'The Dinosaurs', Cinematographer, Jamie Mcpherson, Steven Spielberg

0:00Jawad MirWhen you've got the palette, a rough palette, and you go out to locations, and you've sort of figured out which shot will go into, you know, what background, do you do different iterations of it, like different versions of it? Like maybe position the camera this way…

0:14Jamie McPhersonWhen I t… told people I'm shooting, you know, doing a VFX show and we're shooting back plates, they're like, "Ugh, it must be really boring." It's like, well, no, it's... Well, it is boring if you just shoot a back plate, but we're trying to shoot dynamic back plates that really put the creature in the environment. So there's a lot of movement, and the camera positioning is super critical to how the creature... You know, your first shot of the Spinosaurus, we're tracking down a river in a boat and this Spinosaurus comes around the corner walking down the river towards you. So the camera's super low and there's this little bit of movement, and then as the, you know, as you reach the creature, it comes in and then it comes past you.

0:53Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams Podcast. I'm your host, Jawwad Mir. As you can see, I've got the Jurassic Park T-shirt on, which coincides with today's guest, cinematographer Jamie McPherson, who worked on Steven Spielberg's produced, Amblin's produced, the Dinosaur series, which is on Netflix. It is a breathtaking series with amazing visuals of the dinosaurs, but also the backgrounds and everything else, and it's just mesmerizing. The music and, of course, the narration by Morgan Freeman. I had Jamie on for Life on Our Planet about a year ago or so, and, it was again, pleasure talking with him. Fun guy, lovely to chat with, offers a lot of cool insight of the pr… the process. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Jamie McPherson. What a breathtaking series. I mean, not just from visuals, but also from information.

1:44Jamie McPhersonYeah.

1:45Jawad MirAnd it just didn't really cover T-Rex. It was different periods throughout, you know, history, and which just makes me wonder, like, how do you even research stuff like that? Like, you know, I'm sure there's some made-up stuff, but still, to be able to make it up in such a way… It was so convincing. It was like, this is exactly what happened.

2:03Jamie McPhersonYeah. Well, we had some tame nerds, Tom and Tom, who were working on the paleontology side of it. But yeah, thank you. Yeah, we're all super proud. Massive team effort. And yeah, we're really proud. And it's gone down incredibly well. Like, it's done so well so far. So yeah, fingers crossed for more.

2:21Jawad MirYeah, and not that, Life on Our Planet visual effects were amazing, but this one, not that it was better, but there was just something else about it. Maybe because it was just about mostly, you know, dinosaurs and the Cretaceous period and all that. It just... It makes me wonder, like, how the hell have we come back, like come forward 30 years or so with the visual effects? It just looks like this is the world. This is the world that we're watching. It's all real.

2:48Jamie McPhersonYeah, thank… I mean, yeah, ILM did an amazing job. We worked with ILM and Amblin, exec team, Spielberg. Amazing. So yeah, I think from Life on Our Planet, we've moved on in terms of interactions and just, yeah, more time. And it's easier if you're just in one world, in the world of the dinosaurs. Obviously pre-dinosaurs, reptiles all the way through, so it's still a big, a big time chunk, but I think it's easier to bed it in when you're going from CG... Well, it's not CG world, they're real worlds, but CG creatures all the way through. Whereas Life on Our Planet, we obviously were trying to dovetail with natural history, so we had to shoot the prehistoric creatures in a way that was sympathetic to and cut with the live-action natural history. Whereas this time we're free to... You know, we could do anything we wanted really, so the, you know, the gloves are off. We could, we could get stuck in and make it much more sort of immersive and, I guess, Hollywood style shooting of putting ourpl… ourselves in places where you wouldn't if it was natural history.

3:41Jawad MirRight. And you got onto this project in terms of production, I would imagine about a year and a half, two years ago?

3:47Jamie McPhersonThree.

3:48Jawad MirWas that…

3:48Jamie McPhersonThree and a bit.

3:49Jawad MirThree.

3:50Jamie McPhersonMaybe four now.

3:50Jawad MirSo when we were talking, you were already on this.

3:53Jamie McPhersonYeah, when we spoke for Life on Our Planet, yeah, I was already, I'd already started on this. We were in the... You know, we were, we were prepping, and there's a lot of prep, as we talked about last time, in terms of, you know, you come up with your stories, obviously with the showrunner Dan Tapster and the series director Nick, and then each director, Jolien, Diz, Amber, and Nick again. And then obviously with Amblin, we're working through what are the characters gonna be, the flow of each episode, where you're going from, you're starting here and you're gonna end up here to tell this story of reptiles rising and, you know, reptiles rise, and then dinosaurs rise, and then... So you're trying to work all that out, and so there's a lot of planning, a lot of prep of working out who the characters are, and then in terms from my perspective, how they're gonna interact, and then how we're gonna shoot it, and how we're gonna bring that story to life and make it really exciting and engaging.

4:38Jawad MirYeah, I mean, we talk about storyboards in films, right? I think for something like this, you cannot do anything without storyboarding or at least setting up, you know, this is what the shot would be, this is what the dinosaur movement would be, this is where, you know, he or she will fall, et cetera.

4:54Jamie McPhersonYeah.

4:54Jawad MirWhich I... And I thought that opening was so, such a tribute to Jurassic Park.

4:59Jamie McPhersonYeah.

5:00Jawad MirAnd you know, that wasn't ex… I wasn't expecting that in any way, but I thought it was a nice little touch. And of course, there's Jaws re… you know, a little touch too in the episode three, I think.

5:09Jamie McPhersonYeah.

5:09Jawad MirWhich was, which was really cool to see.

5:11Jamie McPhersonYeah, there's so many. There's, this time, as I said, because we were very mindful with the, with Life on Our Planet to shoot it in a way... As I said, it had to cut with natural history. So we couldn't go too crazy. We didn't want the dinosaur stuff to all be really Jurassic style, close and right in your face, and then you're seeing a cheetah or you're seeing a d… you know, a Komodo dragon and everyone thinks... They don't, they jar. Whereas this time we could just get stuck in really, so... And a lot more, yeah, Easter eggs, of other films and other styles that we were able to put in there.

