'The Rock', 'Armageddon' & 'Jurassic World', Cinematographer, John Schwartzman

0:07Jawad MirThank you so much. I'm a huge fan of your work. You know, ranging from The Rock, Armageddon, and Jurassic World films. And I just wanna get started with the, with the Michael Bay films, i… if that works for you.

0:22John SchwartzmanYeah, absolutely.

0:23Jawad MirFantastic. So how did you come on board? 'Cause The Rock came out in '19... It's been actually literally 27 years this summer, I think, if I'm not mistaken. How did you get on board on a Michael Bay film, in the…

0:39John SchwartzmanSo it... I'll, I'll give you the short… the shorter version, which is Michael Bay and I grew up together.

0:45Jawad MirOh, you did? Okay.

0:47John SchwartzmanSo he and my younger sister, who's three years younger than me, went to, primary school, secondary school. They were f… friends all the way through, high school. And so I knew Michael just because, you know, it was my sister and my sister's friends. And I'm a... I'm three years older, so I went to USC Film School, I got out, and Michael always had a huge interest in movies. And he went to the ArtCenter College of Design, which is a really unique art school in Southern California that really is where almost all the car designers in the world come out of. It was basically financed originally by General Motors and Ford and Dodge.

1:34John SchwartzmanBut they have a small film program. And when Michael was there, I think there were 10 students. It was Michael, Tarsem, and Larry Fong, who's also a cinematographer.

1:44Jawad MirYeah, of course.

1:45John SchwartzmanAnd ArtCenter, because it was so small, you as a director there were required to find your own crew. And since Michael knew that I had gotten out of film school, I became his cinematographer all of his student films. And then very quickly after Michael graduated from ArtCenter, he got hired as a music video director at a place called Propaganda Films.

2:07John SchwartzmanWhich was a kind of groundbreaking company back in the mid to late '80s with David Fincher, and a couple of other directors. There were only four directors there at the time when Michael got signed. And I came along with him because I was the guy who shot all of his stuff. So we had a very, busy couple of years shooting commercials, and I also shot for David Fincher at the same time. When Michael wasn't doing a job, I would do a job the next week with David Fincher. But we worked constantly. I mean, we were, we were doing 35 music videos a year, right?

2:47Jawad MirYeah.

2:47John SchwartzmanSo a music video would be, you scout the locations on Monday, you prep on Wednesday, you shoot... We used to shoot Saturdays and Sundays because the equipment rental was only one day on a weekend.

2:58Jawad MirRight. Right.

2:59John SchwartzmanRight? So it was all about putting it on the screen. And then we transitioned from commercials, from music videos to commercials. And in the meantime, my stock had risen a lot, and I went off and did a little film called Benny & Joon with another commercial director who I was working with at the time, and then came back and did, The Rock with Michael. I was, you know, the only choice he wanted. He wanted me to do... He did a movie before that called Bad Boys.

3:29Jawad MirRight.

3:29John SchwartzmanBut I couldn't do it at the time because my dad was dying of cancer, so I decided to take the summer off and be with him. Otherwise, I would've... The first movie I would've done with Michael was Bad Boys, but I know he didn't have a great experience with his cinematographer on that movie. So when The Rock came up, it was... I was his only choice. Now, I was in my... I think I was 31 or 33 at the time.

3:55Jawad MirYeah.

3:55John SchwartzmanAnd I was a very hard sell to the studio, but Jerry Bruckheimer, God love him, stuck his neck out for me and said to the studio, "Well, look, you love this guy's work. 99% of his work, except for Bad Boys, this guy did. Give him a chance." So they gave me a chance, and that's how The Rock happened for me. Now, Michael and I were very much in tune in terms of, photography and how we... What the style of that movie was gonna be. And we knew we wanted to take all of the techniques that we had sort of honed doing music videos and commercials, and some of that was, forced perspective, miniatures. Remember, this is pre-CGI.

4:38John SchwartzmanSo even doing a blue screen back then was a huge expense. So there's no blue screen in The Rock. There's no nothing, right? It's all…

4:46Jawad MirOf course

4:47John Schwartzman... It's all in camera.

4:48Jawad MirYeah.

4:48John SchwartzmanI mean, when Sean Connery has a glass of coffee sitting in the foreground, that mug is literally, like, 16 inches high, right? 'Cause we wanted this kind of forced perspective. We did a lot of that. The quarter that he spins on the table in the foreground was, like, this big. We knew how to... We were v… very much students of old Hollywood, and tricks, making hallways look longer because we could force the perspective. And we were very much into doing that, which really wasn't being done in Hollywood at that time. And we also knew that we wanted to take the audience on a ride, and kind of break all the rules of action filmmaking, which we did. And I think that movie still holds up to this day.

5:37Jawad MirIt most certainly does. And you know, you talked about Propaganda Films. I was speaking to, I think this was last year at some point, Vadim Perelman. I think he was a group, in that group too, at least that's what he told me. Who went on directing House of Sand and Fog.

5:52John SchwartzmanYeah.

5:53Jawad MirAnd, also Craig Wood, who worked with Gore Verbinski a lot. And Gore, I think Gore was also part of Propaganda with Craig.

6:00John SchwartzmanGore was... Yeah. So, but, so Gore used to be Michael's production manager. So Gore started out as a producer and then became a director. Gore was, I remember Gore. I mean, I remember working with Gore, but not in a creative capacity. But he's a fantastic guy. Vadim Perelman, that was a later group. I had…

6:24Jawad MirOkay

6:25John Schwartzman... I was with the Michael Bay/David Fincher group that moved into features…

6:29Jawad MirGot it

6:30John Schwartzman... You know, like in the early '90s. And once we did that, we, I would only come back and do a music video for Madonna or somebody big. Music videos were no longer my livelihood, feature films were. And obviously, after The Rock, my career got shot out of a cannon. I mean, I went and did this movie Conspiracy Theory with Richard Donner right after that, then came back and did Armageddon. And I was on a, I was on a rocket ship to, you know, a career that I never planned.

7:00Jawad MirRight. No, I, The Rock…

7:02John SchwartzmanBut I still enjoy it to this day.

7:05Jawad MirAbsolutely, and The Rock, I'll tell you, I s… there's very few films that I remember experiencing in the movie theater. So The Rock, I knew in 1993 that I wanted my career to be in films as a director, and The Rock gave me the significance of the editing and the music, like how important those two things are. And I still remember sitting in the movie theater feeling that dun. You know, that whole theme that…

7:34John SchwartzmanYeah

7:34Jawad Mir... Hans did and Harry Gregson-Williams. It was, and the cuts and the cinematography. I also spoke to Richard Francis, who actually, you know, cut the film. Yeah.

7:43John SchwartzmanYeah, he's fantastic. And he had cut Seven and The Road Warrior, and he's an amazing, he's a great... Look, he's as much a part of the success of that movie…

7:52Jawad MirOf course

7:53John Schwartzman... As anyone else. And we were all in the right place at the right time.

7:57Jawad MirRight time.

