'Buy Now, The Shopping Conspiracy', Cinematographer, Brendan McGinty

0:08Jawad MirHello, everyone. This is Jawwad, your host at Kingdom of Dreams Podcast. In today's episode, I have Brendan McGinty, who's the director of photography for the Netflix documentary, Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy. It just came out yesterday. It's an incredible documentary, not only from a standpoint of exposing with all the whistleblowers about how we are addicted to different companies and their products, and how they sort of attract us to their products, but also from a cinematic standpoint, it's a breakthrough. I absolutely love the documentary, and my conversation with Brendan was not only about the film, but also about the technicalities, the cameras that they used, the lenses that they used, the techniques they used, and all of the rest of that. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Brendan. We're here to talk about Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy, that's on…

0:56Brendan McGintyYeah

0:56Jawad Mir... Netflix. And you were the cinematographer on it.

1:00Brendan McGintyI certainly was, yeah.

1:03Jawad MirWhen did you start production on this sh… documentary? And when did you find out about it as well?

1:13Brendan McGintyYeah, so I'm, me and the director, Nick Stacey, are sort of longtime collaborators. I first met him on sort of, One Strange Rock, and then I did some of his Jeff Goldblum series for him. And then we did a docudrama together in, was probably, I think 2022, we did a docudrama, which was about sort of,.. It was called First Contact, and he was already talking about it then. I think he's, he'd been in meetings with people. So I would say late '22 we began to look at references and think about sort of visual approaches. We started shooting the start of 2023 after a lot of testing. We did a lot of, I've, you know, I've got a little studio and we did a lot of shooting around London, testing different strategies, lighting design, the quite distinctive lighting design that you would've seen on the interviews, which, you know, was a big… We wanted something quite specific.

2:13Brendan McGintyWe knew we would be talking to a lot of people, and obviously if you just fill a film with loads of talking heads can get a bit monotonous, a bit boring, so we didn't want that. And yet, we were also very aware that we want… tonally, we wanted something that was slightly ironic, that was slightly in the world of selling, in the world of, seducing an audience as maybe a TV commercial might. So yeah, with these conversat… the, we g… late '22 the conversations began, and then testing I think early '23, and shooting maybe February of '23 we started.

2:54Jawad MirRight. You know, you talked about doing something, unconventional, and it's true that the way the documentary is done, there was another documentary that came out by Netflix called The Social Dilemma, I think four or five years ago.

3:08Brendan McGintyYeah.

3:08Jawad MirYou know, not similar, but similar approach in terms of trying to get into the audience minds. But one of the things I really loved about this documentary is that each of the, some of the products had their own character, right? Like the voices.

3:24Brendan McGintyYeah.

3:24Jawad MirAnd then there was that AI voice throughout, you know, trying to…

3:28Brendan McGintySasha

3:28Jawad Mir... Yeah, Sasha, yes.

3:29Brendan McGintyYeah.

3:29Jawad MirBut for me, the takeaway was, aside from the story, which we'll get into from a technical standpoint… ... Is all the shots that you guys had, of recycling and garbage and... Not the ones from, you know, social media, the ones that you show…

3:47Brendan McGintyYeah

3:47Jawad Mir... Like garbage piling up in like s… ma… in city sky rise and all that.

3:52Brendan McGintyYeah

3:52Jawad Mir... I thought that was very clever and that really, if you think about that, the context of that one day, kinda like WALL-E, right?

4:01Brendan McGintyYes.

4:01Jawad MirOne day, I probably don't think it'll be in our lifetime, but anything is possible the way it's…

4:07Brendan McGintyYeah

4:07Jawad Mir... You know, everything is sped up.

4:08Brendan McGintyYeah.

4:08Jawad MirThat could be, that could be possible.

4:11Brendan McGintyYeah. And interestingly, WALL-E was part of the conversations early on. You know, beautiful film…

4:16Jawad MirYeah

4:16Brendan McGinty... Which Roger Deakins obviously helped with the look of, even though it's…

4:20Jawad MirYeah

4:20Brendan McGinty... An animated film. But WALL-E was part of what we spoke about. And so we started early on, I guess two things happened, is one, we teamed up with, our VFX team, who, some guys called Compost. And they, we started having conversations with them about the kind of things we could do in terms of having these redundant products, shoes, mobile phones, CDs, all the stuff that we buy and consume and throw away, about mountains and mountains of this stuff, and this kind of slightly dystopian future, potential future, where, you know, we can't discard this. All the landfill is full and the stuff's piling up. You know, as it, as it does in WALL-E. But we also, Nick and I wanted to shoot the cities in a certain way that could incorporate this VFX.

5:22Brendan McGintySo we started our tests, our early tests before we shot anything, were in collaboration. We were sending rushes to Compost who were then doing VFX treatments of stuff. And we started using, as well as our main camera, which was Red Monstro at the time, that we were shooting a lot of stuff up, we started using, you know, quite a new product, the 4D gimbal system. So DJI's got a new gimbal…

5:48Jawad MirYep

5:48Brendan McGinty... Which is pretty phenomenal.

5:49Jawad MirI've used it. Yeah, I've used it.

5:51Brendan McGintyYeah. Yeah, very striking. You know, I've used the Ronin 2 with big cameras in it for years, and I shot, I was DP on Welcome to Earth, you know, the big Disney Will Smith piece.