5:39Jawad MirLovely, man. So in terms of locations, where did you guys... Because the locations were breathtaking. The cinematography was breathtaking. Like every shot…

5:48Jamie McPhersonOh, gross

5:48Jawad Mir... Was like a painting, man. Like, seriously. I mean, dinosaurs are one thing, but you actually, the backgrounds and the shots stand out so much that dinosaurs don't really o… over, you know, overpower the visuals. So it was just… Amazing. But where did… give me some locations that you guys went to.

6:05Jamie McPhersonSo we were, I think it was something like 18 countries I think we shot in. So we were very mindful, like you say. So there are, there are a few full CG scenes in there. But most of them, I think there's four, six, full, four scenes I think that are full CG. And the rest are back plates, as people call them, which sounds really boring, but, you know, you... We're in the, in Dominica, say, and you're, you're trying to basically film in the rainforest. You're trying to bring the scene to life, so you're shooting very immersive back plates that really let you place the creatures into those locations. A lot of work in North America. Yeah, this time we got a bit lucky. Had a few in the Caribbean, but, yeah, North America, Canada, a couple in the UK, when we want it to look rainy and gray. But yeah, a lot of, a lot of work on the back plates to really embed the creatures in there and sh… And then obviously the creatures are created by ILM to fit into those environments. So the colors of the creatures, we might have to work with the environment so they feel like they're camouflaged in there, that they would really live there, that they don't jar with it and you'd think, "Oh, why is that guy living there?"

7:07Jamie McPhersonSo I think they did an amazing job with, you know, the paleontologists to put the creatures in the right place.

7:14Jawad MirAnd where in Canada did you shoot?

7:17Jamie McPhersonI've got the worst memory for places I've been, 'cause I've been to too many places.

7:20Jawad MirI'm sure, I'm sure…

7:21Jamie McPhersonI can't remember.

7:22Jawad MirWas it the west? The west coast, I would imagine.

7:24Jamie McPhersonIt was the west coast, yeah. The west,.. I can find out. You can put a little asterisks there.

7:29Jawad MirOh, no, I'm just curious. I was just curious. But…

7:31Jamie McPhersonYeah, I can't remember. But then…

7:33Jawad MirYeah, because I…

7:33Jamie McPherson... And then, and then down the coast, the west coast of North America as well with the redwoods and all those sorts of places. Utah, Arizona. Yeah.

7:40Jawad MirI was gonna, I was gonna guess. There was one part, 'cause I was just at, in Yosemite and Joshua National Tree Park and…

7:47Jamie McPhersonYeah

7:47Jawad Mir... Which is kind of like all sort of connected to Utah landscape and all that.

7:52Jamie McPhersonYeah.

7:52Jawad MirAnd it just felt something like there, and I wasn't sure if it was it.

7:56Jamie McPhersonYeah.

7:56Jawad MirBut

7:57Jamie McPhersonAt the red rocks

7:57Jawad Mir... But other than that, I could pick up…

7:58Jamie McPhersonThe pinnacles.

7:59Jawad MirYeah.

7:59Jamie McPhersonYeah, that's…

8:00Jawad MirYeah

8:00Jamie McPherson... That's all, I think that was, Utah or Arizona. On the border…

8:03Jawad MirArizona

8:04Jamie McPherson... We moved between the two when we shot, 'cause they're so, they're such beautiful locations. So yeah, it was great fun.

8:10Jawad MirLovely, man. Okay, so let's get into some technical. Do you have something to share or are we just talking?

8:15Jamie McPhersonNo. I've spent, I... 'Cause of the hour difference, I was pulling stuff together. But what I can do is we'll go through, we can go through and talk about scenes and then how about…

8:23Jawad MirSure

8:24Jamie McPherson... I send you... I can either do cut downs. I can pull out bits that sort of fit, and then you can drop them in

8:31Jawad MirSure

8:31Jamie McPherson... Make it fit that way. 'Cause then I can give you the exact one then rather than... 'Cause I was trying to thinking about sharing my screen. It'd be a bit more clunky of me constantly like going, "Eh," trying to pull them up.

8:41Jawad MirSure.

8:41Jamie McPhersonSo I can, I know what I wanna talk about roughly, and then anything you... I'll send you a load of stuff that I think fits, and then anything, that you want more specifically, then I can... Either you can pull it or I can pull it and send it over.

8:54Jawad MirSure. Let's just, let me just make a little note of it. So what are we gonna talk about, just so I can have some sort of a record of the time code and all that? What are we talk, talking about right now?

9:04Jamie McPhersonWell, it depends where you wa… what question you're asking me.

9:06Jawad MirOkay. No, that's fine. That's awesome. I thought you were gonna show us on the share something.

9:09Jamie McPhersonOh, no.

9:10Jawad MirOkay.

9:10Jamie McPhersonWell, I basically, I, but we're... In terms of like style and things that I think work and are good examples of style…

9:16Jawad MirGot it, got it

9:17Jamie McPherson... And stuff then.

9:18Jawad MirI misunderstood you. Okay.

9:20Jamie McPhersonYou're in charge.

9:24Jawad MirLet me come back to that in a second. I'm just trying to process my thoughts. Let's go back to ILM and…

9:32Jamie McPhersonYeah

9:32Jawad Mir... And the planning and all that. You talked about color palettes, right?

9:36Jamie McPhersonYep.

9:36Jawad MirSo when... Before you guys go out in the production world and shoot what you gotta shoot, how much of the color palettes are being decided beforehand with ILM, or is it an ongoing process? Is it something different? I'm just trying to get a…

9:57Jamie McPhersonYeah

9:57Jawad Mir... Understanding of that.

