
serving suggestions, you know, some lettuce, some tomato, and some corned beef, whatever, you know,
(25:15):
offer it up. If he says no, then I can say no, no, he's no, you know, there is a temple scene in
Isle of Dogs at the beginning, it is absolutely stunning set where the little Shinto priest kind
of shuffles across and rings a bell. And I lit that. And I was so pleased with myself. I took a
(25:37):
screen grab of it and took it home. And the next day, he said no. I did not want it to work, I
wanted it flat. So I flattened it off. He said yes, that's great. I love it. And a couple of days later,
(25:58):
I was talking about this to my girlfriend and I opened my laptop and I showed her the first
image and I went, what do you think of that? And she went, oh, that's beautiful. That's absolutely
fantastic. And then I showed her the next image and I said, what do you think of that?
And she said, oh, that's a bit flat and dull. That's what I did and that's what he wanted. And she
looked at me and she said, it looks like he took a piece of your soul out.
(26:26):
And I thought that's exactly what it felt like at the time. But actually, you know,
the audience think, yeah.
So you were saying earlier about how like when you and Wes came to work on dogs, you
would really, that relationship had really solidified and you felt comfortable with each
other and there was a bit of a short hand perhaps and you guys felt comfortable with each other.
(26:48):
Because you'd sort of worked that sort of relationship out. And so with dogs, the look is
so much more, it's so different to Fox. And for me, when I was watching it back, there were so
many sort of shots and framing techniques, which are so much more adventurous. They just appeared
to me to be more adventurous and more bold. And I was just, I wanted to ask like whether that was
a result of you and Wes being more in tandem, that you're more confident with each other in
(27:12):
terms of what you could do with the camera and with the animation.
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, yes, to an extent, certainly. I mean, I think what
you have with Fox is a kind of intensely organic environment, you know, it's, it's hills and trees
and burrows and things like that. But the odd bit of kind of industrial chic, you know, sewers,
(27:32):
things like that. Whereas I'll add dogs, you know, the formalism of the Japanese look, you know, which
borrows a lot from woodcuts and things like this and, you know, early Japanese cinema. And the
fact that, you know, they have this beautiful tradition of lack of work and calligraphy and
(27:57):
all these things, you know, it's a very different palette. It's a very different geometrical sense
of shapes to put in front of the camera. So, you know, it does have that very different look,
you know, and a lot of that is to do with that, you know, it's a lot of hard surfaces, a lot of
squares and oblongs and things like that, rather than soft grass and walls and leaves.
(28:20):
And because of that, the palettes were different, you know, it's a city palette
and a trash island palette. Whereas Fox is just, it's orange, you know, it's just like
one of the most orange movies ever made.
Orange and brown, yeah, it's just yeah. I mean, this is fantastic. Lighting gel
(28:42):
called medium bastard amber. And I went through rolls and rolls and rolls of this stuff. It's
kind of warm dust. It's the color of the sun at dusk. It's a very beautiful color.
Wow, we used a lot of it on that job. Whereas dogs is completely different, you know, all the
(29:02):
trash island stuff is meant to be kind of base white, you know, it's almost like a matte white
thing. And then you'll get the occasional kind of crazy color, but it's quite a lot of monochrome
on the islands. And then the interiors, you know, it's all about Japanese wives, like the hospital
and the lab and things like that. It's very structured, hard like a surfaces. It's a glass,
(29:27):
which was great. I mean, God knows, it's fantastic to like that stuff. Beautiful, proper set piece
set building, you know, like the temple, like the sake bar, like the theater, you know, there's
all this sort of jewel like sense, which are absolutely blasts to get inside and make it great.
A very different vibe really in terms of the environment. And I think that's what gives you
(29:51):
that different look. But you know, the baseline is still the same, you know, there's lots of very
symmetrical framing in it, you know, everything is framed on the middle, the third, the quarter,
the fifth, the seventh. And we check that with a grid on the screen. It's not approximate,
it's exact. And if it isn't, let's see. You know, there's that, the very deep depth of field,
(30:18):
very wide lenses, little signature quirks, like small, tiny dots of light on the horizon,
just a dot of light somewhere at the back of the image, just for no reason,
just like a point of light there or there, you know, anywhere, just something like that.
