'Welcome to Marwen', Cinematographer, C. Kim Miles

0:05Jawad MirYou're in, Vancouver, Canada?

0:07Kim MilesI live in Vancouver. Yeah, I'm in, I'm in Atlanta right now for another, three weeks, just finishing up a movie here and then, and then home again.

0:18Jawad MirGood. I love Vancouver, one of my favorite places.

0:21Kim MilesYeah. Where are you right now?

0:23Jawad MirI'm in Canada. I'm in Toronto.

0:25Kim MilesOh, are you in Toronto? Okay, cool. Right on.

0:27Jawad MirYeah.

0:27Kim MilesMy daughter goes to, Western, so she's not far from you. Nice.

0:32Jawad MirNo, that's like a couple hours.

0:34Kim MilesYeah, nice to see you have power.

0:37Jawad MirYeah, I… what was that, power?

0:38Kim MilesYeah, it's nice to see you have power with all the ice storms and nonsense that are going through Southern Ontario, Quebec.

0:44Jawad MirYeah, it was, it was quite insane. We didn't get affected by power, but I mean, it was a lot of snow. I know in Montreal right now they're getting affected quite a bit.

0:55Kim MilesWow.

0:55Jawad MirThey had a lot of power outages there. But yeah. But, you know, Vancouver is, it's been a while now I've been there. There was a time between 20… 2009 and 2017, I was there twice a year just for work.

1:13Kim MilesYeah.

1:13Jawad MirHappened to be there for work all the time. And I, and I always would go to either Banff or I would go to Whistler or…

1:19Kim MilesNice

1:19Jawad Mir... You know, obviously Banff is way far off from there, but just make a point of going there.

1:24Kim MilesYeah. Well, you're all the way out there. You might as well take the extra trip, right? Yeah.

1:29Jawad MirExactly. Exactly.

1:30Kim MilesYeah.

1:30Jawad MirWell, thank you for joining. Man, I appreciate it. How would you like me to address you, as Kim or Steve or…

1:36Kim MilesJust Kim. Yeah, Kim's good. Yeah, Kim's good. Yeah. Yeah.

1:39Jawad MirGreat. Just to start off, Kim, just talk to me about, how you got started in cinematography, your career, how it evolved, to where it is right now.

1:50Kim MilesOh, that's a, that's a long story. How much time do you have? I

1:54Jawad MirWe can go

1:54Kim Miles... I grew up in, it's, it's a good one. I grew up in Malaysia. I was born there and, my dad was a, not a missionary, but he went over with a, with the Methodist school system back in the '50s and started teaching there, and he loved it so much that he never came back. So I was born there, grew up there. At the school that I went to, my best friend, Justin, was the son of a couple that owned a production company. So all growing up it was kind of, you know, in the background on weekends, you know, whatever. It was, there was always movie business in the background. They made commercials, but, same sort of idea.

2:31Kim MilesAnd, after high school was over in 1990… 1988, he said, "Why don't you come and, you know, you got time before college, why don't you come and be a grip with me? I'm gonna go work for mom and dad, so come be a grip." And I was like, "What's a grip?" And, that was kind of the end of it. So we worked in-house there, starting in '88, so when I was 15. I went through the English, school system in Malaysia, so we graduated a little bit earlier than, is normal here.

3:00Jawad MirRight.

3:00Kim MilesAnd, kind of fell in love with it a little bit and worked as a grip in-house there for a little bit shooting commercials, and then, noticed that the camera department was where all the action was, so I was always kind of pestering the camera guys to…

3:15Jawad MirRight

3:15Kim Miles... You know, let me play with the gear. We had all our own equipment in-house and so I was always in the camera room messing around with stuff, getting in their way and all that. And then, at one point they decided, Justin's dad decided that he wanted to rejuvenate the still photography side of the business. He was a still photographer before he went into motion picture. And I was really into stills, so I thought, well, you know, why don't... He said, "Why don't you go to school, get your degree in stills, and then, you know, maybe we'll rejuvenate that, put you to work here." So that was kind of the plan to begin with, was to go and work in stills and commercial photography. So I went to, University of Victoria, partially because they had a BFA program in stills, but mostly 'cause, the girlfriend I was going out with at the time was going to, Burnaby, so I followed. And ended up staying in Victoria. But I would go back in the summertime and be a camera assistant and, you know, mess around and, kinda grow in the business that way.

4:19Kim MilesThe stills idea never came through in the, but the motion picture side of it kinda did. And, anyway, I grew apart from the business a little bit in the, in the early '90s. You know, settling into life in Victoria. I'd gotten married and was, you know, kinda going down a different path. And then

4:36Jawad MirRight

4:36Kim Miles... Justin had actually come and been my best man at the wedding, at our wedding, and he said, "What are you doing?" He goes, "You're a filmmaker. Why are you know, doing whatever you're doing?" At the time, I think I was, I was, about to join the police department in Victoria. So…

4:50Jawad MirOh, nice.

4:51Kim MilesYeah. He said, "You know, even if it's just never mind all the other, you know, serving the community, all this other nonsense." He goes, "How about money?" He goes, "Just, let's just talk about money. Are you, how much money are you gonna make as a police officer?" So he made a very compelling argument that the movie business is more lucrative than civil service. But he started his own company in '90s, in the early '90s, and I went back to Malaysia. Joanna, my wife and I packed up and moved to Malaysia in '96 to go work with Justin now, who had taken over the, basically taken over the business from his parents. And

5:22Jawad MirRight

5:22Kim Miles... Was a camera assistant in-house with him. And then started doing a little bit of freelance work. And, we met a Canadian director named Jerry McKenna, who was a, formerly, an agency, creative director who was now directing commercials, and he took a shine to me a little bit, I guess. And he called, I remember he called one day and he said, "Hey, three weeks from now, what are you doing?" I said, "I've got nothing booked." He goes, "Okay, you're coming and doing a commercial with me." And I said, "Okay, great. Why are you, like you're directing, why are you booking the camera department crew?" He goes, "No, you're shooting it." And I said, "Shooting?" I said, "I don't know anything about shooting. All I know is, you know, near and far and, you know, in focus, out of focus. That's all I know. I don't know anything about shooting." He said, "Well, it's too late. I've already approved, gotten you approved by the agency…

6:08Jawad MirOh, wow

6:08Kim Miles... And you're booked." So that was how I kinda got shoved into it, by Jerry, bless his heart. And then we went on together to shoot, a whole bunch of stuff. I think we shot the first commercials that ever aired in Vietnam, back in 1997 for, what were the prod… it was Head & Shoulders and Tide laundry soap.

6:32Jawad MirOh

6:32Kim Miles... So that was lots of fun. And then, you know, things kinda just evolved from there. And

6:37Jawad MirYeah

6:37Kim Miles... In '98, all the, you know, all the economies collapsed in Southeast Asia, so we decided, well, you know, despite wanting to live in Malaysia permanently, we thought, well, let's go back to Canada and see what's going on. So came back to Canada. I was 25, I guess if it was 1998, and, had a, you know, I'd shot, you know, 30-some commercials, like high-end commercials that we do over there. We don't, the commercial industry there is more narrative. It's more like the European industry rather than the North American product-placing industry.

7:08Jawad MirYeah.