9:58Jamie McPhersonWell, there's an initial... Well, there's a, there's a huge fact file for each creature. So the paleontologist, Tom Fletcher and Tom Land, they worked through, you know, everything from the musculature from, based on the skeleton, what's left, and they build up the creatures. And then they work with Mark Witton, who's a paleontologist as well, artist, and to sort of create amazing color schemes for these creatures that fitted the environments. We knew where we were going roughly, and what could be possible and what would be possible. And obviously they would tweak depending on exactly where we were. You know, if the trees were dark and the, and the sand was brighter color, then it would help. Then you could, you could then sort of change the color scheme of the creature to fit that environment a little bit better. So it was a, that was a process that started s… very early on. There was huge amount of work. These fact files are absolutely massive, of everything about every creature. And then as we went to location, then obviously you could still tweak it a bit 'cause ILM hadn't, hadn't created the full creature at that point. So we could be... You know, we're thinking about, you know, we've got Spinosaurus in these mangrove swamps, and you kind of think, "Well, it needs to be dark, it needs to be moody, and potentially have stripes and little color bits that work with the environment."

11:01Jamie McPhersonSo yeah, it's, it's a long, very cool, exciting process, that part of it.

11:07Jawad MirSo when you've got the palette or rough palette and you go out to locations and you've sort of figured out which shot will go into, you know, what background…

11:17Jamie McPhersonYeah

11:18Jawad Mir... How much... Do you do different iterations of it, like different versions of it? Like maybe position the camera this way or that way?

11:26Jamie McPhersonYeah. Yeah. It's a super cool pro… I mean, that kind of... And I said this last time. When I to… told people I'm shooting, you know, doing a VFX show and we're shooting back plates, they're like, "Ugh, it must be really boring." It's like, well, no, it's... Well, it is boring if you just shoot a back plate, but we're trying to shoot dynamic back plates that really put the creature in the environment. So there's a lot of movement, and the camera positioning is super critical to how the creature... You know, your first shot of the Spinosaurus, we're tracking down a river in a boat, and this Spinosaurus comes around the corner walking down the river towards you. So the camera's super low and there's this little bit of movement. And then as the, you know, as you reach the creature, it comes in and then it comes past you. So we're doing a lot of big dynamic moves, and very careful to frame the creature to either make it feel really big and scary or small and funny or... So you're using lots of cinematic styles to sort of bring them, bring them to life. And then as you said… So you… we've got, say, our 30 shots for the scene worked out on, in storyboard form, and we use plastic. I haven't got any at the moment. Plastic dinosaurs. They're all over the place. So we do the, a thing we call plastic pre-vis where we do the dance steps, the choreography just roughly for, you know, me and the director in my kitchen, say, and then that gets turned into storyboards, and then you get to location, and then you try and find shots that tell that story.

12:36Jamie McPhersonBut obviously they're never gonna look the same because we don't know the location partic… necessarily in enough detail to draw it perfectly.

12:42Jawad MirRight.

12:42Jamie McPhersonSo then as you get there and you know you've gotta find all of those 30 shots, we've gotta find the intro shot of the Spinosaurus, which we wanna come down the river and find, so you have to find the perfect frame and the perfect composition and the perfect time of day when the light's working to shoot it. So it's a, it's a really cool process, that part of it. I love doing that bit.

12:59Jawad MirSo you have the locations. When you have the creatures sort of figured out and you're going to these locations…

13:09Jamie McPhersonYeah

13:09Jawad Mir... At what part of the process, in which stage is the location scouting done, at least kind of giving an idea to the crew that this is a good area…

13:19Jamie McPhersonThere's…

13:19Jawad Mir... Or a good spot to do that?

13:20Jamie McPhersonYeah, so there's, so there was, there were recces to locations to find the right areas, to find this, we can do this scene here in this, in Dominica or on this beach or in this mangrove swamp. And then when we could, I would go with the director and do a further recce to try and get ahead of the game, to try and pick shots and just to double check it'll work in this river or it'll work here. And then, but that's an ongoing process when the crew are there, so we know we can, we can go, we can find the first two or three shots, and then you shoot those in the morning light, and then you spend all of the day finding new shots and new locations for the rest of it. And then when the light gets good again in the evening and you shoot the opposite way, you can then knock off a three or four more and then it, so it's a process. And then, and then you do iterations, so you'll say, "Okay, that's a cool intro shot." And then you look and you're like, "Bloody hell, that's, that's amazing over there, so let's try an alt to shot 5C over there." And then you kind of go through that process, and you're constantly refining it and finding slightly better tweaks or other versions of it. But it's all quite, it's quite con… you know, you're only there for, five days a week a lot of the time, so it's a pretty full-on schedule.

14:23Jawad MirOnly five days a week? That's pretty much the whole week.

14:27Jamie McPhersonCompared to natural history…

14:28Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

14:28Jamie McPherson... That's no time at all. We'll be there for…

14:30Jawad MirYeah

14:30Jamie McPherson... You know, if you're trying to film a, you know, a lion, you'll be there for a month. But then that's because you're hoping it'll walk into a nice bit of light and do something exciting, whereas at least the dinosaurs are always doing something exciting.

14:41Jawad MirYou know, people, I think the audience is a little bit more educated now, but still, to be able to shoot, like, nature documentaries with actual animals and birds…

14:51Jamie McPhersonYeah

14:51Jawad Mir... It takes a lot of time, but at least there is something you're trying to sort of chase. You're trying to follow the ca… you know, the camera's following the subject. But in your case, there's just palette, like, you know, background and palettes.

15:02Jamie McPhersonYeah.

15:03Jawad MirAnd at any point, I know, I know in production, like, when you, there are so many things going on, it's so busy that time flies by. Does it get tedious at any point that you're just shooting empty space? And I know I asked you this last time, too, but just for sort of…

15:21Jamie McPhersonNo.

15:21Jawad MirNo. Never, eh?

15:21Jamie McPhersonThere's never time to be. It's never tedious. There's no, there's no time.

15:24Jawad MirGood. Good. Good.