6:02Jawad MirRight.

6:02Brendan McGintyAnd you know, we had a… You know, every time we were doing gimbal stuff, it's a big Ronin 2 rig with, you know, big old cameras inside. And, you know, it's, it's lovely. It's a brilliant way to work. But with the 4D system, you know, they've put in this extra

6:18Jawad MirAxis

6:18Brendan McGinty... Extra axis, the fourth axis of its title, 4D, and the stability achieved by that is remarkable. So you look at this thing and it looks a bit odd. It doesn't look like a conventional camera, but the stability that it can afford is remarkable. And we were doing stuff... Our first shoot was in New York, and we were doing stuff moving on cars, you know, shooting out of car windows, going across some of the expressways with sort of Manhattan moving in the background or…

6:49Brendan McGinty... We did loads of stuff, even stuff where I was moving really fast, walking. You know, we'd stack up buildings and cityscapes and then move, and there was something about the sort of unfolding parallax of the cities. Like, none of those VFX shots on, are locked off, and I think if they were locked off shots, you'd feel cheated. You'd know it was post-production, 'cause, you know, just a shot of a building with some CG stuff pouring out the windows doesn't feel the same. But because there was parallax in all of the shots, it felt very plausible, and somehow, it just tied in the VFX stuff. It was way more believable because everything was moving. And I'm sure a much greater challenge for them because, of course, the stuff that they were piling up and…

7:39Jawad MirYeah

7:39Brendan McGinty... And tumbling down that famous staircase, Spanish stairs we shot in New York, everything's moving, so they've gotta have their objects, you know, the parallax of their objects moving. So it was e…... You know, they were a great team to work with. But I'd say that sort of parallax effect on our world, when we're looking at our world, I think worked really beautifully to tie in all of these, what could have been tremendously artificial, but somehow feels a lot more real. Even though you know it's not real, it just, it doesn't feel... You know, I think we hit the right note there.

8:13Jawad MirYeah, most certainly you did. And the... You know, g… I'm gonna come back to that, sorry, the technicalities of it in a minute.

8:20Brendan McGintyYeah, sure.

8:20Jawad MirBut the idea of the companies wasting their product. So I remember, mid…'90s, I was a teenager. I used to work at this, franchisee coffee shop place called Tim Hortons. I don't know if you've heard of it in the UK, but it…

8:36Brendan McGintyYes, yeah. I've had m… many coffee out of Hortons.

8:39Jawad MirSo Tim Hortons. So I used to work there, and I remember at the end of every shift, eight-hour shift, they would throw away the donuts and the muffins that were not sold.

8:52Brendan McGintyYeah.

8:52Jawad MirAnd this was 30 years ago almost, right?

8:55Brendan McGintyYeah.

8:55Jawad MirAnd it was just... And I used to wonder at the time, I used to actually talk to my manager and like, "Why are we not giving it…

9:01Brendan McGintyYeah

9:01Jawad Mir... To homeless?" And the argument was, well, the homeless might not wanna take waste food. But taking that to the next level of what, you know, some of the clips that were in the, this woman, I forget her name, that sh… a trash walk, I think she has a company.

9:15Brendan McGintyYeah. Sorry, I must have forgotten her name. A New Yorker, yeah. She's…

9:18Jawad MirYeah.

9:18Brendan McGintyYeah.

9:18Jawad MirAnd how she was able to find ridic… I mean, crazy amount of brand-new products in… ... Garbage bags, most of them destroyed. I mean, from, if I was a devil's advocate, I, if I was running a company, my argument would be as it is in the film, is that…

9:36Jawad Mir... Well, we don't want our brand value to go down by just giving away stuff. Okay, if you're not gonna do that, then how do you solve that? And it, the film really highlights that really well.

9:47Brendan McGintyWell, obviously, you know, and my role in the film was primarily photographic, but I'd had…

9:54Jawad MirI'm just talking, yeah, casually

9:56Brendan McGinty... No, but more than, more than any film I've worked on, in lots of ways I feel this is the most important film I've worked on. This is not to belittle some of the other amazing projects I've worked on, but in terms of... It felt incredibly important, the message of what we were doing and how we were doing it. And more than any film, I brought all of that back home with me. You know, I brought home to my kids. I started a recycling program of food in my house, and I've just become... The making of this film changed me. Like, I am not the same person. I look to every aspect of my life, you know, using water bottles, y… just, my carbon footprint on everything I do. It has just... It took being firsthand, you know, with people and hearing some of the statistics. I mean, the amount of smartphones that we throw away on a daily basis is, it's beyond, you know, i… I imagining. So, and going off to Ghana and seeing both the clothing on the beaches there, you know, that is not VFX.

11:02Brendan McGintyThat is, in Ghana…

11:04Jawad MirYeah

11:04Brendan McGinty... The beaches, clothing, you know, like, I don't know how many meters deep, and it goes out for miles to the ocean, and this is just the essentially plastic clothing that we're producing and producing and producing. So it, more than any film I've worked on, it had a very real impact on me as a person, not just photography. I wasn't just there as a DP. I was there…

11:25Jawad MirYeah

11:25Brendan McGinty... As a witness to something that I needed to hear. As much as I feel like, yeah, we all need to hear, I'm hoping everyone watches the film and responds to the film, I felt I needed to. It was a wake-up call for me as well. You know, and I'm moderately aware of these things, I thought, but, seeing the scale of things really, i… it had a, it's had a huge impact on me, making that film.