7:58John SchwartzmanWe were breaking rules that we knew we were breaking. I can remember there was a day where Michael and I were on Russian Hill in San Francisco getting ready to blow up this cable car, and we just kind of stood there in the middle of the street and said, "Jesus, the two of us aren't even as old combined as Sean Connery, and the studio just gave us $80 million to make this movie." So we were, we were kids. At the same time, we were, I think we had some talent, right? I mean, we were not, we... I was pretty skilled as a cameraman in terms of understanding the technical aspects of it. I had a color dark room as a kid, so photography and going to the lab with printer lights and understanding what could be done was kind of in my wheelhouse, right? And again, it was l… you know, this was the era where you shot a s… a close-up on a 17.5 with, you know, Ed Harris right in the lens.

9:01John SchwartzmanBut we shot the master from another room on 100. Now, the script supervisor was going crazy. She was like, "You can't do this." And you know, you weren't gonna tell Michael he can't do something. He had a vision.

9:13Jawad MirYeah.

9:13John SchwartzmanAnd you know, that's what we did. And it was, it was hard 'cause San Francisco is a tough place to work. And working inside of the real Alcatraz. I mean, today you would've built those sets.

9:26Jawad MirYeah.

9:27John SchwartzmanWe shot, all of Alcatraz is Alcatraz. We didn't build anything, right? Those are real cells. But you know, prisons are not made to move around quickly in, so just getting the gear to where we needed it was a huge physical endeavor. I think everybody lost about 10 pounds for the eight weeks we were on The Rock.

9:47Jawad MirYeah.

9:47John SchwartzmanIt was really physically grueling.

9:51Jawad MirI bet. And you know, that's one of the things that I loved about The Rock, was the actual proper s… you know, locations. Like there was nothing in there. I think the only thing that I thought at the time was kind of visual effects, which I still don't know if it is, when the F-16s or F-15s go underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

10:10John SchwartzmanSo mo… so here's the deal. Most of that, so when we were prepping in San Francisco, they do this I think it's the end of September, 'cause I think we started shooting in October. They have a thing called Fleet Week where they bring…

10:25Jawad MirRight

10:25John Schwartzman... An aircraft carrier into the Bay of San Francisco.

10:29Jawad MirAh.

10:29John SchwartzmanAnd I heard about it and I said to the producers, "Get me a ARRI 3, and I need a 600 millimeter telephoto lens." Now, the shot going under the Golden Gate Bridge, those are mini... That's a, that's a helicopter flying over the Golden Gate Bridge, and then we shot miniatures of the F-16s, just, you know, not on blue screen, but we just... I forget where we shot them. We shot them at a place called Marineland, which is out, sort of on the coast of LA so we could have water underneath. That one shot is visual effects because you're not allowed to fly F-16s under the Golden Gate Bridge.

11:08Jawad MirYeah.

11:09John SchwartzmanBut everything else you see of airplanes flying around San Francisco was me on the roof of Alcatraz with a 600 millimeter lens shooting footage that was provided by the United States military.

11:22Jawad MirCrazy.

11:23John SchwartzmanYeah.

11:23Jawad MirWhat about that se… what about that sequence, when, you know, the mis… missile is launched and the F-16 goes up in the air and it's like an, you know, shot from above with the explosion? How, what was, what was that

11:36John SchwartzmanAgain, that…

11:36Jawad Mir... Behind that?

11:36John SchwartzmanSo that was a, that was a helicopter up high, right? Shooting a plate of Alcatraz, and then a very large fireball that we shot in a parking lot with a camera on a construction crane about 200 feet in the air looking straight down. So that was a composite.

11:54Jawad MirGot it. Wow.

11:55John SchwartzmanBut again, remember, this was an era where compositing was…

11:58Jawad MirI know, I know

11:59John Schwartzman... It was not, it was a very expensive and not…

12:02Jawad MirYeah

12:02John Schwartzman... A great... The s… the science today, obviously…... Is a lot, it's a lot simpler. You know?

12:09Jawad MirYeah.

12:09John SchwartzmanIt's probably in a library, you wouldn't even have to shoot the element. But we hung a basket off a construction crane with a camera pointed straight down. Didn't put anybody in it because we thought the heat from the fireball was gonna be too much, and we literally, I don't know, it was 150 gallons of diesel fuel and some primer cord, and blew this giant fireball up in the air.

12:33Jawad MirYeah. And what makes your work with Michael Bay, unique, and that you mention that, is the use of telephoto lens to get, like, you know, deeper shots, like, you know, wider shots, and it just gives such a beautiful effect, and also mo… moves the story in such a delightful manner. What I wanted to ask you about, there are a couple of... When I think of The Rock, I think of the music, I think of the cuts, I think of couple of scenes, one being, and I spoke to this about, to Richard Francis as well, the shower scene. That for me was the most incredible scene in terms of editing, the cinematography, music, emotion, acting, everything. Can you t… do you remember how that went about and how long it took you guys to film that?

13:22John SchwartzmanI think we filmed it in, I think it was two days, and only because it took a long time to reset all of the walls with the tiles that were getting blown up. And we were really, you know, people had to be careful, right? The camera crew was always under a furniture blanket with Lexan around them, because there was just stuff flying everywhere. You know, the idea was Michael likes to kind of sh… point the camera. He... Look, Michael's got a great eye, so he will only point the camera in three directions. He always knows. You never have to worry with Michael on a day exterior which way you're gonna look in the morning. You know you're gonna look east, and then you're gonna look south in the middle of the day, and then you're gonna look west at the end of the day. He loves backlight. So we built, that was a set that we built. That wasn't actually at Alcatraz, because we had to be able to replace it.

14:15Jawad MirSure.

14:15John SchwartzmanAnd we, I remember kind of, I back lit that, I lit up that window so that when you looked at the window, it was sort of partially silhouette, but when you weren't looking at the window, the light from the window became a very nice wrapping, kind of half light. And that gave us the ability to kind of, you know, shoot quickly with a couple of cameras. And, you know, but Michael's very specific. He's like, "I want a 17-5 on a sandbag right here."

14:46Jawad MirYeah. No, he... And that's one thing that I've noticed about... I mean, I didn't know that you guy… I knew about Michael Bay's music video background, like about 15, 20 years ago. I didn't know that background you had. And I know for a fact, like, and I'm assuming, I already know the answer, but I'm just gonna state it, is that because I have done, obviously n… not to the amount of music videos that you guys have done, but I've done a lot of events, live events, music videos, and documentaries where everything is happening on the fly, and I always find that gives you so much strength when you're in a controlled environment, because then you know exactly what you want, where you want it, how you want it, as opposed to... Not saying it doesn't work for other directors, but I'm just saying if you have that kind of background experience, do you think that sort of helped you move a lot faster on…

15:36John SchwartzmanWell, yeah, without a doubt, to the point of which no one could keep up with us. And the thing is also, Michael and I coming out of music videos and commercials, if we were shooting day exterior and we saw that the light was great somewhere, we would just literally go, "Hey, we're going over here now." And people were like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "Move this stuff over here. Put, you know, put the 300 millimeter Nikkor on. Let's go." we were all about... Michael, you know, he has a great eye, and it was all about creating this kind of, with u… the use of cross lighting, this kind of depth to the shots. Obviously, right, backlight and cross light create more dimension in a frame. And like you said, Michael is, he's, he was a still photographer before he was a, director in his teenage years. And, you know, you can see it in his work. I mean, not to say that obviously I don't contribute a lot, but I'm working with a guy who I know what the answer's gonna be before I ask the question, you know?