15:25Jamie McPhersonIt's, yeah, it's a constant process of you're excited to find, you know, your opening shot and your, all your key shots, and you're developing that as you go along. And then, yeah, and then you're watching, you're going back. You know, you're in the middle of the day you'll spend a bit of time post shooting in the morning to try and find a few more shots, and then you've got a few hours in the middle of the day to go back, download those rushes, and you start to put them together. So you drop them into the, into the time, into the timeline. So you've got storyboard, actual shot, and then we can overlay that with some of the, some of the creatures. So yeah, it's a great process seeing it all come together.

15:56Jawad MirLovely, man. And you talked about earlier, there were five or six scenes that were CG.

16:03Jamie McPhersonYeah.

16:03Jawad MirCan you talk about which ones were they and…

16:06Jamie McPhersonYeah

16:07Jawad Mir... Why they had to be CG?

16:08Jamie McPhersonSo I think off the top of my head there's four.

16:09Jawad MirOkay.

16:09Jamie McPhersonWell, bec… well, there's one in, ep two, which is, some dinosaurs c… trapped in a fire. Obviously we couldn't film enough either. So that's all, there's some initial stuff of live, you know, practical effect fire, and then the rest of the scene is all full CG. There's a baby Stegosaurus scene. Super cute baby Stego walking through the forest. That's full CG environment. And then there's, there's, there's these, there's, there's some s… little mini Sauropods on an island being hunted by the Quatza. I can never say the full name. Quatza something.

16:45Jawad MirIt's…

16:45Jamie McPhersonThis huge flying dinosaur that's hunting them, and that's very horror-esque, like the Slenderman style. And then one of my favorites, which is T-Rex hunting Ankylosaur in episode four, which is awesome. That's at night in the rain. And yeah, so we shot a few practical effects for that, but that was one of those scenes where it's like, this will be amazing if we can create, you know, trying to film at night and in the rain is very hard with practical effects with our budgets. So yeah, ILM created the whole scene. Obviously we worked together to choreograph it and work out what's happening, but yeah, that's an amazing scene, that one.

17:17Jawad MirYou know, I, you talked about T-Rex. I was glad, but I wasn't glad. It's just kind of, like, mixed feelings. It just wasn't about T-Rex and Velociraptors like as normally…... You know…

17:28Jamie McPhersonYeah

17:29Jawad Mir... We have sort of grown up with Jurassic Park. Like, every Jurassic film…

17:33Jamie McPhersonYeah

17:33Jawad Mir... Has that more or less, right? And so it was good to see…

17:36Jamie McPhersonYeah. Well, I mean, they're, also their raptors are massive

17:38Jawad MirYeah.

17:39Jamie McPhersonYeah.

17:39Jawad MirBut it was good to see different types of dinosaurs and also, you know, sort of cute dinosaurs. They're not, carnivores. They're herbivores. And it was, it was fun. It wa… it's... And I can see, I can totally see kids, like I have a nephew who loves this, right?

17:56Jamie McPhersonYeah.

17:56Jawad MirHe loves Jurassic Park, and he's probably, like, four or five years old.

18:03Jamie McPhersonYeah.

18:03Jawad MirAnd I can just see him watching something like that and he's, he's just go berserk because especially the, you know, the little dinosaurs, the cute aspect of it.

18:10Jamie McPhersonYeah. No, we're very careful to balance it. And obviously, you know, we wanted to be very careful with the, with the big creatures like T-Rex, and then we've got some other amazing creatures in this. We've got Spinosaurus, which is just one of the coolest…

18:21Jawad MirYeah

18:21Jamie McPherson... Dinosaurs ever. We've got a Dilophosaur, which is one of my favorite scenes in, that's in ep two. And that's, that's actually the dinosaur that in Jurassic, you know, they took the... The little velociraptors really are like turkeys, and they…

18:36Jawad MirYeah

18:36Jamie McPherson... Took licenses to make them s… huge raptors. So Dilophosaur is actually in Jurassic, is the one with the frill neck that goes and spits acid in the dude's eye who's trying to steal the embryos. But so, but yeah, so we've got the real version, the real version of that, which has got these amazing head crests, and it, and it's a really cool scene. So yeah. And then there's obviously little tiny, there's lots of fun scenes with small, funny dinosaurs and much more balanced than just showing dinosaurs as monsters, which they are in the movies 'cause it's fun, but in real life…

19:06Jawad MirYeah

19:06Jamie McPherson... They'd be big creatures.

19:08Jawad Mir100%, man. What was the most challenging, I'm sure there were, almost everything was, but whether it was weather related or whether it was travel related or whether it was trying to get the lighting right, the sunlight, the challenging s… most challenging scene or a few of them that you…

19:25Jawad Mir... Came across?

19:27Jamie McPhersonWell, a lot of it, I mean, as, Jonathan, as our supervisor, Jonathan Privitz from ILM says, "You fix it in prep." So we try to avoid situations where we go into it not knowing what's gonna happen, because we plan everything and you recce it. So you get to location and you try and figure out, what's happening where. I guess we did a few, we did one in Dominica. We did some in, on beaches in the Caribbean, which seems amazing. And as we kept joking, we're, we felt like we were 20 feet from a holiday because we're in, we're crouched in the bushes trying to get all these shots, and there's just holidaymakers and people on their honeymoons having a lovely time. And those situations are actually quite tricky because you've gotta get there super early and you've gotta make, you've gotta get all your shots on the beach before everyone comes down and starts, you know, sitting on the beach. So we're, a lot of the time we're in there at dawn. We'd get our shots done, and then as we're packing up our cameras and our cranes and all our tracking stuff, everyone would be coming down in their swimmers to actually have a lovely time, and then we'd go back to a hotel, dark hotel room and watch rushes. So it wasn't hard physically, but it was quite fun in that we were just very close to a holiday, but not actually on holiday.