He'll always ask, I'll have it ready now, because I know he'll want it. We have a nighttime scene,
(30:41):
and he'll just say, just put a dot of light on the horizon.
And is he doing all this on the set, sort of over your shoulder, sort of pointing it out? Or is he?
Yes and no, I mean, you know, the legend of his absence is true, but he's there because of,
you know, the internet. I got immediate access to him all day long, you know, he's just not physically
(31:04):
present, which on Fox was a nightmare. I mean, that's the biggest thing that kind of freaked us out,
you know, how did we get hold of him? Because we didn't have as good communication in whatever
we started that job, 2007, as we did when we did dogs. But on dogs, you know, I could send him a clip
(31:26):
or I could send him a frame and he'd be back to me within 30 seconds. And he'd either email me
or what's that mean, or he'd call me. And we'd talk stuff through, and he'd normally email,
unless it got very tricky, in which case he would pick the phone up.
But he was never absent on the communication front, you know, and he, you know, we would get in at,
(31:51):
I would get in at about 7am in the morning, and I knew he'd be there when we would just talk to him.
And he would be online until the end of edit, which was about 9am. So it's 14 hours.
I don't know, probably weed in a bucket, but you know what I mean, it's just, it's present,
(32:13):
it's very present. So I mean, that sort of leads me to actually a question from what you're saying
right now, that's what popped into my mind is, in that instance, do you as the DP sort of take over
the ship, running the ship as it were on a day to day basis? Because as you've said earlier, I mean,
you are there almost from pre-production, looking at all these different teams and
(32:37):
looking at every element almost. So do you feel like you're, as well as cinematographer Tristan,
are you also putting on several other hats to make sure that the ship is righted, if anything were to go wrong?
It is one vessel, but within the vessel, you know, you have kind of triumvirate of people who are
(33:01):
kind of guiding the process. So you have your production designer and art director. So you have
the art department, which is massive. It's fine with the biggest part of the crew. You know,
there are over a hundred people in the art department doing stuff. The camera department,
we're me at the top. And then you have the director, you know, and then you have edit and
VFX that fit around that. And everyone informs the process. You know, what I have is I have 30
(33:25):
years of experience. So I can see stuff coming that's going to go wrong. And I have an opinion
that generally on everything if needed. But the real person who drives a feature film and any
feature film, stop frame or live action is the first AD. If the first AD isn't good,
(33:50):
literally don't get a movie. It's all there. You know, I have quite enough to do running my
department, lighting stuff and you know, making stuff look great without doing that as well.
So it's almost like the dogs in the film where everyone is like an alpha, but it's a democratic
(34:11):
Everyone takes a vote. Everyone takes a vote. Yeah, if you've ever watched that documentary
Lost in La Mancha about Terry Gilliam trying to make Don Quixote, like the one point of sanity
is the first thing. He's the guy who is trying to hold it all together. Super human strength.
(34:36):
As the entire universe collapses around it. There's this guy and he's like Thor.
That's absolutely what a good first AD is like. They are there to make the film.
Going a bit more in depth with dogs then, because as I was watching it back, there were just so
many moments. I mean, you probably have heard this an awful lot since the movies come out,
(34:57):
but like there are so many individual shots and moments where you just kind of want to
you want to freeze it. You want to go, hold on, let me just print that.