7:08Kim MilesSo I had a pretty nice reel, I thought, but nobody would hear, would take me seriously here. You know, "Oh, you're 25, how could you possibly be a DP? You're way too young." So ended up, gaffing, a few shows in Victoria for other DPs and learned some tricks from them along the way. And then, a gentleman named Kirk Shaw came along, and a director named David Decoteau, in 2004 or something, I think, and they had an eight-day feature they wanted to shoot. And I thought, you know what? This is, this is it. Gotta do it, right? You can't, you can't pass up an opportunity. So I did that, and then ended up shooting 30-some-odd movies with Kirk Shaw producing, with directors like, Ron Oliver and George Erschbamer and George Mendeluk. And then, you know, one thing led to another and I got asked to come and do Arrow, and that led to Flash, and then Flash led to, Welcome to Marwen, which was kind of a bizarre, you know, chain of events.

8:06Jawad MirChain of events, yeah.

8:08Kim MilesYeah.

8:08Jawad MirThat's fantastic. I really find it really cool that, Jeremy, I think you said, right? That how…

8:14Kim MilesJeremy

8:15Jawad Mir... He booked you…

8:16Kim MilesYeah

8:16Jawad Mir... Without you know, how he had so much faith in you that it's, it's, it's good to have people like that they just put…

8:24Kim MilesYeah

8:24Jawad Mir... And then, and you wanna prove them then, right? Like, you're gonna work harder than you normally would.

8:29Kim MilesYes.

8:29Jawad MirAnd that is so cool. I, you know, it's rare to hear these kind of things, and I find that really nice and really cool on his part.

8:37Kim MilesYeah. He was really great. He was a real gentleman. You know, he was, he was a big personality. He was a, you know, a six-foot-four-inch Canadian fella in Malaysia, so he towered about, you know, a foot taller than anybody else. And he had a very big presence, but he was a real, a real teddy bear. He was a great guy, yeah.

8:56Jawad MirNice. That's great. And then Welcome to Marwen, you know, for you to be working on all the projects that you did, and then to get called on a project by Robert Zemeckis, you know, someone who I'm sure you have, too, we've all sort of grown up on like, you know, Back to the Future, Forrest Gump…

9:15Kim MilesYeah

9:15Jawad Mir... Contact, all these great films. What, how did that happen? And just sort of run me through, you know, your meeting with Zemeckis and how it kind of, went from there.

9:27Kim MilesWell, that was, yeah, that whole period, there was a period of about three months there where it was just so, everything was so bizarre. I didn't know what was happening. So I was, I was on, I was working on Flash at the time, the TV show.

9:40Jawad MirYeah.

9:40Kim MilesAnd, I was at work. It was like a, I think it was like a Tuesday or a Monday or a Tuesday. It was early in the week, and we had a huge schedule ahead of us, lots of visual effects, lots of, lots of stunts and all that. And Flash is an ensemble show, so there's l… you know, complicated scenes with lots of cast members, so you spend a lot of time shooting. Anyway, my agent called and said, he goes, "I don't know what's going on right now, but Robert Zemeckis's office just called to see if you were interested in making a movie with him." And I was like, "What?" Like, "Robert, like, how do you spell Zemeckis?" Like, you know, he goes, "No, it's legit. It's the real guy. I checked it up." Well, and I said, "yeah. You know, of course I'm available for..." You know, I grew up with movies that Bob's made and, you know, Gump and Back to the Future are some of the, in my opinion, some of the greatest films that have ever been made by contemporary filmmakers.

10:38Jawad MirYeah.

10:38Kim MilesAnd if you'd, if you'd asked me to pick from a list of Hollywood directors to work with, Bob would've been the guy. So this was all a really strange sort of set of circumstances. So they said, well, my agent Brady said, "Well, don't, you know, don't quit your job yet. I'll, I'll let them know you're interested, but, I'll let them know and then, you know, in a couple of weeks if we haven't heard anything, I'll reach back out to them. So in the meantime, don't quit your job, you know, but it's good to be on their, on the radar, right?" I was like, "Yeah, totally."

11:10Jawad MirYeah.

11:10Kim MilesSo an hour later, Brady calls back. He goes, "They want you to read a script, like, right away. Like, tonight if you can, have a meeting tomorrow morning." And I was like, "Well, you know, we've got a huge schedule. I can, you know, maybe do something early tomorrow morning. I can get I can get everyone at Flash, like get the operator and the gaffer to do all the morning blockings, and I can, you know, s… scamper away and try to do a meeting." So the next morning, they sent a script, and the next morning, Steve Starkey, one of Bob's longtime producers called and…

11:40Jawad MirYeah

11:41Kim Miles... And he said, he goes, "You know, I don't know if you know who I am or what's going on." I'm like, "Oh, I know who you are. Like, come on," you know? And he goes, "Okay, well," he goes, "I've got a movie I wanna pitch you and, you know, let me, if it's too crazy, you know, just say so. It's, it's, I totally get it. It's, it's kinda out there and, you know." and I said, "Honestly, Steve, there's nothing you could pitch me that I would turn down that I would say was too crazy."

12:06Jawad MirOh.

12:06Kim MilesSo he pitched me the whole story and I'd read the script the night before… And I was getting kind of nervous. He said, "Look, don't..." He goes, "Don't, don't be nervous." He goes, "It's just two guys talking about a movie. Don't worry about it. It's all, it's all good, you know?" And, so our conversation went really well, and then he said, "Look, Bob's really anxious to meet you, and he's, he's got a bunch of test footage that we did a little while ago that he wants to go over with you to get your opinion on." So, this was a Tuesday, I think. He said, "Why don't you come down for lunch on Saturday? We'll fly you down and, come meet Bob, look at this test footage, and, you know, we can have a chat." So that was a Tuesday. So by the f… Saturday, I was, on the air. In fact, it was Friday night. We were shooting on Flash. Everybody on the crew on Flash was so excited for me, and the transport department said, "You leave your car at the studio. We'll drive you to the airport." So they drove me to the airport. I flew down to LA. Air Canada lost my bags, of course.

13:07Kim MilesI drove up to Santa Barbara, because Bob's office is in Carpinteria. And, the next morning I'm in the same clothes that I traveled in 'cause I got no bags, and it's 9:00 in the morning. And, I'm kind of walking around Carpinteria trying to find his office, and there's n… you know, there's no sign or anything. And, well, this is the address. This must be it. And I, and I kind of walk up to the door, and there's... And open the door, and there's, like, kind of an empty reception area, and I could hear voices down the hall. And I poke my head in, and I look to the left, and there's, there's, the plutonium container and the hoverboard from, Back to the Future.

13:45Jawad MirOh, nice.

13:46Kim MilesI'm like, "All right, this is the right place, I guess." and I'm like, "Hello." And Derek Hoag, who is Bob's, right-hand assistant and also post-production, producer, comes down the hall. He goes, "Oh, you must be Kim." He goes, "Hang on a second." And he goes, he pokes his head in this office. The door was closed, and he opens the door, and he goes, "Hey, Bob, Kim's here." And the first thing I ever heard Bob Zemeckis say in real life was, "I gotta call you back," and click. And then he comes out and he's like, "Hi, nice to meet you." And yeah, we had this really candid conversation about, you know, life and,.. Bob's a pilot. We're both, private pilots, so we had a little bit of a connection there to talk about to break the ice. And, we talked about that, talked a little bit a… about m… movie making in general and then, and then got into the movie, and it was like, you know, kind of a, it, the bizarreness of the whole situation just kind of continued. And I had to, I said, "You know, how do you, how did this come about?