20:32Jawad MirDid you have any outtake where you got this amazing shot, and in the prehistoric world, some human creature pops out behind from the tree you're…

20:40Jamie McPhersonI think we managed to avoid it, but they were always just behind the camera, either having a chat with us or you just have these people, you know, doing a lot of Insta type stuff, of taking selfies while we're…

20:48Jawad MirYeah

20:49Jamie McPherson... Yeah, trying to film a scene.

20:51Jawad MirNice. That's awesome, man. Again, this is something I may have covered in the last episode when we talked about Life on Our Planet, which was last year, I think, is…

21:01Jamie McPhersonYeah

21:03Jawad Mir... You know, working in these kind of environments, and especially with gear, is, yeah, you have a crew. H… actually, how big was your crew? How big was your team?

21:12Jamie McPhersonIt varied. I'd say m… we'd probably be at least four, most of the time six or eight people. So we, yeah, 'cause if we're using, often we'd be using cranes or vehicles, so you'd have, you know, I'd be shooting and there'd be a, somebody helping me with the crane, and then there's a VFX supervisor, and then his assistant, Beth, would be there. And then, you'd have a couple of people from production, and then a director. So yeah, you're sort of looking at six to eight people. Not a huge crew, just enough to do what we needed to do really.

21:43Jawad MirAnd you probably had a couple of vehicles and a fixer, local fixer.

21:46Jamie McPhersonYeah. Sometimes you had a fixer. Yeah, in Canada we had a fixer, and then you'd have a few vehicles and a few bits and pieces. So there's, it… you… it's moving around, but compared to features, it's still very lightweight.

21:55Jawad MirSure. Yeah.

21:57Jamie McPhersonYeah.

21:57Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. And in terms of cameras, which ones?

22:00Jamie McPhersonLet me just turn that microphone off. So we used, my favorite, which is the GSS quite a bit, which has got a Red Helium in it and, you know, long lenses. So options all the way from 14 mil to 1500 mil for big tracking, you know, fast moving, stabilized shots. And then we used a lot of smaller cameras. We used the Ronin 4D quite a lot, for that sort of handheld look. So the opening to episode one, there's a crazy scene of running through, you know, y… you're with a Pachycephalosaur and he sees…

22:30Jawad MirYeah

22:30Jamie McPherson... A rival with his ladies, and so he's running through this huge herd of sauropods. That's a combination of 4D running along, and drone stuff, which is super exciting. And then a few other, we did a beach scene as well where there's, there's little baby Marasuchus dinosaurs hatch out on the beach, and they're having to run through the legs of all these dinosaurs and trying to escape these huge predatory reptiles. That was, 4D handheld stuff. And then other s… you know, we used Monstros, Red Monstros with prime lenses. We shot our scene at night with Marasuchus, so it's a very dark, very low light. We lit it, and then that's on tracks and a few, and a lot of things. So we were trying to use the big sensor, very sensitive to light, and then fast prime lenses to capture those scenes. So a big variety of stuff. And then Racer drones we used this time, which we hadn't used last time, to get some of the more dynamic flight shots of the, of the flying dinosaurs and the flying reptiles.

23:19Jawad MirWhi… which drone, sorry?

23:21Jamie McPhersonSo we used a lot, we used Mavics and Inspires, but we also, the DJI ones, but we also used Racer drones to get that sort of POV super fast flight.

23:28Jawad MirSo the, FPV ones, basically.

23:29Jamie McPhersonYeah, FPV. Yeah.

23:31Jawad MirYeah. Awesome.

23:32Jamie McPhersonYeah.

23:32Jawad MirThat sounds really cool, man. And you said you used fast lenses. What was the fastest f-stop, like the lens that you used?

23:38Jamie McPhersonOff the top of my head, it's probably like 1.2 I'd say.

23:42Jawad MirThat's pretty fast.

23:42Jamie McPhersonA pretty quick, tiny depth of field…

23:43Jawad MirYeah, that's pretty…

23:43Jamie McPherson... Which makes, which is a nightmare for ILM 'cause, you know, nothing's in focus.

23:48Jawad MirYeah. W… and which, what's the focal length?

23:51Jamie McPhersonI don't know for those ones.

23:53Jawad Mir1.2.

23:53Jamie McPhersonI think we were using some little primes, like 50 mil. Not super… ... Wide. I think we were right at, maybe we were like from 14. Some, there were some very sort of tight little scenes we lit at night and I can't remember off the top of my head now, but you're down around 14, 18 mil, and then maybe 75 mil long end of it. But just really low light and a little, a little bit of fill light from us, but just trying to use natural light.

24:15Jawad MirYou know, you're, I was just reminded you talked about, must be a nightmare for ILM. I remember, this was probably 12 years ago, I shot something on a, I don't remember the brand. It was a 20 mil.95.

24:29Jamie McPhersonYeah.

24:30Jawad MirAnd it was pitch black, and it was still able to pick it up. I mean, it was noisy…

24:35Jamie McPhersonYeah

24:35Jawad Mir... But you, the, to focus that…

24:37Jamie McPhersonYeah

24:37Jawad Mir... Is a pain in the butt. It's…

24:40Jamie McPhersonYeah

24:40Jawad Mir... Really hard.

24:41Jamie McPhersonYeah, you got, get to the front of the eyeball, and that's about it. Yeah.

24:44Jawad MirYeah, and that doesn't help when you have glasses on. It's like, oh.

24:47Jamie McPhersonYeah. What we had luckily with our, 'cause the, obviously we're shooting the scene, so just the only issue we have is obviously you're not giving enough depth for the whole creature to be sharp. So sometimes you have to add more light to give us a slightly, you know, and open it, close it down a little bit to give us a bit more depth so that you didn't just have like a dinosaur's nose in focus.

25:05Jawad MirAnd how involved were you with after the shooting was done…

25:09Jamie McPhersonYeah

25:09Jawad Mir... With ILM, with color grading, or co… combination of both, and seeing that dinosaur sort of come to life from, you know, a paper sketch…

25:23Jamie McPhersonYeah

25:23Jawad Mir... To what we see?