And let me just look at it for a bit. And there were so many moments when I was wondering like,
how the hell did you guys do that? Because when I was researching the film and how you guys made
it, it sounded like it was very, very tactile. CGI and VFX weren't resorted to as much as on
(35:17):
other animated films. Some of the ones that Armand had put out are obviously, even other
stop-motion films. The VFX are used to fill in the gaps. So specifically, I don't know if you
could tell us about it, but the shot where they inject Chief, the dog with the flu vaccine,
and there's that amazing moment where it sort of becomes an x-ray shot and you see the serum
(35:39):
doing its work on him. And you're looking at them going, how? I mean, it's gorgeous. You're
looking at it, just going like, how the hell did they pull that off? So, I mean, that is the
quote, how the hell did you guys pull that off? Yeah, I mean, there's such a world of pain involved
in that shot. Pulled out the world of pain shot there. That was originally going to be a VFX shot
(36:08):
because it's staggeringly difficult to do in camera, but Wes was very, very insistent and
once he digs his heels in, you have no chance. So they made a transparent dog with all his organs
inside, like those old anatomical models. I think Damien Hirst did a kind of big version of one of
(36:32):
those. So it was based on one of those models that you could take apart and take all the organs
out of. It had to look like that and have all these tubes in it. What you can do is the animator
animates the puppet and then takes a frame. Okay, and then they have to move the puppet again to
take the next frame, but they don't move the puppet. You can then, you can take that frame again
(36:54):
with in a different lighting state and you can take it again in a different lighting state and
again in a different lighting state. And we quite often do this. So we have multiple lines of exposure
for every frame and they all sit in a different file. We use a file system. The animator has no
part in this. They just press the button and they stand aside and the lights do what they have to do
and the camera does what it has to do and then it just goes okay. You can do your next frame. And
(37:17):
the animator just sees the line they're working in. But what it gives us is the opportunity to have
different lighting states which we can then utilize and blend together in order to give us a kind of
magical feel. So to get the kind of glow and, you know, very specific kind of tiny lighting effects,
(37:37):
we can actually just take a frame with just those lights on or just one element turned on.
And then what the effects do is they take those and they layer them all together. So they're not
actually creating the effects. They're creating a composite, if you will, that doesn't technically
involve creating anything just blending. But obviously there's a little bit of
(38:03):
the effects in there because it's impossible. But yeah, so that dog, they had to make this
bloody transparent dog which just it makes it incredibly difficult to make a transparent dog
that's only 20 centimeters high that has high clarity to the prospects that you've made it from.
(38:25):
That is in every detail the same as the dog underneath. And then working out a way of
subbing it in so that it looks like that's happening. We had a similar but much cruder thing in
Fantastic Mr Fox where Fox reaches out to touch his wife and says there's a certain glow about you
tonight and Wes wanted her to look like a child's lamp. So they made a mold of the puppet out of
(38:51):
hard pink plastic and then painted it really crudely and they've got a light bulb inside it.
And so when he turns to her and goes, there's a certain glow about you, she's actually like a
little lamp. That's what he wanted. He wanted that comedy moment of this rather crude 1950s
bakelite light fitting. So yeah, he's keen on that. But it's the night now. I mean,
(39:14):
registration of those things is terribly difficult just getting everything to wind up.
But we do it. You know, and I mean, you pulled it off. I mean, more brilliantly.
How long does something like that take to plan? Is that something that you intended or like you said,
Wes said, you know, Douglas Hillsen. So was that something that then had to be gone back to the
(39:40):
drawing board? And well, I mean, this comes back to this kind of rolling pre-production process
really. So you know, we would have confronted that full on about six to eight weeks out from
shooting it. And at that point, the conversations would have been had, and people would have gone,
well, we're going to do that in VFX, aren't we? And everyone would have gone, yeah.
(40:02):
Okay. And then we prepare a document to send to Wes and Wes would have gone, no,
this is not what I want. I want to do it like this. And then everyone would have gone,
oh, especially the puppet department who are absolutely ran. So an Isle of Dogs, you know,
they made over 600 puppets. Just consider the implications of that. So every one of those
(40:25):
puppets has a steel and brass fully articulating armature inside. And then they are skinned,
and then they are costumed, and then they are roofed, and then they have all their facial
replacements for speaking. So and they are, you know, key characters of which you make several,
so that you can work across multiple sets with those key characters, you know, the dogs
(40:45):
are every single hair on those dogs is punched in by hand into a silicon necklace.