11:51Jawad MirWell, that's good to hear. And you know, one of my biggest things for the longest time has been... Look, I mean, we can talk about is climate change real or is it not real, whatever that is. But my biggest beef was, for the last 10, 15 years, is that all these companies… That, you know, they have this as green products and everything. It's just... And even the government being involved in it. Maybe, you know, that's, m… maybe they have good intentions. I'll give them that.

12:20Brendan McGintyYeah.

12:20Jawad MirBut then the idea is you go on the other side, and then you, there's all this taxing, you know, taxation purposes.

12:26Brendan McGintyYeah.

12:26Jawad MirYou wonder, and then you, they're using jet, you know, private jets, and they're using all the other stuff, and you wonder, is it a way to ploy, you know, the public? And that's why public becomes skeptical that you're, you know, virtue signaling, right? Like you're preaching us to do all these things, yet…

12:43Jawad Mir... You're able to do whatever you want. So it is, it is a very weird situation w… where you're right. It does make a difference. It does have an impact. And I think for me, the biggest takeaway was in the film there, I don't know the exact line, but it was, the main whistleblower who used to work at Amazon for 15 years.

13:03Brendan McGintyYeah. Yeah.

13:03Jawad MirShe said that, I think it was her who said that if you add a product to the cart and wait for 30 days…

13:11Brendan McGintyYeah

13:11Jawad Mir... And at that time, if you still feel you want to get it, that means you need it. Otherwise, you don't need it.

13:16Brendan McGintyYeah. And actually, that is the other thing about the film. It's not just a traditional environmental film that we've all seen…

13:22Jawad MirYeah

13:22Brendan McGinty... A lot of. It is also about the rip-off that we, you know, pe… families used to buy a fridge, and this fridge would last like 30, 40…

13:34Jawad Mir20 years. Yeah

13:35Brendan McGinty... They would hand it down to kids. It was like this thing that lasted, you know? Hard to make, expensive, loads of, you know, manpower, minerals coming out the ground, make the fridge, and it lasted. Whereas now they're putting circuitry in fridges. There's little batteries on board. You know, you got fridges that are redundant after, I don't know, like a five-year cycle or something. So it's going to landfill. So outside of the environmental me… message, which is still huge and I think vitally important.

14:04Jawad MirI agree.

14:04Brendan McGintyThere is just the, we have just been sold stuff that is, they are, you know, the classic were the earbuds. You know, I don't wanna call out any of the manufacturers, but most of them do. Gluing the batteries in. There is no need for them to glue the batteries in the earbuds because those bat… those batteries will run out, and then less than two years later, your earbuds are going in the bin. They want you to buy another pair.

14:29Jawad MirYeah.

14:29Brendan McGintySo even on that level of just the sort of human, you know, like economics, we're being ripped off.

14:35Jawad MirYep.

14:36Brendan McGintySo some of it, and there's big, there's a big movement i… in the States at the moment to, what, which we touch on in the film, the right to repair, which is actually a political movement as well, that exactly this notion like, why should I not have the right to repair my goods, you know? I, if my fridge has some circuit in it, you can't lock me out of this product. I want my fridge to last 20 years. You know, I don't want 5 years and it's broken. I have a right to, you know, you can't lock me out of this. So I think, I think the two messages go hand in hand, definitely, but there is one that's just outrageous how we've been oversold crap, essentially.

15:21Jawad MirBut I agree with you 100%. So a couple of points I wanna touch upon is that one of the things that, I mean, similar with cars and every product, like I remember back in the day in the '80s and '90s… ... You know, a car, like you'll see like sometimes, I don't know about in UK, but in Toronto, every here and there you'll see like a 1980s Honda Accord somebody driving, right?

15:40Brendan McGintyYeah.

15:41Jawad MirImagine about 30 years from now, somebody driving a car from today's time. It's impossible because the cars are not built that way. The similar approach.

15:47Brendan McGintyYeah. Yeah.

15:48Jawad MirBut I think from a, aside from us blaming, which we should hold the companies accountable, I think we should also hold ourselves accountable, right?

15:57Brendan McGintyYes.

15:57Jawad MirSo aside from this whole chip thing, or sorry, the battery thing in the fridge or the phone. We have become such consumers…

16:07Brendan McGintyYeah

16:07Jawad Mir... That even if our fridge is working fine…

16:11Brendan McGintyYeah

16:11Jawad Mir... Five years, I need a new look.

16:14Brendan McGintyYeah.

16:15Jawad MirYou know? And I think that is also detrimental that we have to sort of assess ourselves, I feel. And…

16:21Brendan McGintyYeah

16:21Jawad Mir... Is that tied into the consumerism? Sure. But that is also a problem. Don't, wouldn't you agree?

16:28Brendan McGintyCompletely, and I think it's why we took this tone in the film, which I…

16:33Jawad MirYeah, which I love, by the way

16:34Brendan McGinty... Slightly ironic, slightly satirical, slightly self-referential, which doesn't let the audience off. It doesn't have, you know, your traditional, say, environmental film. The audience is very much outside of it, like, "Oh, there's terrible things happening. I'm over here at home," and it's like, "Boohoohoo, that's happening over there." The film tries not to do that. It pulls you in. It seduces you. It's showing you the stuff you like a candy store.