16:37John SchwartzmanAnd he's not afraid to take chances. He, back then, he certainly wasn't. You know, we just let it fly. If it felt right, we shot it.

16:49Jawad MirYeah. And that's... One other thing that I... You didn't do Pearl Harbor, did you?

16:54John SchwartzmanI did.

16:54Jawad MirOkay, you did. So, and I think that goes to a testament to your collaboration with him. Another type of shots that I see a lot in those three films, eye level or a little bit... Not, I'm not talking about the shots that, you know, coming out of the car, typical Michael Bay shot with the camera above.

17:12John SchwartzmanYeah.

17:12Jawad MirBut just like in Pearl Harbor, th… that tra… I mean, the Pearl Harbor film, no offense to anyone, I wasn't a fan of it. I was very excited about it. But that trailer, you know, tha… those scenes of kids playing baseball, and the pitching, and the plane flies by. I mean, the position of the fr… camera and the framing was just so spot on, and it gave you everything that was happening in such a beautiful way, and I just wanna let you know that's what I think connects with audiences at such a deep level, among with other things too. But people love that, and they don't realize they love that. I genuinely admire that kind of stuff every time I see stuff from Michael Bay.

17:55John SchwartzmanW… w… I think some of that, the, so the ability to tell a story without dialogue, I think for both Michael and I, came out of commercials, where you've got 30 seconds…

18:06Jawad MirYeah

18:06John Schwartzman... To tell this story, right? And we did a lot of really great commercials with r… really nice images that kind of... Tell you everything you need, and then Michael's also got a great sense of humor, so his comedy commercials, like the milk stuff that I did with him, were legendary. And you can see it in Bad Boys. He's got a great sense of humor. But he knows how to stack a frame, right? And you talk about the baseball shot. So we were prepping Pearl Harbor.

18:36Jawad MirYeah.

18:36John SchwartzmanWe're in Hawaii. We've got all the airplanes there. They're flying the airplanes every day just to make sure they're all air worthy, right?

18:44Jawad MirYeah.

18:45John SchwartzmanI said to Michael, "You know, we've got all the cameras here," and right in the middle of Pearl Harbor, Ford Island, is a baseball field. There, it's really there. And I'm watching this baseball field every day, and I'm watching these airplanes fly around, and I said to Michael, "Why don't we get a bunch of kids, and we'll do a Little League game, and I'll just have the planes fly by, and we can use it in the movie?" And he was like, "That's a great idea." So, you know, you set up 60 feet of dolly track, and you get the pilots to come in as they're doing... They're, they're literally just trying to make sure that all the engines work right and all the control surfaces are good. You know, they're taking them up every day for an hour just to double check the planes, and I said, "Let's just get them to fly the Zeroes and the Vals and the Kates by." you know, and then later we had a close-up of the guy telling the kids to get the hell out of there.

19:34Jawad MirYeah. What was the most challenging thing on The Rock, cinematography-wise, lighting-wise? What do you mean, like…

19:41John SchwartzmanThe most chal…

19:42Jawad MirYeah.

19:42John SchwartzmanIt was the tunnels. The tunnels be… a… and again, I, this is where, as a young cameraman, I was a little bit green. Had I had more experience, I would have asked the production designer to give me more little portholes to shine light through. So when I went to do The Rock, I was friendly with a cinematographer named John Alonzo, who had done Chinatown.

20:08John SchwartzmanAnd I was telling him about how I was gonna be working at these very low light levels. So, you know, as you double the amount of light, you gain a stop, right?

20:19Jawad MirYeah.

20:19John SchwartzmanBut the difference between... So we were working in those tunnels, so it was very difficult on the focus pullers because we had very shallow depth of field. We were shooting film, not digital, 'cause that didn't exist back then. So you didn't know if it was in focus until you saw dailies the next day. And I also knew that the difference between three foot candles and five foot candles was a stop of light. So John Alonzo had a special light meter made, and he actually gave it to me to use on The Rock, and it only measured from zero foot candles to 10, 'cause that was the most amount of light I could get in there. And 10-foot candles at ISO 320 was like a third open two eight, which I could never get to.

21:00Jawad MirYeah.

21:00John SchwartzmanSo everything in there was challenging to work in the water, 'cause we all stood in waders for 12 hours a day in the water. And it was very difficult to get the light levels to create any kind of depth of field in there. Now, for the most part, we shot on pretty wide lenses in there, which helped, but if I had done this, if you were saying, "How would I do it today?" I would have had little pieces of brick that would have hidden where the hole is, but I could have, again, bounced another light off the water.

21:35Jawad MirYeah.

21:35John SchwartzmanSo I was really challenged to try to get any light in there. Once the explosions started to happen, I could put fire bars around, but in the beginning, it was, it was har… it was hard to get enough light in there to see people's faces, and obviously, you're paying Sean Connery a lot of money. You wanna see his face. You're paying Nick Cage a lot of money. You wanna see their faces. And the thing is, those two guys were so good together. I mean, that's why the movie's so fun.

22:03Jawad MirYeah. The chemistry.

22:05John SchwartzmanYou know, they were both at the, they... Sean realized, Sean hated the, making the movie. He was really difficult, until Jerry Bruckheimer showed him, like, a sizzle reel of about eight weeks of footage that we had done. And Sean saw it, and we all saw it. Richard cut it together. We were in a screening room.

22:24Jawad MirWe talked about that, yeah.

22:25John SchwartzmanMe and Sean and Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael and Richard, and you could see Sean's eyes just light up, and he realized, "Okay, I don't like the way this kid works because he's just screaming and yelling, and we don't know what's next." And Sean's very much by the books, you know? "This is my mark. I do this." And Michael would be like, "I don't care. Run over there," you know? 'Cause he'd seen…

22:46Jawad MirYeah

22:46John Schwartzman... The sun ball. But once Sean saw the sizzle reel, he was all in, right? He, then it was like, "Okay, whatever you want me to do."

22:56Jawad MirRight. And back then, I mean, now there are such fast lenses, right? Like 1.8. I've even worked with a lens, which is, which was 0.95. Back then, was there anything under 2.8?

23:09John SchwartzmanThere was. So we were using Panavision Primo lenses. They were, they were two-stop lenses, or they said they were two-stop lenses. I really think they were about a two and a half. Even though they said they go to a two, I never believed it. But, you know, again, you, when you have two people in the frame and they're standing next to each other and you're wide open, you're having to make choices about, where do I play the focus, right?

23:35Jawad MirYeah.