So those dogs are conservatively 20 to 25 grand a piece. So it's a very expensive,
ultra time consuming, ultra specialized thing. And the puppet department are writers, you know,
(41:06):
they're just like, we're going here, we have to have this ready by this day. And then suddenly you
go, oh, by the way, can you make an anatomically perfect transparent dog? You are throwing. And
by that point in the production, you've probably got every decent puppet maker on the planet working
in your public department. It's the United Nations on these jobs. It really, you know,
(41:29):
people come from every corner of the world. I had Japanese woman motion control operator on
our laptops. I had another Japanese girl in the electrical department,
I had a Turkish woman on the camera crew, you know, I had in the camera crew alone, which is
probably one of the smaller departments. I had people from nine different countries. So,
(41:50):
you know, you gather talent. So when you throw something like that at them, you really are
pushing the boundaries. And then, you know, they start, they come in at the weekend, and they come
on their holidays, and they all look like that. I was going to say, on a thing like that, on a
project like that, do you keep any sort of souvenirs? If there's 600 puppets, is there two or three
(42:12):
in a space in your home somewhere? On Wes films, Wes gets everything at the end. He's
got an enormous archive, which is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But
he did give dogs to all the key crew. And I did get a dog. And I got the best dog. I got Black
(42:34):
Chief. Hey, Chief, before he becomes White Chief, he's under a glass dome in my house in Pride of
Plates. Wow. Wow. That's a 20 round puppet. That was a good gift to get. Because you were
describing how much blood and sweat went into that shot of the transparent dog and the flu
injection. We were wondering, are you actually able to sit down and actually watch a movie that you
(42:59):
worked on and look back at it, objectively? Or do you just see the mistakes or the pain, as it were,
that went into making it? You do see the mistakes and the pain because you're looking out for them.
But there's a kind of fantastic chemistry that takes place when the mixed soundtrack goes on.
(43:22):
And you don't, the crew don't see that until the film is finished, finished. So, you know, even
when I'm grading the movie, when I'm sitting in the DI, you know, I'll probably watch the completed
movie 40 or 50 times during that process until I'm sick to death of it, but I watch it mute. So,
(43:44):
I probably know what it sounds like with the vocal track on, but I've got no idea how it is with the
orchestra or the folie or the effects, you know, everything. And it's so transformative. I mean,
really, sound makes such a difference to picture. It really, really does. It is unbelievable.
(44:05):
And it kind of smooths over a lot of stuff, which is hard, isn't it? So, there's kind of audio
plaster on the bits of the image that don't quite work. And I think it's because it helps
the cuts so much, you know, you can drive a cut through with a piece of music that wouldn't otherwise
(44:25):
work on a purely visual basis. So, there is that kind of delight, but they're always a bit painful.
I've just got to the point where I can watch Chicken Run and go, that's a really great film,
because I've forgotten how we did a lot of it, which is fantastic, because you then think,
look at that, we did that. How do we do that? That's great. And the thing about Chicken Run,
(44:50):
there are no VFX in it. It's all in camera, you know, all those daytime exteriors, that's
in front of the camera, all that stuff, that's all set and painted backdrop, right there. There's no
green screen, there's no digital set extension, nothing. It's all there. It's all on 35 millilinks
(45:12):
of film. And I can now look at it and go, yeah, that is a piece of work. Well done,
us. We did a good job. And also, ParaNorman, which I'm very, very proud of. I think of
everything I've shot. I know very few people have seen it, but for me, from my point of view,
cinematography on that is the best thing I've done. I got to do my thing on that job in a way
(45:36):
that's very rarely gifted to you as a cinematographer. Speaking of, well, cinematography
again, we know that you had a chance to meet Jack Cardiff, legendary. Yeah, we were doing our
research for this. And we found, came across that little anecdote you said where you met him,
and it was just kind of amazing. Because obviously, we've seen The Red Shoes, we've seen
(45:57):
like those Powell and Pressburger movies he did, where the cinematography he did is like,
so ahead of the curve, and it looks amazing, it still looks incredible. And we were just kind of
wondering what that experience was like meeting this sort of legend of cinematography, like,
this British sort of icon in a way. Yeah, well, he was a legend. I mean, he must have been
(46:19):
about 90 when I had lunch with him. And he was just full of anecdotes, which is always fun.