17:03Jawad MirYeah.

17:03Brendan McGintyAnd we're shooting objects like a candy store. Be… because, and it's, it's saying, you love these things. You buy these things. You want more of these things. And of course, the very ironic voiceover that we do with Sasha is constantly soothing us, and she's very much in control of the film. It's almost her film. She keeps…

17:23Jawad MirYeah

17:23Brendan McGinty... Predicting the edits and says, "Cut to shots of flowers and natural."

17:26Jawad MirI loved by the, that, by the way. I absolutely love that.

17:29Brendan McGintyIt's perfect, yeah. So yeah, it's a film that tried to, without beating the audience up, you know, 'cause we're all culpable, is…

17:40Jawad MirYeah

17:40Brendan McGinty... It tried to more of a conversation, like pull you in, like h… how can, you know, y… you are part of this. What can you do about this? And also, there's hope in the film. You know, there's a lot of examples of people doing things very differently. You know, the guy who worked for Adidas who's now making stuff that composts. He makes entire clothing ranges that are able to compost. Now, he's probably just a small player, but it's when a big company sees that and thinks, "Well, we're gonna do that," and, you know, buys his tech off him or whatever and makes whole ranges that will compost. Brilliant. Then we stop having mountains of plastic shoes turning up in Bali, you know. So, and the guy with the laptop who's trying to make a laptop that's kind of forever. We can replace the screen and this…

18:28Jawad MirYeah

18:29Brendan McGinty... And then the hard drives, and it's, it is kind of a laptop for life. And all the ports can change as the tech changes. So there are, you know, there are a lot of people out there... We intentionally didn't wanna make a… another doom and gloom film. It's a film…

18:45Jawad MirYeah

18:45Brendan McGinty... That can look at issues and problems, also entertain you, but also have hope and solutions in there.

18:53Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree, and I think one of the things that I think about when I was watching the film when it comes to laptop, like, I've been using Apple products for 25 years, right? And the evolution of that, like in the beginning you could change hard drives, you can change RAMs, you can…

19:08Brendan McGintyYeah

19:08Jawad MirAnd now it's like you can't do anything. Like, you gotta…

19:12Brendan McGintyYeah

19:12Jawad Mir... Upgrade, right?

19:14Brendan McGintyYeah

19:14Jawad Mir... But going back to the technicality of the film, one of the things… ... I wanted to ask you. There was a shot which was sort of from behind the three cameras, where the camera goes... Well, the one, the camera that's shooting goes behind the main camera, and there's this little blurry effect. I don't know if you remember what I'm talking about. It was... How to explain it?

19:40Brendan McGintyI think…

19:40Jawad MirDo you know... Do you know what I'm talking about?

19:42Brendan McGintyYeah. I think, I think I know what you mean. I think that is the beginning... Is, does Sasha begin speaking at that point?

19:49Jawad MirIt's, it's somewhere in the middle of the film.

19:50Brendan McGinty'Cause I think it's…

19:51Jawad MirYeah

19:51Brendan McGinty... I think we're getting into Sasha's world. So I was doing that shot on a, you know, on a 4D gimbal behind our…

19:58Jawad MirYeah

19:59Brendan McGinty... Studio setup. 'Cause we're constantly breaking the fourth wall, breaking the fourth wall. You know, even in the interviews, you begin with someone against a nice plum background, but then you see a shot that throws it away and says, "Oh, it's just a roll of paper." And then another shot that, where you see some of the lighting. And then we're on a gimbal where we're behind everything. So it's ki…... You know. And then even the interviews with the people, they're talking down the lens, you know? So it's very... You know, the ability to break the fourth wall was very much part of what we just spoke about. Like, the film's complicity, the audience's complicity in all of this is, you know, you, this thing's coming at you. So Sasha, at that point in the film, I think they were beginning to put these kind of ripples into the screen, as if Sasha is beginning to manipulate... You know, Sasha, this kinda AI narrative filmmaker, whatever, is beginning to disrupt the surface. So I think what you're talking about are these moments where they, there were these little ripples that Sasha began to glitch out our content.

21:03Brendan McGinty'Cause you see a lot of glitches and trails throughout as well, you know? That's…

21:09Jawad MirRight. Right. Okay No, that makes sense. That makes sense.

21:11Brendan McGintyYeah.

21:11Jawad MirLenses... So I read your blog entry. So you ta… you used three REDs, right? If you can talk about…

21:20Brendan McGintyYeah

21:20Jawad Mir... The cameras that you used and the lenses that you used…

21:22Brendan McGintyYeah

21:23Jawad Mir... For the interviews, and then also for the, you know…

21:27Brendan McGintyYeah

21:27Jawad Mir... Secondary B roll and all that stuff.