23:35John SchwartzmanAnd this was a movie in which I wanted to, a lot of times you wanted to carry both of their faces because how they interacted. So that was the real challenge in the tunnel, was, you know, the, there was a move in digital cinema to shoot everything wide open, right? Everything on the Leica is at a one four, but that's one eye in focus and the other eye out of focus. I don't really like that style of cinematography. I think it's, it works if you're gonna rack focus from the barrel of the gun to Ed Harris' face…

24:05John Schwartzman... Where you want that kind of deep rack and everything goes from in, you know, very small focus in the foreground to suddenly Ed's face in the background and the gun disappears. But as a style of shooting, it's not my favorite way to go. I don't shoot day exteriors At less than a five, six. Because the human experience when you go outside is you carry a certain amount of depth of field in your own vision because of how bright it is, and your pupils become, you know, their I… lens irises, they just, they get smaller.

24:40Jawad MirYeah. No, so it's…

24:41John SchwartzmanI mean, I use, I do use, exposure and depth of field for storytelling reasons, but I don't, but I'm also always thinking of what is the audience experiencing.

24:52Jawad MirYou know, it's f… so funny you mention that. So I wear, you know, prescription glasses, and I've sort of, kind of stayed away from sunglasses because what's the point? You know, how am I gonna change this? You know, you have those clip-ons.

25:04John SchwartzmanRight.

25:05Jawad MirAnd now I just got a new pair, and it came with these, like, magnetic clip-ons, and I swear, it's great. Like, when I'm walking outside, like, you know, or running, like, it's great that I'm not, this light's not hitting me. But when I take them off, I feel like I'm in my natural world. It's so important. You know, it's just like ND filters, right? Like, sunglasses are like an ND filters.

25:26John SchwartzmanRight.

25:26Jawad MirAnd it's, it's so important, you're so right, to have that kind of a feel because audiences... I mean, I'm in film. I look at these things. But even, you know, ordinary film goer, they may not know the technical stuff, but they can pick up on these things at a very subconscious or even conscious level.

25:42John Schwartzman100%. 100%. So, you know, I did a picture about, oh man, s… seven years ago called The Highwaymen for Netflix.

25:51Jawad MirOkay.

25:51John SchwartzmanAbout the two Texas Rangers that killed Bonnie and Clyde. And it's a really… ... Good movie. And to me it was a Western, right? These guys in the '30s chasing Bonnie and Clyde across Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana, and ultimately killing them outside of Shreveport, which is where they were killed. And I said to the director, and everybody was saying, "Oh, you can't shoot a deep stop on digital cameras because it looks like video." And I, so I went to Dan Sasaki, the lens designer at Panavision, and I said, "Look, think of this movie as The Searchers," right? John Ford, when he was out in Monument Valley, shot with a lot of depth, right? To see all of Monument Valley. And I said, "I am out in the middle of Texas where I can, there's, the horizon goes on forever. I don't wanna shoot this movie where four feet behind Kevin Costner the background falls away. I want to feel the desolation of where we are." So he helped me design a set of lenses that looked really good on digital cameras, stopped down to an eight or even an 11.

26:59John Schwartzman'Cause I felt like that was the right, that was the right language for that movie, you know? And that was w… how we did The Rock as well. I mean, sometimes we shot, you know, close to wide open, but most of the time we didn't. We shot at a four or a five, six because we were in San Francisco, and you wanted to see the Palace of Fine Arts. It didn't wanna be a blurry background.

27:22Jawad MirYeah.

27:22John SchwartzmanYou know, Michael wanted to put you in the environment.

27:26Jawad MirRight. And that's, that's what, w… so you shot Highwaymen. Is it Highwaymen is it called you said?

27:31John SchwartzmanYeah.

27:32Jawad MirWas that on Red?

27:34John SchwartzmanThat was on the, yeah, the DXL, which was a Re… a Panavision version of a Red camera.

27:40Jawad MirSo for me, and I'm sure maybe for you too, is that when I look at s… I was watching this series with my wife. We just started this Apple series called Silo. I don't know if you've heard of it.

27:51John SchwartzmanNo

27:51Jawad Mir... It just, it's, it's just came out. It's kinda like the COVID kind of a setup, but it's in distant future where everybody's kinda stuck in one building and you're not allowed to go out. And I get what the tone was they were trying to do. Like, it was, like, just, like, bland colors, you know, dark shots. And that to me somehow doesn't click the same way. I'm all, I'm all good for dark shots like the way you did The Rock, right? Or other, like, David Fincher has done stuff in his films like Se7en. But there's just something about digital that to me doesn't register, even though I shoot digital. I mean, I can't afford film, right? It's so expensive. But…

28:28John SchwartzmanWell, and no one can these days because there's, at least in America, there's only one lab. I mean, look, Jurassic World was film. I still think that film is prettier and better. The fact that the photo sites are in a different spot on every frame of film, you know, there's no moiré in film. There's only moiré…

28:49Jawad MirYeah

28:49John Schwartzman... In digital, right?

28:51Jawad MirDigital.

28:51John SchwartzmanI also find that there's a respect for the process when you're shooting film that seems to have gone away when you shoot digital. That said, there's no question that if you're shooting a gritty movie in the streets of New York at night, the Sony Venice 2 would be the camera of choice because you could turn the ISO to the high gain position of 3200 but rate the camera at 16 so you don't get any noise, and you've got an extra stop or two of, you know, exposure, which means that streetlights are suddenly a light source. I mean, in the Pearl Harbor, every night exterior, if it was supposed to be Honolulu downtown, I rigged 2K bulbs in every streetlight. You know, nowadays producers aren't gonna give you a week or deal with the city to get into their lights to rewire them and all that, but that's what we needed to do.

29:52John SchwartzmanBack in the film day when we were shooting anamorphic film where I only shot, I never shot more wide open than a four because the lenses lost their contrast. If you went to a 2.8, the lenses didn't look sharp anymore because of the chromatic aberration of the front element, which is curved. So there were certain tricks to the trade, but it meant that you were gonna go out and you were gonna light your night exteriors, really light them. The good thing about that was if you didn't, if something was in the background and you didn't wanna see it, you just didn't have to light it because you were building up the light levels to s… such a level…... That the background would fall away. So if there was something that wasn't the right period for our movie, if I didn't put any light on it, you wouldn't notice it. Now the problem is you can't control anything, right? It's all, you go out on the streets, and whether you like it or not, there's light everywhere, 'cause these cameras see in the dark.

30:48Jawad MirYeah. And I think that's what's changed drastically when it comes to anything, any stage in filmmaking, but I'm gonna talk about, you know, the camera and post, is, like, I remember when I shot my first short, it was on a 16 millimeter, and I had no fricking clue what I filmed because, you know, you couldn't see it.

31:07John SchwartzmanRight.

31:08Jawad MirAnd first two films that I did, one was overexposed, one was underexposed, and then I obviously learned my way through it. And the same, I think every… everybody's become too safe now. You know, people are not willing to take chances and risks and be bold about things, and I genuinely feel that's why '90s was probably one of the best era of filmmaking. Like, it was just bold decision-making and r… risk-taking.