I mean, he could just talk about stuff he'd done. I mean, if you've ever read his book, Magic Hour,
boy, he had a life. He had a saucy life. You know, I think he, they did a lot of significant
(46:42):
actresses in his time, and as well as shooting a lot of great films. And he was only about five
foot four, you know, twenty gold teeth. Yeah, still talking about stuff that is kind of
annoyed in years and years ago, he was talking about shooting Anna Karenina, which was directed by
King Vidor and Audrey Hepburn played Anna Karenina. And he was, he was moaning on about this scene
(47:06):
where she gets into a carriage and sits back and Jack had wanted her to sit back and go into complete
darkness as he felt that it spoke to the plot rather well. And King Vidor wouldn't have it.
He said King just wasn't brave enough to let that happen. He wanted light on her face.
So I had to put light on and still annoyed him. This is what you were talking about,
(47:30):
isn't it? With like, you know, with some of the directors you worked with, like, you know,
you want to do one thing, then they're like, they dig the hills and they're like, no,
it's got to be this way. Yeah. I mean, some directors just don't direct cinematographers at all.
You know, you just kind of turn up and you go,
and they kind of get, yeah, yes, fine. What about if I did this? No, it's fine.
It's fine. Sometimes feedback is good, you know, just have a conversation about it.
(47:57):
I've done this. What do you think? You know, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this.
You know, this is just a suggestion. But some people's heads are just in the action.
That's all they want to think about. It's funny. It's funny. Like the best directors
are people you can have a dialogue with. I mean, so I'm shooting commercials, you know,
you work with some absolute mentalists, but they are, they are better by far at the end of the day
(48:19):
than the person who doesn't know what they want or just thinks everything is fine.
There's actually, you know, the more mental just pushing you towards something different.
You know, and they recognize that in themselves, you know, they go, you know, I know, I know this
is going to take us ages. We'll be here till 3am, but I just want to see if we can do it.
(48:42):
And you go, okay, yeah, I get that. Let's do it. You know, a bit of mental doesn't hurt when you're
being creative. You know, you don't want a committee and you don't want indecision. You want,
you want a decision, whatever it is. So at least you can go, that's wrong. Let's not do that.
Ask for what you want. I think that that is the key to being a director. Ask for what you want.
(49:06):
And don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Because generally, if people like you,
they will try and do it. Even if everything about it seems ridiculous, they will try and do it.
Because they can see in you that quality that suggests that you can see something they can't.
(49:26):
You know, it's an interesting dynamic that is serving the director, which is what we're there to do.
If as a cinematographer, I think I'm the director, I shouldn't be on that job.
So we're talking from Ravensbourne University, which has a lot of animation
students and a lot of film production students who are no doubt wanting to get into cinematography
(49:47):
and also break into animation in some form. And we were just wondering, what kind of advice would
you give just for people who want to break into the field that you're working in?
Well, of course, animation and cinematography are not necessarily the same thing.
If you're an animator, you need to show real. You need to be able to show what you can do.
(50:14):
And you need to be more than willing to start as low as it gets. So,
you know, luckily places like Aardman do run training schemes. They have the Aardman Academy.
If you want to go into animation direction, then you should be looking to go to the national,
because at least there your stuff will be seen by a suitably large audience.
(50:36):
But I know people, I work with people who've been to Ravens Forum, you know,
and there are some hardware decent animators who've come out of there. So, you know,
that's obviously working, you know, it's about innate talent and it's about getting that down.
But as in anything visual, audio describing what you've done is not going to cut it. You need to
be able to show stuff you've done, you know, so make sure you finish your graduation film.