21:30Brendan McGintySo, we were using... So the interview setup, I'll, I'll discuss that first, 'cause it's quite significant. It's a big part of the film, is…

21:38Jawad MirSure

21:38Brendan McGinty... We were... We began shooting Monstro, and then sort of midway through the production we went to Raptor. Just, you know, it was the newer camera. I've got both. We just, you know, we switched camera bodies at that point. But they essentially do a very similar job. They're both sort of 8K resolution, you know, a full frame sensor. So on the main camera, the A camera if you like, is shooting through a mirror box, which is why the person's looking straight down the lens, 'cause they can see the director's face, the director neck reflecting in a mirror, which they see in front of the lens, called a mirror box. They are... And for the audience, you've then got someone engaging straight, talking straight to you, which is, you know, quite a seductive way to shoot. But we wanted to shoot 8K on that purely 'cause we wanted two frame sizes. You know, we're shooting for Netflix, you have to have a very pristine 4K delivery.

22:31Jawad MirYeah.

22:32Brendan McGintySo of course if we're shooting 8K, we can push in. So we'll get... If the shot's on me now, we've got that at 8K, but we've also got that. This is actually something I did on Welcome to Earth, on the interviews we did on that as well, was shooting 8K for that reason on the interviews. And then we were running a B camera, which was on a slider, 'cause we wanted it to be moving. Because the B camera, its role was to move between seeing the person against this Colorama backdrop, but then as you move off them, seeing some of the lighting, a bit of a kick off a light or maybe the fluorescent tubes or something. So again, you're revealing the mechanism of it. And then the C camera, which to be honest was chosen for scale as much as anything else, because it's so small. We had a Sony FX3, so another full frame sensor…

23:27Brendan McGinty... Which was straight below the min… mirror box. Reason being, that we could... It's so small with no viewfinder on the camera, we could get it straight below the mirror box. And actually, the eye line looks identical, because it's such a wide lens on the, on the Sony FX3. We actually had a Nikon, 18 mil AIS lens, which is a Nikon lens from the '80s and '90s on there, which I love those lenses. So we had Angenieux zooms on both of the cameras. And the Angenieux zoom stayed static on the A camera. We picked a frame, we lit it, and we shot for that frame. But on the B camera it was, we were finding different frames, you know. It was more we'd do tight passes, we'd do a bit wider, but... And then this fixed wide on the C camera, which was straight below the lens. So that would be Angenieux lenses and these, the Nikon manual primes from the '80s and '90s, which I love, and they match very nicely, the Angenieux.

24:31Brendan McGintyAnd then midway through the production we switched to a Raptor, and at that point it just meant we would do the same thing but this time instead of the Monstro being the A camera, the Raptor was.

24:42Jawad MirRight.

24:42Brendan McGintyAnd then when we were out on the street shooting cities, shooting stuff, you know, like, what people would call B roll, but I don't really like the phrase B roll so much…

24:51Jawad MirI know, I know. I agree

24:52Brendan McGinty... Because, you know what I mean? You, it feels like you're belittling it, and you're not. It's the…

24:55Jawad MirYeah

24:55Brendan McGinty... You know. But that stuff that's not these interviews was we were on the Monstro as a camera, but then we began to heavily utilize the gimbal as well. So we had the 4D gimbal, which we'd be using with a set of Leica primes, the Leica M-08 primes.

25:11Brendan McGintyJust they're very small, and they balance very nicely on that gimbal…

25:15Jawad MirYeah

25:15Brendan McGinty... System. And we loved that. We absolutely fell in love with that for so many of the shots in the film. The fact that you've got something that can compete with a Steadicam, in some ways do a lot better than a Steadicam for certain situations, which is just ready to go all the time, you know, I just loved it. You could just put down the A camera. You know, I did all the gimbal stuff myself. So yeah, it would essentially bet… be between the, so Monstro, Raptor, and the… the 4D which we're shooting with Leica primes. Then when we got into studio stuff we, there's quite a bit of Phantom in there. I'm sure you saw some extreme slow motion light bulbs exploding, and CD collisions…

26:02Jawad MirYeah

26:02Brendan McGinty... And things, and, you know, we shot quite a bit on a Phantom. Just hours of fun, days of fun exploding things and…... Ripping things. We, you know, had a lot of fun.

26:12Jawad MirI bet, I bet.

26:12Brendan McGintyAnd we... You know, the film wanted to be fun. We didn't want it, we wanted it to entertain. We want people to watch the film, you know? Lots of people to watch the film and get something out of it, not be bored. Like, be really engaged and debate these issues and… and see their place in these issues. And I don't know that you can do that with a film that's too austere and, you know, boring with a load of scientists shouting at you. You know, I don't think that's the way to get a result. So yeah, we'd shoot on the Phantom a lot. We had a lot of studio days on that. And then I was using a mixture of a lot of macro lenses. I've got, I… I do a lot of studio stuff as well. I shoot a fair lot of, bit of commercials, and I would use borescopes. I have the new Laowa probes, the TA probes by Laowa, a set of those, which I love. I was using, like, so many different macros. Like, a TLS 60 mil macro was used a lot.

27:13Brendan McGintyI had another 90 mil macro, a DZO 90 mil macro. We used some Sigma primes when we needed, the cine primes, which we're using with adapters, where we needed the speed of 1.4 but also closeness, so we would use ARRI Master adapters mounted on top of Sigma primes. We got quite carried away in the studio. And then of course being in a studio we had any grip that we wanted. I was using a GFM Tele jib quite a bit to do sort of camera moves on. I've actually got a Tele jib with a slider on the nose, which I find very versatile 'cause a bit like handheld you can just put the camera anywhere, but you've got so much mass on it that it… it's just everything is incredibly immaculate and smooth. So I like to use that a lot when, you know, in something like a studio where you've got control. Yeah. And then lots, as you saw, we're leaning into colored lights quite a lot. We were using, a lot of Creamsource lighting.