31:33John SchwartzmanIt was bold decision-making. It was some really great advances by Kodak, and also the lighting manufacturers were coming up with new lights and it was a young group of cinematographers, kind of like how they were in the '70s.

31:48Jawad MirYeah.

31:48John SchwartzmanI mean, we used to consider ourselves like Vilmos Zsigmond, where we were pushing the boundaries. Look, film fails with a certain elegance, right? All you have to do is look at McCabe & Mrs. Miller, where Vilmos, every night in his hotel room, pre-fogged the film by sh… just turn, loading the mag up, running the, punching a hole so he knew where to center it, and then exposing a white card at a 16 stop to build up a layer of fog. And then, you know, the windows were blown out, but when you blow out film, it creates this kind of elegant look. Digital does not fail with the same elegance that film fails with.

32:31Jawad MirYeah.

32:32John SchwartzmanAnd that's one of the problems. I don't, I don't... I, look, I'm trying to master it, and I still carry a light meter. I still work the same way. And somebody'll say to me, "You've got, you're clipping there. You've got no definition." And I would say to them, "Well, I don't want any definition there. Is it a problem?" They're like, "No, it's not a problem. Just letting you know." It's like, "Okay, great. Here's how we're gonna shoot it. I don't need any definition out of that window. I want that window to be blown out. I want it to be white."

33:02Jawad MirYeah.

33:03John SchwartzmanBut, you know, look, it's a lot easier to shoot with a digital camera than it is with a film camera. It just is.

33:11Jawad MirBut I also, I agree with you. Look, I'm, I'm part of the problem myself too, but I also feel, and I've been guilty of this, and I've sort of tried to figure a way around that, is that when you're doing digital, you know in the back of your mind you can always do retakes, right? They, and sometime it slows down the process too, I feel. But if you can get a hang of it and, you know, you don't push yourself to that edge that, "Okay, I have, I can do another 10 takes because the digital is not costing me anything," then you lose that sense of, you know, on the moment spot decisions kind of thing.

33:48John SchwartzmanI agree with you, and I mean, but it's still... And by the way, it does cost, right? I mean, digital's not free. Somebody's gotta transcode all the footage.

33:56Jawad MirYeah.

33:57John SchwartzmanBut digital... So it used to be that, you know, you knew that the monitor, the video assist coming out of a film camera, was like an impressionist painting, right? And they were relying on the cinematographer to make sure that everything looked right. Nowadays, everybody's got a really good monitor, and now everybody's a cinematographer or a colorist. And, you know, certainly the respect for the job has changed. Now, granted, I only work with the directors that I like to work with, and they trust me and they respect my work, and they don't really ever say, like, "Is it gonna be this dark?" Or is it gonna... You know, they hire me for what I do. But, certainly the position of being a cinematographer in terms of, on set scrutiny has gotten exponentially bigger.

34:50Jawad MirYeah. Right. And Armageddon, you know, like you said, you were a natural selection by Michael…

34:57John SchwartzmanRight

34:58Jawad Mir... To work on Armageddon. What was that experience like?

35:03John SchwartzmanThat was an incredible... I mean, first of all, when you get to spend as much time as I did at NASA. So I had, I had nine months of prep on that movie. That's an incredible amount of prep.

35:16Jawad MirWow.

35:16John SchwartzmanNow, we shot for 140 days, so it was a very long movie, but it required me going to, the Kennedy Space Center many times. We went out there with Michael to scout it, to figure out where we wanted to put the cameras for the launch. And the original launch that we did, the day launch, was never supposed to be in the movie. That was just a trial run for the night launch, because they only do one, they were doing one night launch a year, and Michael wanted to photograph the night launch, and I had suggested that we better do a day launch just to make sure it all works. But we picked our camera spots. We had 17 cameras. And then it was a whole case of, okay, so now we have to figure out how the NASA computer can turn on the camera. So we had electronics guys make boxes. I would take the box and a camera to NASA. They would do a simulated countdown, and we would see if it worked. If it didn't work, we'd go back and try to figure out what the, why the trigger didn't work.

36:19John SchwartzmanAnd then we did things like, so when they fuel the main rocket booster, you cannot be within two miles of the orbiter. The cameras have to be placed before that. Now, the launch can be postponed for up to 24 hours. So the question was, okay, so let's... So we took all the cameras… We took them out into the parking lot of Panavision, we plugged them in, and we left them there for three days, and we came back and we turned them on to see if they would actually run or would the batteries have drained out. Of course, the batteries were dead. This is pre-lithium ion batteries.

36:54Jawad MirRight.

36:54John SchwartzmanCamera batteries were lead-acid batteries. So we had Panavision build us super big batteries. Then the question came down to, "Oh, hell, we're in Florida. There's so much humidity and temperature change. Are the lenses gonna fog up?" So then it was a case of, okay, so let's get 12 volt marine batteries and wrap the lenses in, recreational vehicle 12 volt light bulbs, sort of like your, rear window defroster, to keep the lenses warm so that they wouldn't fog up, 'cause the last thing you wanna find out is your launch is no good because your lens has fogged because of the humidity. So there were... It was weeks and weeks and weeks of problem solving, and then getting to actually shoot the launches was one of the highlights of my life. I mean, to be standing on top of the vehicle assembly building, you know, filming, tilting with a orbiter as it goes up was just beyond... I can't tell you. I mean, the NASA people were so amazing.

37:56John SchwartzmanThey were, they were just the greatest people I've ever met. They loved what they did. We gave them copies of every shot that we did for their library, and they'd never seen 35 millimeter anamorphic film running at 120 frames a second of, you know, the launch. So they... Once we turned over our day launch to them, I had, I had basically access to every area of NASA, to the point at which when I left, they gave me a tile off of one of the space shuttles.

38:26Jawad MirOh, that's sweet.

38:27John SchwartzmanYeah. So it w… that was great. And then, you know, it was, it was a very long, hard movie. You know, we went out to the Badlands of South Dakota to shoot the big wide shots of the asteroid.

38:39Jawad MirYeah.

38:39John SchwartzmanAnd we had an, a small RV version, a remote control version of the Armadillo that we would drive around in the background. So that was a model, a miniature. All of the stuff of the Freedom and Independence was, were miniatures. When I say miniatures, they were, like, 10 feet long, but they were shot by a model, a model unit, in the, in Marina del Rey. So it was all... That's how we did it all. We tried to do it all in camera.

39:08Jawad MirAmazing.

39:09John SchwartzmanYeah.

39:09Jawad MirAmazing. And, you know, I'm kind of going all over the place, but one thing I love about Michael Bay films and, I mean, in tying to Armageddon and, even Pearl Harbor and The Rock, is the way he portrays, because he has a obviously strong relationship with the military, you know, NASA and all that, the way he portrays patriotism and the way he portrays... I mean, I come from a military family, so whenever hearing the music, the style, the slow motion shots, and just that salute, it is such, I mean, he just nails it in a way.