14:48Kim MilesLike, how did this whole, how did you end up with me, like, you know, of all people in the world?" And he was like, "Well, it's, the kids watch Flash." And he goes, "I just noticed your work, you know, on the TV, and we'd interviewed a bunch of people. It wasn't, it wasn't clicking with anybody." And he said, you know, "Let's, let's check this guy out." So that's kinda how it all came together. I mean, part of it was that they w… they wanted to shoot in Vancouver so that it didn't hurt that I was local to Vancouver as well.

15:19Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

15:20Kim MilesAnd yeah. And, you know, you know, four or five weeks later, the deal was done, and, we were starting prep. So it was, yeah, it was cr… it was crazy. But

15:30Jawad MirThat's such a great story.

15:32Kim MilesYeah.

15:33Jawad MirI think that's such a great story.

15:35Kim MilesYeah. You know, I've always believed that everything happens for a reason, you know? And, every setback you have when you look back on your, at least when I look back on my career, every setback that I've had has always led to an opportunity that went somewhere else, and it's, you know... And this was, I think the rumor has it that, the episode that he saw was a, the musical episode. And I, and I don't know this for sure, but if it was the musical episode, when we started Flash back in 2013 or whenever it was, Greg Berlanti, our executive producer, was a huge fan of doing musical episodes, you know? And he came from Glee and, you know. And nobody in the writers' room really wanted to deal with writing a m… musical superhero episode.

16:27Jawad MirYeah.

16:27Kim MilesAnd it kind of became this, like, running joke between me and the writers' room. Every time I talked to anyone down there, they'd be like, "Hey, how's that musical episode?" They'd be like, "I don't, we don't wanna talk about that. That's not happening." And then, but three years in, Greg's finally said, "Look, we're doing a musical episode." And that was one of the best scripts, I think, in the entire show that I did. And I think that was, I've been told that was the one that Bob saw. And, if that's the case, then, hey, there's that, everything for a reason thing happening again.

16:56Jawad MirYou know, it's, it's, it's so true about that because, the setback and how things kind of unfold later on in life or later on in a few years, I had a similar thing where we were working on this, feature narrative documentary. We were, like, 10 days into it, and, it just fell apart. And I don't wanna get into that why, but, we, because of that, I was introduced to someone who introduced me to someone else, and I ended up making a feature narrative documentary, and that just kind of opened up a slew of contacts and opportunities just because…

17:34Kim MilesYeah

17:34Jawad Mir... Of that setback.

17:35Kim MilesYeah.

17:35Jawad MirYou know, at the time, which looked extremely terrible, and…

17:38Kim MilesYeah

17:39Jawad Mir... It was tough to deal with, but it just opened up so many doors. And that's so true. We just, we just don't see it. Sometimes we don't see it for 10 years, you know?

17:46Kim MilesYeah.

17:46Jawad MirWe just don't know.

17:47Kim MilesYeah.

17:47Jawad MirBut, it's incredible, man. I'm so happy for your, y… the way your story is and the way you told it's, it's such a cool story, and I loved listening to it. So thank you for sharing that.

17:58Kim MilesOh, thanks. Oh, yeah. Anytime.

18:01Jawad MirWhen you were working... So let me, before we talk about Welcome to Marvin, we, w… I just wanna talk about your process, right? Like, you know, st… storytelling is, t… takes place everywhere. It takes place in the lenses. It takes place with the set design, art direction, effects, post-production.

18:21Kim MilesYeah.

18:21Jawad MirWhen you are When there's a scene that you have to shoot, whatever that scene is, dramatic or action, the selection of lenses, right? Like, are you on 24, 28, 35? How do you… Is that something that you kind of talk to the director with? Take, just take one pr… project for example, or is that something that you sort of work in your head? What's, what's that process like?

18:47Kim MilesDepends on the show and it depends on the director. So if, you know, if it's something like, if it's a director like Bob Zemeckis who understands lenses and is more sort of in tune…

19:02Jawad MirYeah

19:02Kim Miles... With the technical side of things, then yeah, we talk about lensing, we talk about, a little bit about the philosophies of what we wanna do in terms of the storytelling in the show. You know, do we want to start the show close and wide and follow a character arc by tightening lenses or vice versa, you know, things like that. Those are… There's always… For me, there's always, there's always a narrative reason to make lens selections and focal length selections. And those don't necessarily, aren't necessarily a catch-all for the entire movie. They evolve as the story progresses for me.

19:39Jawad MirYeah

19:40Kim Miles... There's a show I did called Yellowjackets for H… no, for, Showtime. And Yellowjackets was a story about a present day, a group of, a group of ladies that had gone to high school together, you know, 15 years ago. And it's how events that unfolded 15 years ago relate to present… the present day. And we knew that we wanted to have… I didn't shoot the pilot, so I wasn't really ahead of the early decision-making, but I started on episode two, and it had been a long time since they'd shot the pilot because of COVID and everything else. So we kinda had a clean slate to start from. So on that show, I worked with the, with the showrunners more than anybody, Ashley and Bart and Jonathan Lisco, and we talked about, you know, how do we wanna make these worlds look different? So we chose to use, Arri Signature Primes, in the present day for a nice, clean sort of, honest, no-nonsense kind of view of the world, 'cause they're very… you know, Signatures are very clean, very flattering, very modern glass.

20:56Kim MilesAnd, so we chose those in slightly longer focal lengths, to portray the present day. And because the characters were introverted because of their experiences from before and kinda had built these walls around themselves, spiritually, we wanted to have the camera sit back a little bit and be more observational in the present day, than in the past. And then in the past, there were two sort of time periods. There was the events that unfold in the story revolve around an airplane crash, and the past therefore is divided into a period before the airplane crash and then a period after the airplane crash. So we chose…

21:38Jawad MirNice. Nice

21:39Kim MilesYeah. So we chose, Arri's DNA Primes for the before the crash, look. They're a little bit more vintage looking, a little bit more detuned. Kind of more '90s is what we were looking for. But they're clean and kinda simple lenses, you know, or you can tune them into a, into a situation where they are, simple and easy to use. They flare nicely and then have a lot of character. And then once the crash happens, the girls find themselves stranded in the woods, and in the woods, we wanted the forest to become a character. We wanted the forest to be always looming over them. You know, their, it, was emblematic of their predicament, and we never wanted the audience to forget that. So we chose anamorphic lenses in the forest. We went with Atlas Orion Primes and, that gave the forest a different character that, you know, everything else was spherical and then in the forest were anamorphic.

22:40Kim MilesSo all the bokeh and the trees, you know, the trees had this kind of eerie oval-shaped, anamorphic bokeh and those lenses are just incredible. They're really great. And it gave the forest that character that we were looking for. And, the other thing we did in the forest was always go handheld and always be in close and wide and almost make the c… the camera a character in the show and a participant in all the things that are going on rather than being back and observational like they are in the…

23:12Jawad MirRight

23:12Kim Miles... In the present day. So those are the kinda things that philosophically I think lead me to decisions with lensing and that sort of thing, in addition to, you know, how the lenses are with skin tones and that sort of thing. So lots of decisions, but, lots of conversations and working things out. But I tend to drive most of those conversations by providing examples like, "Hey, you know, I'll go out and test, you know, six or eight different sets of lenses and pick three, and then, and then present those to the, to the director or to the showrunner and say, 'Let's talk about these ones,'" you know? And then kinda narrow the field a little bit so that, so that we're not spending three weeks, you know, talking back and forth about it.

23:54Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. And what's your favorite focal length? I mean, ex… with… without any preference of a situation or a scene, like what do you…

24:02Kim MilesYeah

24:02Jawad Mir... Like to attract the most?

24:05Kim MilesI like, in spherical lenses, in, There's so many, there's so many, capture formats now. So in… If we talk in like super 35, spherical lenses, probably a 32 and a 40 I think are my two favorites.