25:25Jamie McPhersonYeah, so we do, so once we've, we've done it on location, we've blocked it out, and we've put in a few sort of grayscale creatures so that we can make sure it's working and the angles are all right. And then when we get back, ILM take that, and they start to do the first blocking phase. So I was involved in the blocking of the creatures, so the framing, so I can say, "Well, the framing, I think I would have put him here a little bit, and the idea with this shot was that as we came round, the nose would be here," and then all the way through to when it's, you know, final anim and it's starting to look really sexy. So yeah, I was involved in that. I didn't do the grading or any of the back end of that, but more in the, in the sort of when it's at the composition stage, and I was involved in that process, which is great fun seeing them go from grayscale or a plastic dinosaur to an ILM-created dinosaur is an amazing thing to see.

26:09Jawad MirDo you normally grade in other projects?

26:11Jamie McPhersonWe don't, yeah, if I'm on a, if I'm on another film, I won't, I won't have to do the whole thing myself. I can dip in and out, and somebody else has to do all the hard work. But I love doing it. The process is amazing and seeing it, you know, that's, you really get to see it come to light, and seeing it on a full 4K, a proper monitor rather than a laptop or a, you know, a TV, it makes a massive difference.

26:30Jawad MirI know you've done so many of these nature shows, if you wanna call this a nature show.

26:36Jamie McPhersonYes

26:36Jawad Mir... What is one thing about working on this series, you know, taught you something about yourself? Not just the dinosaur knowledge, and I mean, you seem to be pretty versed with all the names because that's what, you know, you lived and…

26:49Jawad Mir... Breathed in for the f…... For at least couple of years.

26:52Jamie McPhersonYeah.

26:52Jawad MirBut what's one thing that you probably learned about yourself?

26:56Jamie McPhersonI mean, not in a deep way, but in terms of storytelling, that's what I love about doing these, this show in particular, is you've got carte blanche. You've gotta, you know, with when you're filming natural history, a lot of it is done for you. You've gotta make the most of the story that's unfolding, but you're documenting it, as a documentary cinematographer. That's kind of what I've done my entire career. Whereas this, you're free. You, it's up to you. You can make up the story. You can base it on some facts. Eh, twist it a little bit to make it exciting.

27:24Jawad MirYeah.

27:24Jamie McPhersonSo for me, I love, I love that process of starting with a kernel of an idea of, you know, we've got Dollophasor lives in the swamps. She's a badass. She hunts crocodiles, was the setup. Me and Jodie and the director, Dan, Nick, we all talked about this idea. She's this badass, and she's in this dark forest hunting crocodiles. So you set her up as this, there's crocodile remains everywhere, and you think, "Wow, she's a really scary dinosaur." And then she hears a noise, and the noise is another scarier dinosaur and a proper, like, Little Red Riding Hood. She's, you know, like, "Don't go towards it." And obviously, she then turns around and goes towards this dinosaur walking through the forest. So for me, I find that super exciting that you can just tell a story visually, and also, you know, you're narratively you're telling the story, and building that scene, and that's, that's so exciting. I d… I mean, yeah, I've learned that I still absolutely love that, and I'd like to do as much of it as possible.

28:14Jawad MirIsn't that amazing? I was actually on ILM Instagram the other day, just kind of just popped up on my feed, and I actually made a comment which just came out of nowhere, is that what we see in Hollywood today wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for ILM, right?

28:32Jamie McPhersonThat's right.

28:32Jawad MirAnd it's been, what f… fif… 50 years almost. Well, when Star Wars came out, it was '77, so…

28:39Jamie McPhersonYeah

28:39Jawad Mir... The pre-production and all that. And now that with the advent of AI, right, and then there's such realistic-looking AI. I'm not talking about, humans, you know, the cartoony ones. I'm talking about the skin tones of animals and all that. Do you see that integration happening in the near future if there was, let's say, the Dinosaurs 2 or some other series of visual effects combining with AI?

29:07Jamie McPhersonI think there's, there's a place for it in, if, I mean, I, this, it's more in the ILM part of the world than my part of the world, hopefully. Hopefully, there won't be AI cinematographers, but I'm sure there will be at some point. I think in terms of integrating it with the back end of helping the process and helping reduce man-hours, I think it could be very useful there to help, you know, streamline it and make it a bit cheaper. But I don't think, I'm hoping it'll never be used purely as a creative tool and allowing it to create stuff, 'cause I think working with directors and producers and ILM supervisors, is the fun of it. And so I think if we give that over to a, an AI bot to do, I mean, what's the, what's the point?

29:45Jawad MirNo, it's true, and…

29:46Jamie McPhersonThat's the reason we all do it is 'cause that's the fun part of having those ideas and the references we have in our heads of movies and stories we've heard and how we wanna translate those into visual. You know, turn a dinosaur into Little Red Riding Hood or any of those sorts of ideas, I think come from people and people sparring with each other and, you know, bouncing ideas around is great fun.

30:06Jawad MirAnd also with AI, I mean, I, look, I use AI as tools every single day. We all do now. And to be able to be involved in the process is something completely different than just telling it... What to do, and even if it does a remarkable job, let's just say in the next 10 years or five years, then okay, why are, then the ro… the automated system will start making their own films, and what the hell, what's the point of making movies then, right?

30:36Jamie McPhersonYeah.

30:36Jawad MirSo I truly believe that. I think if you'd asked me like a year and a half ago, I would say, "Yeah, we're l… approaching doom and gloom," but I don't think, at least in our world, it's not gonna be replaced. I think there's gonna be tools definitely to help us out…

30:50Jamie McPhersonYeah

30:50Jawad Mir... For sure, and they already are. But the rest assured…

30:53Jamie McPhersonYeah

30:53Jawad Mir... The story and everything else will more or less remain the same.

30:57Jamie McPhersonYeah. I hope so. I mean, if we don't know anything for movies, then we shouldn't give it control.