39:46John SchwartzmanWell, it's why we get all that access, right? I mean, how do you think, how do you get 30 vintage airplanes from the, from the West Coast of the United States to Hawaii? A P-40 cannot fly to Hawaii, right? It can only fly for three hours.

40:06Jawad MirYeah.

40:06John SchwartzmanAnd it can't refuel in the air. You make a phone call, you call your friends at the Navy, and they load all the airplanes onto an aircraft carrier, and they basically are a taxi service for Jerry and Michael. I mean, we all stood there in Hawaii as the air… as the John C. Stennis came into port with all the vintage airplanes, P-40s, B-25s, and the Japanese Zeroes, Vals, and Kates, all on the flight deck. All the F-18s, all the F-14s or whatever the Navy version, they were all underneath. All the old vintage planes were lined up. I mean, you need those kind of friends to make these kind of movies.

40:46Jawad MirYeah.

40:47John SchwartzmanAnd obviously Michael's movies are a love letter to sort of America, you know?

40:52Jawad MirIt is. It is, 100%. I mean, his even most recent movie, which I don't think you were part of, Ambulance, like I…

40:59John SchwartzmanNo, I, so after... I hadn't done a movie with Michael after Pearl Harbor.

41:03Jawad MirOkay.

41:03John SchwartzmanI mean, I basically, w… where Michael and I sort of went different directions was I kind of felt like we were making the same movie over and over again.

41:14Jawad MirYeah.

41:14John SchwartzmanAnd, I was now getting offers in. I did Seabiscuit, which I got an Academy Award nomination for, and…

41:21Jawad MirWhich is a great film, by the way. Great work.

41:23John SchwartzmanThank you. And Michael's a difficult director. He's, very impatient. He's a screamer and a yeller, but he doesn't take it home. I mean, he'll, at the end of the day, go, "Sorry I yelled at you." But it's a lot of stress.

41:36Jawad MirYeah.

41:36John SchwartzmanAnd I remember saying to Michael, you know, "First of all, we, you keep telling me we're gonna do something different, but we always fall back into what works," which I get. But I said, "You know, I just, the yelling and the screaming is just becoming too much for me. I go work with other directors that are so happy that I'm there. They would never yell and scream." So basically that's... We still were doing commercials together, but I just said, "Look, find somebody else to do Transformers or The Island or whatever," 'cause I knew that basically those were gonna be another version of my kind of cinematography, but not done by me.

42:12Jawad MirYeah.

42:12John SchwartzmanAnd I don't think any of those movies... Transformers is very good, and it was done by Mitch Amundsen, who was the operator on Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, who his... And he was, worked with me and Michael all the way through our commercial and music video life. So Mitch was well, he was, he was well experienced to step in and know what he was getting, you know? And Michael felt comfort with him.

42:35Jawad MirYeah. And I, and I think, one thing that I, his most recent movie that came out, Ambulance… Which for me was probably one of his closer to early films, like The Rock and Armageddon in terms of motion. But one thing I couldn't stand in the movie when I was watching in the movie theater, it was, there were certain great shots of that FPV drone that they had going underneath the police car.

42:58John SchwartzmanIt was too much, 'cause I saw it once and it…

42:59Jawad MirIt was way too mu… I was, like, so distracted in the beginning of this film.

43:03John SchwartzmanYeah.

43:03Jawad MirLike, what the hell is going on? It was overdone…

43:06John SchwartzmanYeah

43:06Jawad Mir... So much.

43:07John SchwartzmanYeah, no, he fell in love with those drone guys.

43:11Jawad MirYeah, I think it was a bunch of kids, right? Like young kids.

43:13John SchwartzmanYeah. But they race them, and they can really fly. And…

43:16Jawad MirYeah

43:17John Schwartzman... The reality is just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

43:21Jawad MirGood. Yeah.

43:23John SchwartzmanYou know?

43:23Jawad MirAgreed. Agreed.

43:25John SchwartzmanAnd I think the thing that's fun about, like, Colin Trevorrow, working with him on Jurassic, is he felt this duty to the franchise and to Steven. So we shot those movies in a very classic way, right? Now, just so you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark is Michael's favorite movie in the world.

43:44Jawad MirYeah.

43:44John SchwartzmanAnd, you know, that's, that to him, that's the best action movie ever made, and it probably is, right? It's a pretty flawless movie. And Colin, you know, was very much, loves that movie and loves the Jur… loved Jurassic Park and all that. So we were trying to create an, a new version of the Jurassic franchise, and I think Jurassic World is a really fun movie, but we shot it in a very kind of classic Spielberg way, where it's not overcutty. So Steven is the greatest master shot director of all time, right? What starts as a master, ends up as an over, turns around, becomes a close-up of somebody, and there's very few cuts in his scenes.

44:31Jawad MirYes.

44:31John SchwartzmanHe really knows how to move the camera around in a way that tells the story. And Colin was very much a student of that, so we really worked to try to create that same kind of feel, as opposed to cut. Now, there's obviously cuts in the movie, but we really took time and care in blocking our masters so they weren't just a wide shot of everybody in the room.

45:00Jawad MirYeah, no.

45:00John SchwartzmanThey constant, they constantly evolved into something else.

45:04Jawad MirAnd that's so evident in Jurassic World because I became a filmmaker because of Jurassic Park. Like, that movie turned my life upside down. And…

45:12John SchwartzmanRight

45:13Jawad Mir... Jurassic World, the way it was done was, I mean, exactly what you just said. It was such, I mean, there was a lot of similarities with Jurassic Park. It had to be because it's kinda like, you know. Which is fine. I still dig, dug it. Like, I still enjoyed it, but it was just so true to the Jurassic. I think it was even better than the second and third Jurassic Park.

45:35John SchwartzmanYeah, which I don't think are very good.

45:37Jawad MirYeah. No, they're not.

45:38John SchwartzmanIn my, I mean, no disrespect to Steven 'cause I have nothing but admiration for him as a filmmaker.

45:42Jawad MirYeah.

45:42John SchwartzmanBut I thought we did a really good job, and I thought it was a really fun, solid script. We had Chris Pratt. He had, Guardians had not come out yet, but you just knew from the moment you met him he was on the verge of stardom. I had known Bryce Dallas Howard since she was 14 'cause I did a movie with her father.

46:05Jawad MirYeah.

46:05John SchwartzmanSo she would come to the set. So that was, it, the relationships there were easy for me. And then it was just about, you know, I would say to Colin many times, "You know, we can put a B camera over here if you want." And he's like, "I'm never gonna use it. It's the A camera. We're on the Technocrane. We follow the kids. We do this. Then we have a shot over the shoulder. We see the waterfall. That's all I need." It's like, "Okay, I get it. I'm just saying, I could give you a profile if you want it." He's like, "Nope. I don't want it, and I won't use it." And that was because, you know, he was very much wanting to, stay within the style of what Steven does.

46:45Jawad MirYeah.

46:45John SchwartzmanAnd I think he did a very good job.