24:22Jawad MirOkay

24:22Kim Miles... If it's anamorphic, then, you know, a… 65 or an 80, would be in that zone. On the, on large format cameras, on the Alexa 65, the 80 mil focal length is absolutely amazing. It's equivalent to a 40, but it's, it's, it's just three-dimensional, in the, in the 65 format. It's, it's unbelievable. So yeah.

24:47Jawad MirNice.

24:48Kim MilesYeah.

24:49Jawad MirThat's, that's, that's, that's cool. And, you know, when you're working on a film like Welcome to Marwen, it's not complete motion capture, but it's a mixture of both. Although, I mean, I just saw the film two days ago, again…

25:05Kim MilesYeah

25:05Jawad Mir... Just to refresh my memory. And, you know, the actual dolls, not the motion capture part, the actual dolls, what lens were you utilizing in those cases whenever you had, like, Steve Carell's character in the same frame as the doll just to kinda give it a little bit of a same, you know, height or significance?

25:27Kim MilesYeah.

25:27Jawad MirWhat were you using there?

25:30Kim MilesThat's a good question. I'll bet you we were on the, I... It's been so long now. I'll bet you we were between the 65... That was a show that was shot on the Alexa 65. So we were probably…

25:40Jawad MirYeah

25:42Kim Miles... On, I'll bet between a 65 mil and an 80 mil virtually all the time, on that show when we're, when we were doing Steve Carell in the real world with the

25:52Jawad MirYeah

25:53Kim Miles... With a plastic doll in his hand. Yeah. Yeah. And then it really became about camera height and perspective. You know, Bob's a very, he's very particular about storytelling perspective and, for every shot. You know, as much as he loves, shot design, I mean, he's one of the greatest shot designers I've, I've ever seen.

26:17Jawad Mir100%.

26:18Kim MilesAs much as he loves that, it has to be motivated, and it has to have a reason. And it's not just fancy shot design for the sake of it. It's storytelling shot design. So there's all... That was a great takeaway for me from that was really focusing on storytelling perspective. You know, it wasn't something that I, that was forefront of my mind before working on that show.

26:40Jawad MirYeah.

26:41Kim MilesYeah.

26:42Jawad MirI think with Zemeckis, one of the things I've noticed, I had seen obviously the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her… ... Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but there was a big transition, and I don't know if you have ever noticed that, in his, in his approach to visual, you know, to cinematography even though he's had different cinematographers on different projects depending on the project, is that when... I don't know if you remember Contact with Jodie Foster.

27:09Kim MilesYeah.

27:11Jawad MirThere is that opening scene when young Jodie Foster's character, it runs up the stairs and to get the medication, and she opens the mirror, cupboard.

27:20Kim MilesYeah.

27:20Jawad MirAnd from that moment on, every film that I see of his, like What Lies Beneath, Cast Away… His camera movements, and I, when I say his, I don't mean him. I mean, but he's the director and, but…

27:32Kim MilesYeah

27:32Jawad Mir... Yes, there's a DP.

27:33Kim MilesYeah.

27:33Jawad MirThey're very similar to the way things were re… they, things are being revealed as they're happening. Even in the one that you did, one of the really…

27:40Kim MilesYeah

27:40Jawad Mir... I mean, you probably don't even remember this, but there was a really cool shot that I thought... He doesn't like to cut unless there's a need to cut.

27:48Kim Miles100%.

27:48Jawad MirSo there's a, there's a shot, it's, maybe halfway into the film, and I'm, I'm just forgetting the names of the characters, but the camera's kinda, like, at a high… higher point.

28:00Kim MilesYeah.

28:00Jawad MirAnd there is this doll sitting on the swing.

28:03Kim MilesYeah. Yeah.

28:03Jawad MirAnd you can see that doll…

28:04Kim MilesThe swing

28:04Jawad Mir... Out of fo… yeah…

28:05Kim MilesYeah.

28:06Jawad Mir... Out of focus, and you're seeing what's happening. And then the, obviously the purpose of that was because it was gonna come to that doll.

28:13Kim MilesYeah.

28:13Jawad MirAnd just the way that is done, instead of, you know, cut here or follow the actor here, it's just so well done. And obviously, you know, you were part of that, too. And how was, how was that with Zemeckis? Like, his approach is so different.

28:26Kim MilesYeah.

28:26Jawad MirIt almost reminds me of the Godfather films.

28:29Kim MilesYeah.

28:29Jawad MirYou know?

28:30Kim MilesYeah.

28:30Jawad MirIn fact, he's actually said that every time he shoots, directs a movie, he watches The Godfather…

28:35Kim MilesYeah

28:35Jawad Mir... One or two or both before.

28:37Kim MilesYeah.

28:37Jawad MirAnd what was li… that like, you know, transitioning from Flash and all those stuff to something completely different?

28:44Kim MilesYeah. It was, yeah, coming from Flash, yeah. It wa… The entire experience was a masterclass in filmmaking for the entire period, and being not only a masterclass but being paid to come along for the ride.

28:57Jawad MirYeah.

28:58Kim MilesThe big... A… as much as Bob is, defines, almost a whole generation of filmmaking, you know, in how he, how he shot designs and how he tells a story, he's, he's remarkably collaborative, like, exceptionally collaborative. And that comes, I think, from a, from the confidence that he has. You know, he's not insecure about anything. And…

29:24Jawad MirYeah

29:24Kim Miles... And with… without insecurity, there's, there's open conversation. And, with Marwen, there's a, there's a shot at the... There's a, the opening sequence of the film is the fighter going in, down in the trees.

29:40Jawad MirYeah.

29:40Kim MilesAnd then Hogie climbs out and goes and meets the girls. And then after the Nazis show up and the girls kill the Nazis, there was a sequence that was in the script that outlined the scene in which we tell the audience that all of that you just experienced lives in this, in the world of the imagination of this character. And they had, the, all of that lives in the world of the imagination of this character in the real world. And the script had been with Bob for a number of years, and I think it had been through a bunch of rewrites, and I, and I remember reading it and thinking, "You know, I can, I can see what we're trying to do here in this particular sequence," but I think it had become so internalized with Bob and the writers that it, that it was, as an outsider looking in, it was a really confusing, sequence. And I said to Lee Grumet, the, our AD on the show, who was the most amazing human being on the planet.

30:41Kim MilesI said, "Lee, I think I have a pitch for Bob, on how to change this shot so that it tells the story I think a little bit more efficiently." But how do you know, how do I tell Bob Zemeckis that I think there's, there's a way to do this that's not what he's thought? And Lee said, "Put it in an email and send it to me first. Let me look at it, and then I'll, you know, let you know if you can send it to Bob." So I said, "Okay." So I typed it all out and sent it to Lee, and Lee said, "Yeah, that's great. Send it to Bob." So I sent the email to Bob and got... He doesn't type a lot in emails and he…

31:17Jawad MirTwo words

31:18Kim MilesWhat's that? Yeah.

31:19Jawad MirTwo words

31:20Kim MilesTwo words, yeah. He's like, he replied and said, "Great. Let's test it." I'm like, "Okay." So and then he was big. He was still in Santa Barbara at the time, and we were up in Vancouver scouting and, he was gonna be in town the following week. So I had to come up with this, like, proof of concept shot thing that the, with a little, you know, with an A7 in the studio. We built a little set and, so that I could show Bob what I meant. And I said to him, you know, I said, "I think, I think the story's gotten a little too close to you, and as an outsider it's confusing. So here's, here's what I'd pitch." So I did, and he looked at it and he goes, "Yeah, that makes total sense, so let's do that." So in the movie, the shot lived, which just blew my mind. But in the movie, Hogie's been rescued by the girls. They killed the Nazis, and then, we come out of that sequence, and we pull back from that and find ourselves coming through the viewfinder of a still camera.