28:14Brendan McGintyWe had Vortex 8s, Vortex 4s. I forget what the… the round one's called, the X. Space X. So yeah, a lot of Vortex, yeah, Creamsource lighting. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different approaches in the film. I think that's kind of what's interesting about it. From the interviews, which are these quite elaborate set pieces with all these fluorescent tubes and, you know, to the… the stuff where we, looking at the world around us in hopefully quite interesting ways. You know, even when we go out to Ghana and we're shooting on those beaches and in the markets, I mean, I loved that shoot. That was incredible. But also terrifying to see, you know, where all of our waste goes. This is... So of course all of the s… stuff we throw away ends up in China…

29:02Jawad MirThird world countries.

29:03Brendan McGintyYeah. China used to be a big place, but they stopped. So I… I gather now Thailand is very big, bits of South America very big. I think in Ecuador they've got major problems. And then, you know, we… we… we ended up going to Ghana 'cause in terms of clothing waste it's… it's very visual. You know, you see it happen. It's all the clothes, clothing that we think, oh, it's going to a charity store, it's going to a new home or something, th… there's just too much of it. You know, the people in Ghana can't wear all that clothing. It's, you know, mountains and mountains and mountains of clothing. And unfortunately a lot of the cheaper modern fashion, what people call fast fashion, is m… essentially made of plastic, so this stuff will not degrade. You know? So if… if it goes into landfill it'll be there in thousands of years. It's still…

29:51Jawad MirYeah

29:52Brendan McGinty... It's plastic. So, yeah. Just kind of, yeah. The, Ghana had a huge impact on me as well, actually seeing the end place, this place where we say, "Oh, throw something away." You know, we went to away. What does away look like, you know? It's… it's not pretty.

30:11Jawad MirYeah. I, you know, I… I figure these countries, are probably getting paid for…

30:20Brendan McGintyYeah

30:20Jawad Mir... Right? For… for being…

30:21Brendan McGintyYeah

30:21Jawad Mir... Having to dump all that, all that garbage. I remember, this is nothing that extravagant, but this was again 15, 20 years ago, just where I live about 20 minutes from here. There were, they had this garbage dump in the middle of…... A developing city. So there were houses and there was, shops and everything.

30:43Jawad MirAnd then eventually what they did to tackle that, and it's still there… ... Is they built a golf course over it.

30:50Brendan McGintyWow.

30:51Jawad MirSo I don't know what's going on underneath. I mean, it's been about…

30:54Brendan McGintyYeah

30:54Jawad Mir... 20 years but… ... But again, like, does that mean that you have, you know, taken care of the problem? Not really… ... Because it's still…

31:03Brendan McGintyIt will leach out, you know?

31:04Jawad MirYeah.

31:04Brendan McGintyAnd that was a small thing that I learned from this film, and one of the things that I sort of came away with, was that when we combine food waste with our general waste, so like that, like landfill where you've got a mixture of electronic goods and clothing, but also food, you know, 'cause food waste can be turned into soil and you can regrow stuff. It's actually really valuable organic waste, which is why food recycling is really important. But if you just dump it all together and stick it in landfill, it actually ends up producing this really toxic sludge that, you know, that will eventually seep out. So in that case you're talking about where you've got a giant mound and you just cover it over, you know, there's water going on underground. This stuff will come out somewhere else in a very…

31:54Jawad MirExactly

31:55Brendan McGinty... Toxic way. Old batteries full of terrible chemicals. You know, half of the, you know, you know, all of our smartphones are filled with all sorts of chemicals that are, like, fairly deadly, some of them. You know, if you just leave all the stuff to corrode in the ground and you combine it with food waste and stuff, it's, it's all just gonna run off into, you know, it'll, it all comes back. We've only got this one planet. It's not going…

32:19Jawad MirYeah. And, you know, with the advent of artificial intelligence and… ... All the stuff that we're talking about… ... You wonder, like, how... Okay, so you have to find, like, a happy medium so that as an individual…

32:34Jawad Mir... You don't go on one side where you're going completely being irresponsible, but you go on, don't go on the other side where you're, like, completely thinking about these things all the time and it's having an effect…

32:44Brendan McGintyYeah

32:44Jawad Mir... On your health, right?

32:45Brendan McGintyExactly.

32:45Jawad MirSo, and it's challenging because there's always, like, there's problem with your food, there's problem with your d… you know, your household items…

32:54Brendan McGintyYeah

32:54Jawad Mir... The trash that you throw.

32:56Brendan McGintyYeah.

32:56Jawad MirSo where lies the good stuff?

33:00Brendan McGintyYeah, and I think that's again why the film takes the tone that it does.

33:04Jawad MirYeah.