31:01Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. And what's your favorite part in the fi… in the series that you liked in terms of the output and versus the part when you were on the set trying to see that, something that caught your attention when you saw the final s… episodes that, oh, this was this, and this is what we did, and look where it is now?

31:30Jamie McPhersonWow. I think, I mean, I'm always, as I said, when you see, when you see the creatures, the final anim for the first time, there's so many that look so cool, like Dolphosaur looks amazing. Spinosaur looks great. The full CG T-Rex hunting a Ankylosaur at night is awesome. I think probably for me, some of the biggest, the biggest thing, the things that worked, I suppose, well, there's a brilliant scene with the Hesperornis, which is like a prehistoric penguin.

31:56Jamie McPhersonSo we start it off with there's a monster in this forest, classic setup of like you see this thing darting around, then it comes out and it's like, "Wah," and it's basically just a rubbish penguin, like penguins in Madagascar when they get infected with the meh, makes them a bit funky. And that was a great scene playing with that idea, and then he goes in and it's swimming, and it's like a, you know, it's like a penguin. And then we did a classic thing where it gets chased by a Mosasaur, comes out on the beach. You think, "Phew, it's made it." And then obviously the Mosasaur then comes out of the water and grabs it, and it's so cool. Such a cool scene. It's very similar to, there's a scene in The Meg where the Meg grabs a, I think it's The Meg 2, grabs a T-Rex, in a really much worse version than ours, I think. But seeing that, you know, the Mosasaur come out of the water and the detail and how well that shot worked when that's a, that's a real back plate shot where you're just like, ah, it's just literally a static shot of shoreline, beach, distant islands. There's very little there, and then there's a, there's a Hesperornis in the foreground panting, and then this Mosasaur just comes out of the water. That I think worked so well, and ILM did such an amazing job of the water and the, you know, this thing coming out and grabbing something so close to camera.

33:01Jamie McPhersonAnd then I'd say the re… there's so much world building lunacy of stuff exploding and especially in episode one with Nick, the dir… the director of episode one, loves stuff to explode. And the end of episode one, it ends with literally the whole world exploding in the Jurassic World style. And that's brilliant. ILM did an amazing job of that, of that just crazy, you know, disaster movie style imagery. I think that's great fun.

33:28Jawad MirYou know, y… you must have seen the Jurassic W…

33:31Jamie McPhersonJust think

33:31Jawad Mir... World Rebirth, the most…

33:32Jamie McPhersonYeah.

33:33Jawad Mir... The most recent one with, by Gareth.

33:35Jamie McPhersonYeah.

33:35Jawad MirWhich obviously came out after the production was finished on this series.

33:40Jamie McPhersonYeah.

33:40Jawad MirWhen you, when you saw it, because the visuals in that, the dinosaurs in that, even though they're very minimal… ... And I've seen a lot of behind the scene how they did it, like especially the T-Rex and the raft sequence. You know, when the girl pops up the raft, there was no raft at all in the actual

33:57Jamie McPhersonYeah

33:58Jawad Mir... Right? And the T-Rex popping. W… w… h… what kind of progression have you seen, you know, even from life on our planet, I think it's bound and leaps ahead what you guys…

34:09Jamie McPhersonYeah

34:09Jawad Mir... Have worked on now. And how more realistic can it get? Can it go beyond this? 'Cause I don't see that. I mean, I think it's as realistic as is possible, but…

34:19Jamie McPhersonYeah, I mean, I think it's obviously getting better. I mean, obviously it's pretty much with VFX, it's down to money. So the Jurassic, the latest Jurassic looks amazing, and I, their budgets are quite a bit bigger than ours. So I'd say the, what the streamlining of the set of how it works and the creation of these assets and these creatures and these worlds, I think what will happen is, you know, the creatures are at a point when they look photo real, most of them. There's some that don't quite. There's a few, there's textures that don't play quite as well. I think the more textured they are, the more they seem to embed in their scene. But I think if we can use, you know, other tools to create, to create the CG, we can build bigger worlds and have more set pieces and more creatures in the scene, I think, is that's what I hope we'll be able to bring to newer ones. And more interactions obviously. You're limited by, you know, feet on the ground. You spend a lot of money, a little bit of dust pops up, you've just spent 20 grand. So I think being able to have more interaction and more with the, with the environment and more creatures will bring it to life more.

35:18Jawad MirLovely, man. And what movies have you seen this year? I mean, not the fact that Academy Awards were just yesterday.

35:24Jamie McPhersonOh, God. Well, I watched I Swear two days ago with my wife, and I had to get, I had to go and keep getting more glasses of water. We cried so much that we were dehydrated. Like, it was just an amazing film, just so powerful, and yeah, I've literally never cried so much watching a movie. And I was really sad to see that it didn't get, didn't get an Oscar last night, but yeah. I think that was the most powerful film I've seen for a long time.

35:47Jawad MirSo which one, sorry? I, you kind of broke up.

35:49Jamie McPhersonI Swear.

35:50Jawad MirOh, okay.

35:50Jamie McPhersonI Swear.

35:50Jawad MirRight.

35:51Jamie McPhersonYeah.

35:51Jawad MirI f… I felt that for Hamnet, actually. Hamnet was just like a, we're watching in the movie theater, I can just hear everybody crying, like as you would normally hear people laughing, and then you start getting emotional too, because that's all you're hearing…

36:04Jamie McPhersonYeah

36:04Jawad Mir... Around you.

36:04Jamie McPhersonYeah. Yeah.

36:05Jawad MirBut I was glad that won Battle after another one, because I, when it came out, I'm like, "This has to…"

36:12Jamie McPhersonYeah, such an epic…

36:12Jawad Mir... 'cause it's just timely film, and especially the final sequence. I mean, it's crazy how they did that ep… I don't know if you've seen the behind the scene…

36:20Jamie McPhersonNo, I haven't, no

36:20Jawad Mir... Of that, but the lens is... Oh, you should. It's, it's awesome. You'll love it. You know?

36:23Jamie McPhersonNo, I'll watch it after this.