32:21Kim MilesWe then wrap around the still camera to reveal Steve Carell as Mark Hogancamp sitting there. So that tells the story that, you know, the previous world that we were in exists through the lens of this camera that belongs to this fella. And as the camera wraps around, it was all a big Technocrane move. As the camera wraps around, Steve gathers up the dolls, so now we get... We understand the relationship between him and his dolls. He puts, he puts them back in the little case that he has them in, and as he's sitting down, we kinda wrap the camera around and reveal his environment. So now we're telling the story of who he is, what is important to him in terms of the dolls, how doting he, how dotingly he was taking care, you know, wiping off the dolls before he put them away. As we wrap around, we reveal his trailer, so we see his circumstance of life. We see, we catch a little glimpse of, the world of Marwen that he's built in the, in the background. We don't delve on it, but it's there if you're looking for it.

33:20Jawad MirYeah.

33:21Kim MilesAnd then we notice that, a moving truck pulls in across the street. So that tells the story that there's someone coming in next door and it just... It's, it's such... It's a shot that tells... It sets up the entire film in one shot. And it was like a two and a half minute long oner, I think it was.

33:41Jawad MirYeah.

33:42Kim MilesYou know, and he eventually walks into the house. So Bob being the shot maker that he is and but still being open to collaboration and open to hearing other ideas and saying, you know, "Tell me how we can make it better," and listening and truly listening when other people say, you know, "Hey, maybe it'll be better like this." I think that's the success that Bob brings and the confidence and everything that he brings to the table, you know? And it, and then you have ownership. You know, I had ownership of that shot. Our operator, Peter, had ownership of that shot. And with ownership comes pride, right? So you have pride in ownership, and now you're more invested in the movie, and you wanna make it better. And it just, you know, everything just improves as you go along. So, you know, in addition to being a masterclass in filmmaking, it was a masterclass in how to, how to get along with people and how to appreciate people and bring the best forward in everybody on the set. So anyway, that was... It was a really inspiring process.

34:43Jawad MirNo, that's, that's, that's so true, right? Like, you know, when you're growing up as a filmmaker, it's like, "I'm the director. I'm that."

34:50Kim MilesYeah.

34:50Jawad MirBut, you know, it's, it's, it's all about collaboration, and it's all about having people on your team that are better than you in a lot of other departments.

35:01Kim MilesYeah.

35:01Jawad MirSo then everybody can bring in their input and make the end product, you know, amazing. And then working as a... How, what was the process of the motion capture technology? Was it similar to how "Lord of the Rings" was done? Like, you know, the, in real life, in real live environment, other actors with all the suit and the dots, or was it something different?

35:24Kim MilesNo. No, it was,.. That was a process that we, that we experimented with 'cause Bob wanted to do it a little bit differently. He wanted to, he wanted to break new ground, you know? At first, before I came aboard, they had talked about face replacement, about just doing traditional motion capture in the, in the volume, in the, not to be confused with the LED volumes we shoot in now, but the, just a gray motion capture volume. The original plan was motion capture and then, and then, facial arrays, with multiple cameras to capture the, performance and then blending the two together. Bob's, visual effects producer, Kevin Baillie, is in addition to Lee Grumet one of the greatest human beings on the planet. Kevin said, "Well, you know, let's, let's, let's push the envelope here. Let's do something different." You know, and Bob's always keen on innovating. You know, if you ask him, he's a… he's the first one to say, you know, "I just, I wanna be the one to do it first. Everyone else can come along after and do it properly, but I wanna do it first."

36:27Jawad MirYeah.

36:29Kim MilesSo

36:29Jawad MirYeah.

36:29Kim MilesSo, you know, that, and then that, attitude obviously gets you movies like Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump and so on. But anyway, They had tested the tests that Bob wanted me to see were these motion capture, tests that they'd done. I don't know who shot them. I think maybe Don Burgess might have shot them. But, they'd done some motion capture tests, and they'd shot the faces of the actors at the same time, within the motion capture volume. And they, and then Kevin was basically taking this much information from the photography part of it, and then all the motion capture information, and building the dolls out of that. And, we talked about it. We thought, well, you know, what we know that we wanna do it like that because the struggle that you have with animation when you're animating, photo real characters like this or s… or quasi photo real characters is the uncanny valley, you know, that we know about that where, in which an audience doesn't, doesn't trust an animated character be… for some reason that's psychological.

37:33Kim MilesAnd…

37:33Jawad MirYeah

37:33Kim Miles... And, Kevin and Bob had narrowed it down to, hey, you know, it's, it's because the eyes and the mouths aren't real. And if we can get the eyes and the mouths to be real, then we have a window to the audience. And, you know, we can... It's possible in visual effects to make eyes and mouths, you know, the little muscles around your mouth that really convey emotion. You can do that in visual effects, but it's way too expensive, and it takes way too much time 'cause it's, it's such…

38:02Jawad MirYeah

38:02Kim Miles... Minute detail. So we thought if we could photograph that, then that will take us past the hurdle of the uncanny valley a little bit. So we tested right away, the motion capture process. So this, the actors were in gray suits with the motion capture targets all over them in a motion capture volume.

38:21Jawad MirYeah.

38:22Kim MilesAnd then what we did different was bring our cameras into the motor… motion capture volume as well with them. So we would have to, we knew that we had to build, proxies of the sets, of the, of the locations and the sets that the actors were gonna act in so that they could actually block out a scene and actually act out a scene within the motion capture volume that corresponded to a, to a set that was either gonna be built later or photographed later. Which that brought a whole other set of problems, which we'll talk about in a sec. But, the first thing we wanted to know was, is it better for us to just flat light the actors in the motion capture volume so that their, so we get all the detail possible in their, in their eyes and mouths, and then model the light in visual effects, once the environments have been created around the animated characters? Or is it better to try our best to simulate the lighting from those animated settings that had, that we've nobody shot yet and hadn't been created yet, and light the actors as though they were in those environments?

39:24Kim MilesSo we tested that, and it was better to light them as though they were in those environments. It was much more convincing. You had interactions with the eyes that were a lot better, you know, with light sources and so on. So the next part of the problem then became, okay, now we have to light, we have to shoot actors in some environments that are entirely digital. So how do we, how do we light them as though they're in those environments when those environments don't even exist yet? So how do we, like, how do we do that?

39:52Jawad MirYeah.

39:54Kim MilesAnd the answer to that was the Unreal video game engine. So, let's, what do we use for an example? Let's say the town of M… the village of Marwen

40:06Jawad MirYeah

40:06Kim Miles... Was a set that we had built. It was one of these sets that bridged both worlds. It was, we had a digital version of it, but we also had a physical version of it that existed outside the physical set of Mark's, Mark's trailer. So the art department had built this beautiful little scale model village out of, you know, tin cans and little, you know, bits of castaway garbage that Mark Hogancamp had built into furniture or built into churches and so on. So the art department had built this. The visual effects team, LIDAR scanned all of it and had, a 3D model of that, of that set basically, that we then imported into Unreal. And then what Bob and I would do on weekends in prep is we would go into a little mini motion capture volume with a little mini, camera with a motion capture Sputnik on it, and the Unreal guys would put the environment on screens around us so we could basically walk through these virtual sets with a, with a screen and have the screen be the camera and look around and see how the world reacted, you know.