33:04Brendan McGintyIt doesn't try to be doom and gloom. It does try to entertain, it does try be, I don't know if light-hearted is the tone, but it tries to... I think you achieve more by having…

33:16Jawad MirI agree with you

33:17Brendan McGinty... Conversations with people, by having people think even just in small ways, understanding that they're getting ripped off and they want to, they want... Y… you know, I think the moment there's pressure on big business like, "Don't sell us headphones with the batteries glued in," they'll just sell headphones that don't have the batteries glued in, and that's an amazing, you know, achievement on every level 'cause you've got to say…

33:41Jawad MirNo, of course

33:41Brendan McGinty... Much. But it just needs the pressure, the everyday pressure, which is almost like a trend that comes from people themselves, you know. 'Cause the manufacturers are, they're not just pushing products on us. They are to some degree, but they're also responding to what we think we want, you know? So if there's a big lobby of people saying, "Don't sell me my drinks in plastic bottles, I don't wanna see any more plastic bottles," that will change.

34:05Jawad MirI wanted to ask you, just to sort of on the wrap-up note is… ... It's more of a question for Nick, but you may know the answer to this.

34:13Brendan McGintyOkay.

34:13Jawad MirIf you don't, that's good.

34:14Brendan McGintyYeah.

34:14Jawad MirObviously you have to have access to these individuals that you, that are in the film… ... In order for any company or streamer or production company or, you know, like, distributor to sort of show interest.

34:27Brendan McGintyYeah.

34:28Jawad MirWhere, like how, do you know, has Nick talked to you about how that sort of got initiated, that how did he get access to all these individuals?

34:36Brendan McGintyYeah, so the film is made by Grain Media who, you know, they've multi-award winning. You know… ... They primarily in documentaries making,.. So they will have production teams attached to a project maybe even a year before me and Nick start having…

34:55Jawad MirNick

34:55Brendan McGinty... Conversations…

34:55Jawad MirSure

34:56Brendan McGinty... Where they will have teams of, like, researchers essentially, and producers, not in the sense that you or I might understand the word producer, but they're people who, you know, on the ground know, you know, from a journalist background, for example.

35:10Jawad MirYeah.

35:11Brendan McGintyAnd they will reach out to different people. You know, they just begin with the process of reaching out, you know. Maybe reaching out to people who used to work for Amazon, you know, and that amazing woman comes across their horizon and, you know, you ask people, you tell them, "Well, this is the kind of film we wanna make. Would you be interested?" And then, you know, a lot of them, I guess, say no, and some say yes. You know? And, 'cause I do think it's quite impressive the range of people they speak to. You know, there's a lot of kind of insiders, so to speak. You know, people who used to work for Apple, people who used to work for Amazon, but at very senior levels. You know, people who worked in plastics, in government, and, you know, Adidas. You know, these are very significant individuals who have also... They've worked at that level producing those goods and creating that machine and selling us the stuff that we want, but something's changed in their own lives where they've also realized...

36:12Brendan McGintyYou know, the guy from Adidas tells us an amazing story that he was in Bali surfing, you know.

36:18Jawad MirYeah.

36:19Brendan McGintyAnd he was just looking at all, you know, shoes and plastics and stuff. He, and he just was like, probably saw some shoes, you know, that he'd made, and that was the beginning for him of thinking, "Well, how can..." But again, what I like about that is the positive energy of these people. They're not looking at it and going, crawling into their shell. You know, he's like… How can I do bet… how can we do better? How can I make products that won't do this? How can I make... And then he begins with Adidas. They make, with reclaimed plastic, they make a range of shoes, and then now he's taken it further on his own. But that's a very positive energy. That's someone who's…

36:59Jawad MirYeah

36:59Brendan McGinty... Doing something creative, and his clothes are amazing. Like, I would go out and buy all his clothes, you know?

37:05Jawad MirYeah.

37:05Brendan McGintyThe fact that they're compost is brilliant as well. Like, I'm delighted. But they're great clothes, and he made that point. He doesn't wanna make ugly clothes that no one wants. He wants to make stuff that you desire. He wants to make a shoe for you that you desire. It just happens to compost as well. And that adds to your desire, 'cause you're like, "That's amazing. I'm gonna... Those look cool. I can't wait to wear them." But also, when the time is up, I'm really pleased to know these are not gonna end up in landfill, you know?

37:35Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree. I agree wholeheartedly, and I think there's a lot of things that we can talk about, you know, how electric cars, even though it's sort of good for the climate, how they're being made through, you know, the mining and all that stuff…

37:53Brendan McGintyYeah

37:53Jawad Mir... And everything.

37:53Brendan McGintyYeah.

37:54Jawad MirAnd for me personally, one of the things I... And I know I'm not trying to, you know… ... S… select one group of people. But just something that I see all the time is that, you know, with the shoes, right?

38:08Jawad MirLike Nike or, Adidas or Puma or whatever. Specifically Nike. Like, there are all these show… I don't know if you've ever seen them. My son was watching it on YouTube once, and even there was a doc… I think it was a Disney+ too, I could be wrong. But basically there's a group of people who buy and sell Nike shoes.

38:29Jawad MirLike, the collectible ones. I mean, we're talking 40, 50, $60,000 worth of shoes.

38:34Brendan McGintyYeah.