36:25Jawad MirAnd awesome. Anything, else on the horizon that you're secretly working on already?

36:30Jamie McPhersonSecretly working on lots of things. That's the problem. They're all secret. Yeah, we've got some, I've got some natural history. I mean, we can definitely chat again when I'm allowed to tell you. I've got some big natural history stuff coming out, and some more VFX stuff coming out. It won't be…

36:45Jawad MirSo are they, are they finished production or are they in production? Can you please say that?

36:49Jamie McPhersonIn production. One… there's some pre-production and then one, a couple that are in production.

36:54Jawad MirWonderful, man. I'm excited about that.

36:56Jamie McPhersonWell, it's good fun.

36:56Jawad MirAnd so next year, I'm imagining?

36:58Jamie McPhersonOne will be next year, maybe a couple next year, and then a couple of years after that, 'cause obviously creatures and things take a long time to create, don't they?

37:07Jawad MirSo let me, let me ask you one last question because you're working on all these things, which is awesome, right?

37:12Jamie McPhersonYeah.

37:12Jawad MirThere are so many people in the industry, not just in our industry, in the world, because of what's going on, you know, they're affected by things that are happening. How do you... Is it in the back of your mind that, "How long am I going to go for this consistently?" Are you, do you have any fear sometimes, "What if for six months I've got nothing, or, you know, a year?" Does that come, kind of creeps up in the back?

37:39Jamie McPhersonOh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we all thought, I, certainly, and all my colleagues, we thought that yeah, it just in natural history, let alone, I mean, I'm, I'm lucky that I'm doing natural history and VFX. We thought it would just, you know, it's just continuing. Natural history was going crazy a few years ago when all the streamers started commissioning everything. And I'd never really thought about retiring or about not having work, luckily, 'cause I've managed to be employed quite consistently. And I think it's been a real opener the last two years. Lots of my colleagues, friends, who have been working, much more experienced than I am, have been out of work for quite a long time. And I've, you know, I've had it, and it's definitely been quieter the last few months. So it's definitely an eye-opener that maybe I should have actually got some real skills in life.

38:21Jawad MirY… you know, it…

38:22Jamie McPhersonBut

38:23Jawad MirWould you give, would you give... I know it's a hard thing to do. People ask me this too. I'm like, "I have no idea what to tell you, man. You just gotta keep going." Is that advice of, you know, creative people more or less are horrible at selling themselves. That's just a fact.

38:40Jamie McPhersonYeah.

38:40Jawad MirHow... And I sort of see, I think you evolve over time. I think I was terrible at it five years ago. I've gotten a lot better at it.

38:47Jamie McPhersonYeah.

38:47Jawad MirClearly, you ha… you have that personality. What's the secret to sort of pop out of that shell that, you know, where you have to sort of become a little bit of a salesperson? You're not natural at it. But you just sort of have to.

39:01Jamie McPhersonNo, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm awful at it. I'm happy when I'm, when someone asks me a question, I can jump…

39:05Jawad MirYeah, exactly

39:06Jamie McPherson... Excitingly.

39:06Jawad MirExactly. Right?

39:07Jamie McPhersonBut I won't, if I, if I'm left to my own devices, I won't video myself going, "Guys," and that sort of thing. I'm not very good at that. I'd rather be doing my day job of coming up with cool stories and working with people and creating stuff, and then showing them that, rather than people seeing this daft idiot. So yeah, I'm, I'm not very good at it. I'm, yeah, sadly, I think that's the world we're in now, where we need to sell ourselves more, but.

39:28Jawad MirOh, boy. Do I not know that, man. It's like, it's a challenge. When you said, "Guys," it's… so funny. I actually, during Christmas, during December, I'm like, "Okay, I gotta start daily vlogs." Not because I like doing them, because I gotta…

39:43Jawad Mir... You know, put myself out there more. And I did it for 28 days straight.

39:48Jamie McPhersonJesus Christ.

39:49Jawad MirAnd they were just, they were like... Okay, so we went to Joshua National Tree Park, a little bit of traveling, a little bit production work, a little post-production, a little bit, you know, brand films work.

40:00Jawad MirAnd it was, it was good. But after 28 days, I was like, "Oh my God, I don't know how people do this." And it was not, like, just recording. It was, like, editing and stuff, right? It takes time.

40:09Jamie McPhersonYeah.

40:10Jawad MirAnd, but once you, once I stopped for one day, that's it.

40:16Jamie McPhersonYou didn't want to go back.

40:16Jawad MirI didn't want to go back. And now, and I wanna go back.

40:18Jamie McPhersonYou couldn't say, "Hey, guys."

40:19Jawad MirBut it's…

40:19Jamie McPhersonYou couldn't say, "Hey, guys," again.

40:19Jawad MirI hate saying that. I… But I s… but I, but I keep saying that over and over again.

40:24Jamie McPhersonI'm sorry. I didn't mean to pick. Yeah.

40:26Jawad MirNo. It's all good, man. It's all good.

40:28Jamie McPhersonIt's all cool.

40:28Jawad MirAwesome, man. Listen, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much again for…

40:32Jamie McPhersonAh, pleasure

40:32Jawad Mir... Your time. Wonderful work. I would actually love to, if you have any direct contact with the VFX supervisor…

40:39Jamie McPhersonYeah

40:39Jawad Mir... That would be really, I would love to chat with him. I can go through ILM, but, you know, it's just kind of like…

40:45Jamie McPhersonNo, I can give you, I can give you, yeah, Jonathan Privett, I'll give you his details and you can have a chat. He's a great guy. And Steve Moncur did quite a bit, so there was two. But the main guy who I worked with on Life on Our Planet and then on this was Jonathan Privett, who's…

40:55Jawad MirAwesome, man. Good luck with everything.

40:57Jamie McPhersonGreat to chat. Speak soon.

40:58Jawad MirTake care, buddy.

40:59Jamie McPhersonCheers.

40:59Jawad MirGoodbye.