41:12Kim MilesAnd then we would take, avatars of our characters and have the Unreal guys put them in the scene. Okay, let's start them in the doorway over there, then they walk out like that. So the Unreal guys would render that, and the characters would walk out. And we would design the shots virtually by moving our little fake camera while the motion capture, information was being logged and do our shots. And re… we would record all of our shots, record the close-ups, record the masters, and all that. And then we had a kind of a groundwork plan of how we wanted to capture each sequence. And then Bob would go off and do whatever else he does on the weekends, and I would stay with the Unreal guys, and we would look at the environments that we'd, that we were in and decide how to light them. And, so w… again, using that, the village of Marwen as an example, at the practical location where we built the set for that, if you, if you stood at the road and looked towards Mark's trailer, you were looking due south.

42:15Kim MilesSo we knew that in the virtual world we needed the village to be oriented to match that so that due south was due south. So now we knew that the sun could go from, you know, from east over the south and based on the time of year, what the, what the azimuth of the sun was gonna be and where it was gonna be at a given time of the day. So we knew based on our schedule looking ahead, we're gonna shoot this sequence for real at the location on, you know, July the 17th between 3:00 and 6:00 PM. So now we know that the sun's gonna be over there And between there and there while we're shooting the sequence frame by frame.

42:52Jawad MirYeah.

42:52Kim MilesSo then we were able to in Unreal, sort of pre-light it with digital lighting, so that our... When we got to the motion capture volume to shoot the actors in their suits walking around, we could just look through our bible and go, "Okay, it's, it's scene 17, so now we need the sun needs to be over there. The sky needs to look like this. We need, the bounce from the ground needs to be gray because the cobblestones are gray concrete. We need a little bit of a red bounce over here 'cause there's a red tablecloth." So we, so we basically were able to pre-visualize every shot and then build a world in the motion capture volume that gave us all the proper lighting cues for, just for this much of their faces. So it was quite a laborious process, but it was methodical and very…

43:43Jawad MirIt is

43:43Kim Miles... You know, once we got into it was really cool. I had, you know, so much of the environment around us is influenced not just by the light itself, the source of light itself, but how that light source interacts with the objects around you. You know, like right here in this room, you know, there's blue sky out there. The sun hasn't quite come around yet, but it's, the light's coming in and it's bouncing off this brown table. It's coming off this orange wall and all of that influences how the light, lands on your face, right? So we had, when we were shooting the motion capture volume, I asked the paints departments to paint, you know, big 20 by 20, drop cloths in green to represent grass or in gray to represent that cobblestone or, brown for dirt so that we could lay down a big sheet that would bounce some of the light back that we were lighting the actors with and give us a sense that we were in that environment. I talked to Joanna Johnston, our, costume designer, who thought I was absolutely nuts, and asked her to make, bibs that we could Velcro onto the gray, suits that the cast members were wearing in the motion capture volume that were representative of the colors of the costumes that they were meant to be wearing.

44:57Kim MilesSo for example, if Hoagy had his leather jacket on, he had like a brown kind of leathery bib that would Velcro on so that the light hitting that would bounce up into his chin and be, you know, in the zone of what it would be if it was a real jacket. So there was lots of, lots of little details like that I just love doing, but all of it, you know, comes together to make the end product more believable, right? So, wow, that was a long one.

45:23Jawad MirYeah, no…

45:23Kim MilesI don't even remember what your first question was after all that.

45:25Jawad MirNo, this is... You know, honestly, we were talking about masterclass. Like, you just gave a masterclass to the audience here that the motion capture technology, you know, we see behind the scenes stuff like of Avatar, you know, Welcome to Marwen, all the other films that have come out. But it's what you just explained, I mean, it just makes people appreciate the amount of work that goes into it. It's just, it's just so much. It's not even about motion capture. Even like in a regular film…

45:54Kim MilesYeah

45:54Jawad Mir... Like how, you know, we were talking about deciding lenses, how that serves the story. Every little minute detail, lighting, how does that work?

46:01Kim MilesYeah.

46:01Jawad MirBlocking.

46:02Kim MilesYeah.

46:03Jawad MirAnd it's, it's... I mean, I am, I'm in the industry and I always get fascinated at the same time, regardless of the time, how many have done it. But it's just something that I wish people and audiences understood more that the amount of effort and work that goes into it.

46:18Kim MilesYeah.

46:18Jawad MirIt's, it's just…

46:19Kim MilesYeah

46:19Jawad Mir... It's just insane. It's insane.

46:20Kim Miles'Cause the, you know, the devil's in the details, as you know, right? It's always, it just takes a…

46:24Jawad MirYeah, 100%.

46:25Kim MilesYeah. Like there's a good example of that, with Kevin, our VFX supervisor again. The, when we, Bob has this thing where he doesn't, and rightfully so, doesn't like shooting outdoors. If he can avoid it, he'll build a set on stage because it's, it's, it's unpredictable being outside. You don't know what's gonna happen. You're at the mercy of the weather.

46:44Jawad MirYeah.

46:45Kim MilesBut there were sequences in Marwen where we did have to be outdoors. Like at, so we, if we use Mark's trailer as a, as an example, Mark's trailer is across the street from, Leslie Mann's character's house, whose name escapes me right now.

47:00Jawad MirYeah.

47:00Kim MilesAnd we knew that we needed that physical location. We needed a street between them and all this. So we knew that we had to build that set on location, but we also knew that we had a lot of stuff to shoot there and we didn't wanna be at the mercy of the weather. So we…

47:15Jawad MirYeah

47:16Kim Miles... Also built those same sets on stage. So we had interior, exterior of both Mark's trailer and, We… was it Wendy's? Not Wendy's. Anyway, of Leslie's house across the street built on stage as well, and, with blue screen, you know, around them and all that. And I remember we were doing, the point of the story was we were in, the point of the story being the devil in the details. We were in color correction, in f… finishing color in LA.

47:46Jawad MirYeah.

47:47Kim MilesAnd Kevin Bailey, the VFX super, was there, and we were color timing a scene that we'd shot in the back, in the village of Marwen. Leslie Mann's character had come up, and Meredith, or no, oh my God, I forget everyone's names. Anyway, we were shooting a scene that took place in the, in the village of Marwen with real actors, and as we're doing the scene, I said to Kevin, I'm like, "I don't, I totally don't remember this day. I don't remember Leslie being at that location." And Kevin said, "She wasn't. This is on s… this is on stage." I was like, "We shot this on... Like, that's a comp, like, in the background? That's an extension?" And he said, "Yeah, it is." And they had shot such seamless background plates that I was fooled. And Kevin said an interesting thing. He goes, he said, "You know," he goes, "A blue screen comp is a blue screen comp, but, you know, a good blue screen comp won't win you an Oscar, but a bad one will cost you an Oscar." So I was like…

48:47Jawad MirThat's interesting

48:48Kim Miles... Yeah. So he says you gotta do like every, you know, there's no such thing as a simple blue screen comp. It's gotta be done… A… to the absolute best you can because it all plays to the same end result, lands in the same place in the same story.

49:03Jawad MirYeah, a… a… in some films you can tell.

49:05Kim MilesYeah.

49:05Jawad MirYou know, in some films it's so obvious. Like, now I even, like, I've seen that, right? Like, you know, maybe 20 years ago people wouldn't know what green screen or blue screen is, but now, you know, even my kids would pick up, "Oh, is that green screen or blue screen?"