38:34Jawad MirAnd they have this massive collection. And it boggles my mind that how is that... I get it's a business thing. Like, you know, you're making money off it, but still, it just,... I may… it… I can't wrap my head around that. And maybe…

38:52Brendan McGintyBut that is, I mean, part of the point of the film. And it, like I said, led into our photog… photo…

38:57Jawad MirYeah

38:57Brendan McGinty... Is these objects are very seductive. You know, like, we do, we fall in love with these objects. You know, these are like, we want this. It's a beautiful thing. And they've crafted in a way that it, you know, the way we engage with it, the way it looks, the... You know, they're amazing. So, and you could take that to shoes. I'm just vulnerable to say cameras. You know, you give me a beautiful, like…

39:24Jawad MirOh, yeah

39:24Brendan McGinty... Classic looking camera…... Or lens, and I'm as seduced as some other person is by a pair of trainers, you know? So we probably all have our different things that we, you know…

39:34Jawad MirI totally do.

39:35Brendan McGintyYeah. So, and some of it's not all negative qualities. You know, some of it is just craftsmanship or the materials used or, you know, just a design. You know, sense of design. I've got lots of friends who work in fashion and design, and the admiration they have for a cut of certain clothing, which I have no idea, it's just more clothing, but for them, they... You know, the stuff is beautiful. And they…

40:01Jawad MirNo, I agree with you. Sorry, I agr… I agree with you. What I was trying to get at was... And again, it's like a never ending cycle, right? Like, all the products that we get… ... Whether it's computer or shoes, even clothes. Like, you know…

40:13Brendan McGintyYeah

40:13Jawad Mir... There was a whole documentary about the factory in Bangladesh, about the fashion industry.

40:17Brendan McGintyYeah.

40:17Jawad MirI don't know if you remember that.

40:18Brendan McGintyYeah. Yeah.

40:18Jawad MirI… you know, like the, slave labor that makes stuff in different countries.

40:25Brendan McGintyYeah.

40:25Jawad MirSo i… i… you just begged... Like, the craftsmanship is there, I agree. I…

40:28Brendan McGintyYeah.

40:28Jawad Mir... Like, I fall victim to that too. But it's just that idea of how do you deal with that? And it's… such a deep web of, you know, different elements that it's difficult to get out of it. But one thing I did wanna point out to you, I'm just gonna go sideways here. I l… one thing, and you mentioned this, but I would like to sort of mention it again. I loved about the documentary, especially with the, whistleblowers, there, it was not portrayed from you guys as well as from them. It was a very organic thing. There was no victimization.

41:04Brendan McGintyYeah. Yes.

41:04Jawad MirAnd I've, I absolutely loved that. Like

41:07Brendan McGintyYes

41:07Jawad Mir... "I am a victim, please," you know? That's, it was just like they were…

41:10Brendan McGintyYeah

41:10Jawad Mir... Doing something more about it. So thank you for that.

41:13Brendan McGintyYes. Yeah. And also, they all were very articulate in the sense that whatever particular companies they came from didn't matter. They're all doing it.

41:22Jawad MirYeah.

41:22Brendan McGintySo you could call out absolutely every tech company. There's not one particular one that's doing this. They all, you know, this is the modern, this is modern, capitalism, I guess. You know, this is how we work, is we all build redundancy into products. Try sell more, try sell regularly. You know, don't sell one phone to the person. Sell a person a new phone every year. You know, it's better business. So we have to h… you know, break the cycle somehow, all of us. And, yeah, it's kind of what the film's about. But I'm glad, I'm really glad you enjoyed it. It's, it's a film that I'm very proud of. I think…

41:59Jawad MirYou should be

42:00Brendan McGinty... I'm proud of all the films I've made, but I think the challenge that Nick asked me to meet, you know, photographically, was this. To shoot in a style... 'Cause, you know, I've made lots of films. I shoot beauty work, I've shoot fashion work. I've done, I shoot a lot of drama. So I can do stuff that's very pretty. You know, shallow focus, soft flare, you know. We didn't wanna do any of that. On some levels, you know, to lean into a photography that's maybe even, I don't wanna say ugly, but it's, it's very different. It's not my natural aesthetic. But I really enjoyed being asked to deliver a style of photography that was appropriate to the script, to the message, to the narrative. And I think we nailed it. You know, when I see the film and all the weird color stuff we were doing. I mean, there's some strong color work in it. And the…

42:53Jawad MirYeah

42:53Brendan McGinty... Weird objects and the burning ducks and the exploding phones and light bulbs, I mean, it's great, you know? It really, we, I hope you feel some of the joy that we had making it, 'cause it…

43:05Jawad MirNo

43:06Brendan McGinty... Was amazing to shoot.

43:06Jawad MirI do. But, as a director myself, I will say one thing and then you probably will agree with me 100%. Aside from how well a film does, whether it's box office wise or critically…

43:19Brendan McGintyYeah

43:19Jawad Mir... And everything.

43:20Brendan McGintyYes.

43:20Jawad MirThe biggest gratification for anybody involved in a production… ... Is when a film makes an impact and you see it from at least one individual that how it changed his or her life. And that is a goal…

43:34Brendan McGintyYeah

43:34Jawad Mir... Of everybody involved in a production. And there's nothing bigger than that. And your film…

43:38Brendan McGintyYeah

43:38Jawad Mir... Has done that for me, and it will do it for millions of other people, for sure.

43:41Brendan McGintyOh, amazing. I really hope so. Yeah.

43:44Jawad MirAwesome. Well, thank you so much, Brendan, for joining, man. I appreciate your time.

43:48Brendan McGintyMy pleasure.

43:48Jawad MirFabulous film. Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy, available on Netflix, not on Amazon.