46:48Jawad MirNo, he did. And you know, talking about the coverage, one of the things that I love about Spielberg's work, like you said, is that there is, there's a shot that always, again, comes to my mind. Minority Report, when, Colin Farrell's character pushes Tom Cruise's character in the elevator when he's, you know, he, they discover, when Tom Cruise finds out that he's gonna commit a murder.

47:08John SchwartzmanRight.

47:08Jawad MirAnd that entire scene is, like, one take, but the way the camera moves, it feels like he did, like, four cuts, but he doesn't.

47:16John SchwartzmanRight.

47:16Jawad MirThat's what's so crazy about it, and I felt that in Jurassic World so much. And you know, I absolut… I wasn't fan, I'll be very honest, I wasn't a fan of the second film at all, Jurassic World, the second part.

47:26John SchwartzmanNo, I wasn't a fan of it, and I'm not even a huge fan of the third one.

47:30Jawad MirNeither am I.

47:30John SchwartzmanThat I, that I did. And I, and I did it, and the thing is that, look, success, people deal with success in different ways.

47:38Jawad MirYeah.

47:39John SchwartzmanAnd Colin is a very smart guy, but I s… my comment to him was, "You know, why does everybody feel like they have to world build?" I said, "The first movie was so much fun. It was a ride. It was a simple setup."

47:53Jawad MirYeah.

47:53John SchwartzmanKind of like The Rock is a simple setup. And I said, "Now we're, like, world building," and I said, "All of this kind of like, this Biosyn is all stuff we've been hearing for years." Jeff Goldblum gives a speech, and it's like, God, I think I heard Linus Pauling give that same speech when I was at the uni… when I was in university in the late, in the late '70s. You know, it's like, you know, what... I kept saying, "This movie doesn't seem like it's gonna be fun like the first one was." And of course it's like, "No, you don't understand. This is what we're doing." It's like, "Okay, fine. I trust you. You're a smart guy. You're a smart filmmaker." But I don't think it had the same s… fun.

48:34Jawad MirYeah.

48:34John Schwartzman'Cause the setup of the first one was like, okay, the aunt was in charge of the kids. The dinosaur escapes. The kids are on their own. Now we gotta go get them, and it's a chase movie. You know, and the kids survive on their wiles

48:49Jawad MirWell, what happens with every film, right? Like, when you make, when you make the first one, not knowing it's gonna be a hit, you're limited. You're limited with your resources. You're limited with ideas. You're constrained. But when you become... You know, you have to top the first one, so you add... Especially the Dominion film, my biggest problem with that film was way too many characters. We're... I couldn't even keep track of what was each character's arc. I mean, there was that Asian lady character.

49:16John SchwartzmanSo, i… with all... So here's what I will say. So I've seen a, there's different versions of the movie, obviously.

49:24Jawad MirOkay.

49:24John SchwartzmanThey're the ones... So…

49:25Jawad MirSure.

49:26John SchwartzmanThere's three big story arcs. Hang on, I'm gonna close the window 'cause they're, that leaf blower's going.

49:32Jawad MirNo problem.

49:39John SchwartzmanSo there's generally a mandate on summer movies that they can only run about two hours and 18 minutes, right? So they can get X amount of, exhibitions in a day.

49:49Jawad MirRight.

49:50John SchwartzmanI… the, we, with the three story arcs, the original version, Colin's version, which I think is a, it's a long movie, and you gotta sit for almost three hours. But the three-hour version of Jurassic World: Dominion, those story arcs actually, they, you watch them build, and they develop, and they pay off. When you have to take 40 minutes out of a movie…

50:17Jawad MirRight

50:17John Schwartzman... That stuff gets truncated, and it doesn't work, and that's what happened.

50:23Jawad MirYeah.

50:24John SchwartzmanYou know, ultimately, the movie got... It was too long. They cut it down, and in the process it didn't play. Look, the four-hour version of Heaven's Gate is kind of an interesting movie. Now, it's a, it means you're gonna sit for half a day and watch this movie, but it's way better, than the two-hour version.

50:47Jawad MirYeah. Well, a similar thing happened to Thin Red Line with Terrence Malick.

50:52John SchwartzmanYes.

50:52Jawad MirYeah, I mean, it was like a six-hour film, and I remember when I watched it, George Clooney, who was like a rising star at the time, he only had like a two-minute scene, I think, because they cut so much of his part out.

51:03John SchwartzmanRight.

51:03Jawad MirAnd a bunch of other stars. And listen, I mean, I get it. Like, with Dominion, it was still better than the second one, but I, and I assumed, I know there's an extended cut on DVD, which I think is two hours and 40 minutes, but I think you're saying that it…

51:15John SchwartzmanThat's probably, that's probably Colin's version.

51:18Jawad MirOkay. Okay. I haven't seen that one.

51:20John SchwartzmanWhich is a better ver… it's a better version of the movie, unless you're a shareholder in Comcast Universal, right?

51:27Jawad MirYeah.

51:27John Schwartzman'Cause remember, it all, ultimately it's all about the bottom line.

51:30Jawad MirNo, I know. I get it. I get it. It's a business. Everybody's making money. I mean, everybody's got, gotta get jobs, right? So I totally understand that. I understand.

51:37John SchwartzmanGive me one second. I'll be right back.

51:39Jawad MirNo problem. No problem.

51:55John SchwartzmanSorry about that.

51:56Jawad MirThat's okay. That's all right. Yeah, so what was some of the biggest challenges on the Jurassic World one and Jurassic World three, on bo… on the film?

52:10John SchwartzmanSo e… so the first, so Jurassic World one, the biggest challenges were literally just sh... I've, it was my second movie in Hawaii. Hawaii's a difficult place to film because the weather changes so quickly 'cause you're on an island.

52:25Jawad MirRight.

52:25John SchwartzmanYou're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Other than that, we actually finished that movie I think two days a… ahead of schedule. Jurassic three was obviously COVID, right? So we had started filming. We were filming in northern British Columbia in early March. We shot for eight or 10 days, up in the snow, and then we came back to London. We pr… we sort of prepped for a week to start the 75 days of filming in England, and we started filming our first week. And I don't even know if the scenes that we filmed are in the movie, but

53:07John Schwartzman... I know they're in Colin's version. And then on a Friday night at midnight they said, "We're shut down," because COVID was, you know, went from…

53:16Jawad MirYeah

53:16John Schwartzman... Being something abstract to suddenly, "Oh, this is real."

53:20Jawad MirYeah.

53:20John SchwartzmanSo we got on an airplane and flew back to America. That was, March…

53:25Jawad Mir2020

53:26John Schwartzman... 16th or 17th, right?

53:27Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

53:28John SchwartzmanBut I went back to England in the middle of June. We were the first movie to start back up, and no one really understood transmission or what the hell was going on. And at this time, 40,000 people a week were dying in London. I mean, it was scary.

53:44Jawad MirYeah.