49:18Kim MilesYeah.

49:18Jawad MirLike, they would, they could tell…

49:20Kim MilesYeah

49:20Jawad Mir... That the background not blending in with the foreground.

49:24Kim MilesYeah. Yeah. It's because, you know, there's a sense of, you know, whether it's schedule related or budget related, but there's always a point where it's like, you know, let's just make it. It's a simple comp, just do it. Just do it real quick. You know? And that's…

49:36Jawad MirYeah

49:36Kim Miles... When it's going to fall apart, right? Yeah. Yeah.

49:38Jawad MirYeah. Did you, as a, as a cinematographer and DP, did you co… work or chatted or converse with Steve Carell and the other cast quite often, or was…

49:50Kim MilesYeah, not on the level certainly that Bob…

49:54Jawad MirSure

49:54Kim Miles... Would or anybody like that or the producers. You know, I always have a jovial relationship with the cast on set. You know, it's important for them to understand that I understand the responsibility of looking after their representation and their image on screen, and I always try to make sure that they understand that I take that seriously and I'm not flippant about how we're photographing. So early on I try to make contact with cast members and have a little informal, you know, camera test day or something where we can just kinda get to know each other and, without the pressure of the whole movie watching us and waiting to, you know, waiting to move on with the day. And, you know, in the perfect world, we did this on Yellowjackets, we have them come in and just spend a half a day with us, and we can play around with lights and they can, you know, in an informal environment where they can say, "Hey, I really hate it when the light's, like, you know, under my chin," or, "I, you know, I kinda like it when I... This is my better side," for lack of a better, a more cliche way of saying it.

50:57Jawad MirYeah.

50:57Kim MilesBut just to kinda get to know the cast in that regard is always important to me 'cause, 'cause they're trusting me with…

51:05Jawad MirSure

51:05Kim Miles... Looking after them, so I wanna make sure that they understand that I take that seriously. So, and then on, by the time you get on set, you know, you've kind of been hanging around and it's, it's a more jovial relationship.

51:15Jawad MirYeah.

51:15Kim MilesEveryone on the show was fantastic and a… again, that comes from... It all trickles down from the top. You know, when Bob and Jack Rapke and Steve, Starkey are all such great people and are just trying to make the best product they can, it, you know, trickles not only through the crew, but through the cast as well. Everybody's there 'cause they wanna be there, and that's, that's the best part of it, yeah.

51:39Jawad MirAnd, you know, aside from collaboration, I think in any kind of production, the sense of, relationships are so important because you have to have that distance from everybody, like the professional and personal.

51:52Kim MilesYeah.

51:52Jawad MirBut at the same time, and es… especially with the cast, if you bec… if they become comfortable with the crew, then, you know, even the, some of the greatest actors, they may not feel intimidated by certain lighting or certain... You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it just adds up to everything and

52:09Kim MilesYeah

52:09Jawad Mir... And I'm glad that you're able to pull that off with the cast, which really helps. And it shows, it shows on camera then, right?

52:15Kim MilesYeah.

52:15Jawad MirIt easily shows on camera when the c… somebody's comfortable or not, or…

52:19Kim MilesYeah

52:20Jawad Mir... If they're pushing, putting too much effort into it if, even if the way they shouldn't.

52:24Kim MilesYeah. Yeah. I agree.

52:25Jawad MirTim, what, who are some of your favorite cinematographers that you look up to, or movies?

52:32Kim MilesOh. Well, you know, the old, the old school guys are always, you know, like the Greg Tolands of the world. Bill Butler, bless his heart, just, he just passed the other day.

52:42Jawad MirYeah

52:43Kim Miles... I, you know, I love everybody's work. I... There's something to be learned from everyone. I'm a huge fan of, you know, Barry Ackroyd, for example, you know? Coming from a documentary background and I love the way that he photographs things because he's always conscious of having come from nothing of, or coming from shows where you don't have time. You don't ha… you have to improvise to tell the story, and you have to find ways to tell the, to tell the story efficiently without all the toys. I love that. I love, you know, I love the stuff that everyone loves, the stuff that Roger Deakins does, but the special, the really special thing about Roger's work to me is that it's, it's always transparent, or he always at least tries to make it transparent. For me, if you're watching a film and this is also kind of a cliche, but if you're watching a film and you come out and you go, "Wow, that, the cinematography was amazing," then I think we've failed to some degree because…

53:40Jawad MirI agree with you. I agree with you.

53:41Kim MilesYou know? Yeah. If the audience can go into a film and lose two hours of their lives, I think that's the best outcome.

53:55Jawad MirYeah.

53:55Kim MilesYou know, that they've just got swept up in the, in the story, in the characters and then, and not noticed any of the technical aspects of the film, then I think that's, that's a win. And

54:08Jawad MirYeah

54:08Kim Miles... And some films lend themselves to that, you know? Like simpler, you know, indie products kinda lend themselves more to story than to spectacle, you know? If you compare... Well, actually, Bob's a good example if you wanna compare, use of, or showcasing, let's say, of technology. You've got something like Avatar th… that Jim Cameron's done, which is a technological extravaganza. It's absolutely unbelievable.

54:34Jawad MirYeah.

54:34Kim MilesBut on some level the, it's the cart pulling the horse in a way where the technology is driving the narrative, and the narrative services showing the capabilities of the technology. And then you look at something like Forrest Gump that is a seemingly simple, I'm almost getting emotional talking about it's a, it's a, just a simple story about a fella that was in the right place at the right time that wins an Oscar for visual effects, and nobody knew. Right? So…

55:06Jawad MirYeah

55:07Kim Miles... That to me is successful filmmaking is when you don't, you have no concept of all the stuff that went into it that was so seamless you didn't even see it, you know?

55:19Jawad MirYeah.

55:19Kim MilesBut…

55:20Jawad MirIt's, it's, it's true so much because I was talking to, Richard Francis. He edited, Seven…

55:28Kim MilesYeah

55:28Jawad Mir... The Rock

55:29Kim MilesYeah

55:29Jawad Mir... Those films.

55:30Kim MilesYeah.

55:30Jawad MirAnd I was telling, I was talking about the same thing, that how there's some films where, you know, even people like us, we would, like, study, "Oh, that's a nice shot," or, "That's, you know, great cut," or that. But even some of the good, like, you know, decent budget films, you get so immersed that by the time the film is over, you don't realize that you never picked on a cut. You never picked on the way the camera was framed.

55:53Kim MilesYeah.

55:53Jawad MirAnd that, you're right, that is, that's where it's, it's a home run because…

55:58Kim MilesYeah

55:58Jawad Mir... Everything worked. You were immersed into the story, and every department was immersed in the story.

56:04Kim Miles100%. That was, we went and saw 1917 before. I deliberately avoided reading anything about it, learning anything about it before…

56:12Jawad MirYeah

56:12Kim Miles... I went to see it. And, it was my wife that said, we were like five or six minutes into the film, and she leans over, and she's not even in the business, and she goes, "I don't think they've cut yet. Like, this has been the same shot the whole time." And I was like, "What?" And she goes, "They haven't cut yet." I'm like, "Surely they've cut by now." And then, and then I started noticing like, oh, maybe that's the thing with this movie, is that it's all one. But that, you know, there's success in it 'cause it's like I, like I'm looking for that kinda thing, and I didn't see it 'cause I was more interested in what the actors were doing, right? Like, I always tell, the, there's, the, like you say, with all the contributions from everybody on the, on the set, it's such a, it's a collaborative process. Everybody has a part. You know, we wouldn't have 160 jobs on set if each one wasn't critically important to the, to the outcome of the, of the film.