(51:02):
Because no one wants to see a graduation film that's got cards in it with unfinished written on them,
or, you know, black space. God knows, I've seen plenty of those. In terms of cinematography,
I don't know, I mean, this is the key question, you know, I think, you know, the advice I always give
(51:25):
is it just seems like the coolest thing you could possibly do. And in many ways, it is quite a cool
thing to do. But it's incredibly hard work. You have to be very, very good at it. And it ain't
just about making things that pretty, you know, the amount of people management you have to do, the
amount of just daily dicking about with production and, you know, everything that being the head of
(51:52):
something brings with it. It's, you know, we are not left in monk like peace to perform our art to
the best of our ability. Because there's always a schedule, there's always a budget, and there's
always someone who wants to go and do something to take you away from that. There's always someone
in your way, you know. So it's just about, you know, like animation, it's about doing enough to
(52:17):
show you can do something. And getting, making sure you make the most of your opportunities, you
know, so shoot whatever there is to shoot, you know, work for your mates, shoot short films for
your mates, shoot pop moments for your mates, shoot whatever classes for a pop program in this
day and age, you know, digital content. You know, use your phone, you can shoot 4k on your phone,
(52:44):
for goodness sake, imagine, you know, if I'd had that when I was 15, I'd have shot 10,000 times
more stuff, you know, we were shooting on 16mm, which was 100 pounds a tin. So, you know, you've
essentially got all your filmmaking tools free in your hand. And if you're halfway decent with a
camera, you can make something that looks halfway decent. So it's about having stuff to show.
(53:10):
You know, showing willing is good. Showing interested is good, but showing stuff, that's
what we've got. And also, you know, there is a progression within the camera department. And I
think people think they can get around that. They can kind of go college, DOP. But actually,
that's great. You know what, you might have some heaven sent talent, you know, some enormous
(53:37):
heaven sent, you might be absolutely brilliant. But what you need to remember is you need to do that
every day. You'll get up in the morning and you will feel like dead warmed up, you'll have flu,
proper flu, and you will have to go and shoot a £850,000 commercial, which you've got one day
(54:02):
to get it right. And you need to be able to go in there and do it. And all your heaven sent talent
is going to count for nothing if you haven't got the experience to just run on autopilot.
And just be able to go in and go, okay, I basically can't think I don't know what my name is. But I
do know that if I do this, this, this and this, I use this camera, this set of lenses, and I do this,
(54:25):
it'll look okay. Because my experience is all, you know, and I have trainees,
I don't need a CV 10 pages long from a trainee, I know when you're 21, that you haven't done very
much. But at least show me what you have done, you know, and don't waste anyone's time. And my
(54:47):
number one piece of advice, if you're applying for a traineeship in the camera department,
do not write the word direct photography at the top of your CV. Because if you are a director
of photography, why you're applying for a traineeship, if you're a trainee, why are you calling
(55:08):
yourself a director of photography? Write trainee at the top. And then someone will read it. But if
I read a trainee CV as director of photography at the top, it goes in the bin. Because I'm the DP.
It's a fair point. It's a very fair point. Very fair point. Thank you so much for talking to us,
(55:32):
Tristan. This has been an absolute pleasure. And, you know, it's been great, you know, talk about
your work. And for me, for, I think for both of us personally, talk to the guy who shot all these
movies, which have meant so much to us over the years since we were literal good kids. It's a
great pleasure and a privilege. So, you know, thank you for both of us for chatting to us. But
it's been great. You are welcome. I always love to hear that stuff. It always makes me feel incredibly
(55:56):
old. Yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking, I forgot this, but I was thinking before we said,
like, do I mention like that? I've forgotten that. I'm afraid. One of you is younger than
wrong trousers, I think. No, I'm not younger than wrong trousers. 92 we shot wrong trousers.
Yeah, no, I was about, I would have been about two. I suspect you weren't born. That is, that is
(56:22):
probably possible. Yeah, that is correct. You do know when you were born, don't you?
Yeah, yeah, more or less. Most of the time. I mean, his close shave was 95, wasn't it?
So yeah, something like that. Okay, that's not even go there.
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