56:58Jawad MirRight.

56:58Kim MilesAnd even something like, something that draws my eye out when I'm watching a film is focus point. You know, when you have a two shot or when you have a shot where there's one actor in the foreground, one actor in the, in the background, and there's focus racks between the two of them. When those focus racks are mistimed or of a kind of an unusual quality, it takes me out of the film. And sometimes, you know, I find myself working with a, with a focus puller that has different instincts than I do with timing focus racks and stuff like that. And the thing I always tell them is, like, at the end of the day, stop doing your job and watch the movie. So instead of, you know, waiting for that moment, waiting for that line to send the focus to you, watch the movie. And when you're watching this actor talk, and then he says something, and you look over there, that's when the focus rack happens. It's not, you know, don't force it. Just let, like…

57:55Jawad MirYeah

57:55Kim Miles... Let your eyes lead you there, you know? And if you get there a beat after the first couple of words, that's fine. You don't have to beat, to beat dialogue. You know? Like, that's another thing, like panning from one person to another to get a…

58:07Jawad MirYeah

58:07Kim Miles... To get a, to land perfectly as they deliver a line takes me out of it because it's not how the human existence is. You know, you don't, if you're standing in a room and there's five people, and someone over here says something while you're looking over here, you don't look at him before he says something. You hear the first couple of words, and then you look over. So that to me is more, you know, it's, it's all those little nuances of trying to bring the human side to the, a… a… and blend it with the technological side of it to tell the story, so anyway.

58:38Jawad MirIt's, it's interesting you mentioned that rack focusing, right? Because I was watching, I don't know what I was watching a week or two ago, and there was a scene where you had a character close with the camera in the foreground, another one in the background, and that was the frame. But despite whatever the character was saying in the foreground, that character kept out of focus throughout that shot. It was always the guy, the character in the background because that character had more important things to say…

59:06Kim MilesRight

59:07Jawad Mir... Than this one. You know?

59:08Kim MilesRight.

59:08Jawad MirThis one might be saying, "Yeah, I agree," or, "You're wrong." You know, just, like, just small sentences, so there's no point…

59:14Kim MilesYeah

59:14Jawad Mir... In pulling those focuses…

59:15Kim MilesYeah

59:15Jawad Mir... Because you're right. It will just distract from the message that you're trying to drive out of the character in the background.

59:21Kim MilesYeah. I think, I think Steven Spielberg is one who very rarely will do a focus rack on one…

59:26Jawad MirHe doesn't.

59:27Kim MilesYeah.

59:28Jawad MirI don't, I have, I don't remember him ever using it. He l… he's kinda like Zemeckis too, I think. They move the camera, and the way they do the blocking, it just works in blocking. They don't need to do all that stuff.

59:40Kim MilesYeah. That's the thing, and that's, that's a, I don't wanna say it's not a dying art, but that's an art that takes a lifetime to master, if you ever master it, is blocking and staging, and working. That's the, been the biggest sort of, thing that I've noticed in transitioning from television to, excuse me, to, doing more features, is that in TV you just don't have time to work out a really nice blocking and, you know…

1:00:08Jawad MirYeah

1:00:08Kim Miles... Build the story beats into a nice move, especially when you have, editorial constraints that, you know, they wanna be, in close-ups all the time in television, which is an antiquated, if you ask me, outdated philosophy. But in features, you know, you get to, you get to spend a little bit of time blocking a scene and building a narrative into a single shot and avoiding a cut, you know? 'Cause every time you cut, you're, you're, you're risking drawing attention to the process, you know?

1:00:37Jawad MirYeah.

1:00:37Kim MilesWhich I guess is Bob's philosophy and Steven Spielberg's philosophy also. So yeah. It's, it's just, it's, it's, that's the beauty of this business, right, is there's so many new things to learn and so many new people to meet that all have ideas and so on, so.

1:00:55Jawad MirYeah. Tim, any advice that you wanna give to upcoming cinematographers? And how about, how should they about, go about doing what they're doing, and keep doing what they're doing?

1:01:08Kim MilesFirst of all, shoot. Just shoot. Find your, like learn your own voice, you know? It's, watch other people's work, but find your own voice. You know, that's, that's I think the important thing to me, and the only way that comes is if you just go out and shoot stuff, whether it's stills. You know, it's a, it's a great discipline to take a still camera out and challenge yourself to tell a story in one frame, you know? Look at, this has g… been said a thousand times, look at paintings. Look at, you know, look at... I always use, I love the old Dutch masters, Vermeer in particular, which is also such a cliche 'cause everybody loves Vermeer, but everything that he did i… is every aspect of every frame is there for a reason. You know? It's not like, it's not like running around with your iPhone and going, snap, "Oh, look, there's a girl by a window reading a..." It's, it's a painting that took who knows how long to do, in which every detail in the frame is meticulously crafted to be there for a reason, for a narrative reason.

1:02:15Kim MilesSo that's, that's... And, you know, and sitting there and staring at a painting like that and trying to reason, you know, why is the window opened that way? Why is the curtain flipped over the window in such a, in such a careless way? You know, why is she holding the letter in that sort of careless but yet, you know, emotional way? Why is... You know, there's a bowl of fruit on the bed that's, that's tossed out. This is, this is a Girl by a Window, reading a Letter I think it's called. But you know, there's, there's a haphazardness to the, to the setting that tells volumes. The more you look at it, the more you can almost smell the breeze coming in the window and, you know, it's, I don't know. That's... So learn from what other people have done, but find your own voice. A huge thing is don't be afraid to reach out to people that work in the business and ask for, you know, a coffee date and, you know, ask for a conversation. I'm, you know, involved with the ASC and with the CSC, both of which have huge mentorship programs, that are designed…

1:03:22Jawad MirRight

1:03:22Kim Miles... To take emerging filmmakers and pair them with people that work, that do this for a living and with…

1:03:27Jawad MirYeah

1:03:27Kim Miles... Reasonable, you know, success. And even if it's just to have a conversation, you know? And then come to set and come hang out for a day and see how we do it when we've got all the means in the world, Technocranes and drones and what, you know. Come see what that's like, you know? And then, you know, and then maybe come and visit when we're doing something really simple with no money, you know? But reach out to people. Find organizations like the ASC, like the CSC, like whatever the society of cinematographers is in the t… in the city, in the, or in the country that you live in. Reach out to them because their existence is motivated by helping and pushing the industry forward. So far be it from those associations to be the lofty, thing you can never reach. They're the places…

1:04:18Jawad MirYeah

1:04:18Kim Miles... That are designed to help you get there, you know? We… well, if you're, if you're, if you wanna be in the ASC or in the CSC, then reach your hand out because someone will grab it and yank you up there. That's the... Don't be afraid of it. That's, that'd be the…

1:04:33Jawad MirWell said. Well said, Kim. Thank you so much, man, for your time.

1:04:37Kim MilesOh, my pleasure.

1:04:38Jawad MirAnd for all of the words of wisdom and the stories that you told. Hopefully we can have you back on. Maybe we can talk about…

1:04:46Kim MilesYeah

1:04:46Jawad Mir... Yellowjackets, but first I gotta see that before I can talk about it. But, great to have you on, man.

1:04:53Kim MilesThanks very much. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

1:04:56Jawad MirLikewise, man. Take care.

1:04:57Kim MilesYeah.

1:04:57Jawad MirHave a good one.

1:04:58Kim MilesThanks.