53:45John SchwartzmanWe were, I was sort of like, "Do I really wanna do this?" And of course, my loyalty to the project and to the producers was, "Yeah, I'll do it." so COVID was the, was the hardest part about making Jurassic three by far. Everything else was standard filmmaking. I mean, it was great to have all the animatronic dinosaurs. I mean, there's, there's almost no CG dinosaurs in the movie, right?

54:10Jawad MirYeah.

54:10John SchwartzmanEverything is puppeteered, and that was just a joy. It's tedious and slow, and they break, but you've got the time and the money to absorb that. You know, in other words, if we, if we couldn't finish a scene on Tuesday because the dinosaur broke, we knew we could come back on Wednesday. We weren't, like, up against it, right? We had a certain amount of flexibility also because it was COVID, and no one was gonna say, "You're a day behind."

54:39Jawad MirYeah. Right. And you know, w… when you're, when you're on a film, whether it's Jurassic or, you know, Michael Bay films or anything else… How, and I know the director's always, like, interacting with the cast and making sure the performances are kinda coming out, and, you know, you're working with your crew. But how much, has there been any kind of involvement, you know, working with actors on your part, aside from, you know, schmoozing and socializing off set?

55:10John SchwartzmanWell, I always talk to them about, you know, hey, you could... When we rehearse, I'm always like, "You can do whatever you want, but when we come back from the rehearsal and I've lit it, I need you to hit your marks." You know? I'm a... We've lost the, skill, with the younger actors have lost the skills that the older actors had, which is they c… knowing how to hit marks without making it look like they're hitting marks, right? Sean Connery never missed a mark in his life on The Rock. I mean, it was so ingrained in him, b… especially back in the day when, you know, you had brood arcs and the film was ASA 20. You had, if you were out of your light, you were gonna be dark, right? You weren't gonna have a nice close-up.

55:55Jawad MirYeah.

55:55John SchwartzmanSo, but, you know, I'll talk to the actors about, "I think this," or, "Can you slow that down? We're on a Technocrane. We, when you get up to start the run, let us get up to speed before you really, you know, give me 100%." But I would never say to Chris Pratt, "Hey, I think you were a little big on that one. Why don't you try bringing it down?" That's, that's, that's a director work.

56:18Jawad MirYeah. And I think, do you think it's probably because we live in such a fast-paced society now, where everything is, like, you know, going faster than anything else, and people are... Like, when I, when I say people, I mean, like, actors, you know, when they're not meet, young actors, when they're not meeting their mark. Do you, do you feel it has anything to do with the way the society has become?

56:38John SchwartzmanI don't, I just think it's the fact that they're not being trained in the way that they were. I think that it was a lot harder. There's, look, there's a lot more production going on…

56:49Jawad MirOh, God

56:49John Schwartzman... In the last three years than there ever has been, so a lot of people are getting their opportunities, which is a great thing. But a lot of them don't have the technical background that the great actors of the '60s and '70s and '80s had, you know? So when you... I did a movie with Donald Sutherland, you know?

57:11John SchwartzmanDonald Sutherland, he's gonna hit his mark every time, because he doesn't think about it's just he's been trained to do that, right? It's second nature to him.

57:21Jawad MirYeah.

57:21John SchwartzmanYou know, if I'm sh… and obviously, when you're shooting over-the-shoulder shots, that's where things, you know, if you lean too much one way or the other, you can block the shot and gotta go again. The more experienced actors understand, "Oh, you're over my left shoulder. I'll put my weight on my right foot. I'm not gonna..."

57:39Jawad MirYeah.

57:39John SchwartzmanYou know, and I don't have to say anything. Sometimes with younger actors, you bring them back to the monitor and you go, "Look, when you do this, if you do it this way, this is the problem. We have to go again." 'Cause it's, look, it's, it's a technical medium, right? It's not theater. It's, it's very much about every shot has its specific requirements, and if y… if everybody does their thing as a team, then you get the best results. The shot's gonna be in focus. The dolly's gonna land right when the actor stops. Whatever the criteria is for that shot.

58:20Jawad MirRight. And John, how big is your cinematography crew? Obviously, it varies probably depending on the budget of the film. But average, like, you work with the same group of people, like, whether it's the…

58:31John SchwartzmanI used to work with the same group of people. But now that I've been spending... I mean, I have a, I have a crew that I work with in the UK that, you know, is, I, you know, the way the camera department breaks down is I'm the director of photography. I, if we have one camera, then I have a camera operator, I have a focus puller, and I have a second assistant, and we have a loader, whether that's film or digital. If we have two cameras, then you just double that. So generally speaking, on most movies I do, and especially during COVID, we always had two cameras, even if we were gonna shoot one, just because somebody might test positive, and you wanted to keep everybody within the testing cycle. So it was a way of, like, having players on the bench in the Premier League, right? I mean, it was just a way to, you paid guys, and you hoped that they didn't have to work. But if they did, they were there, and they were within the COVID protocol, whatever the rules were at whatever given time. As of today, there is no more COVID.

59:32John SchwartzmanSo…

59:32Jawad MirYeah, that's great

59:33John Schwartzman... There's no more COVID protocol.

59:34Jawad MirYeah.

59:35John SchwartzmanSo you know, a camera crew would be nine people. And then, you know, between the grip and electric department, it's probably another 16 people, so that's what? 26, 27 people make up my team on a big movie.

59:52Jawad MirThat's, yeah, that's a pretty good size. I, and not…

59:53John SchwartzmanIt's a good size.

59:55Jawad MirYeah, not to take away from anybody in any team, whether it's your team or any team, you know, elec… the op, camera operator, all these people have important jobs. But I always find one profession in the camera department that doesn't get n… talked about much is focus puller. And…

1:00:11John SchwartzmanIt's the hardest job on the set.

1:00:13Jawad MirIt is. I mean, everything is dependent on that, right?

1:00:17John SchwartzmanIt's…

1:00:17Jawad MirAnd I wish there was some sort of category at the Academy.

1:00:21John SchwartzmanIt's the hard, it's the hardest job on the set. The day's work is in your hand right here. It is, it is by far the most s… you know, oh, my job can be stressful, but every single shot is stressful for a focus puller, and including making sure the equipment's properly maintained. I mean, on the last movie, we were out, and I kept looking at, this ca… I was, you know, looking at the A camera, and I was like… Something's wrong. These lenses aren't coming up the way they should. And of course, we took the lens off, put the camera on a columnator, and realized the back focus was off. You know, need... We couldn't shim it on set, but we sent it back to the rental house. You know, so the first assistant has to have a wide range of skills to understand how all this equipment works as well. Or, "Hey, this, the iris on this lens doesn't feel right anymore. Let's send it back to get it serviced." You know, it's just not only pulling focus, but it's understanding how every piece of equipment on that camera truck works.

1:01:27John SchwartzmanIt's a really hard job.

1:01:31Jawad MirYeah. No, I bet. I mean, I can do a lot of things on set, you know, if I have to, but focus pulling is, you know, it's mo… the, sometimes it's... I realized that when I was doing, live events, that obviously, you know, you don't have a budget for a focus puller. You're just focus puller yourself.

1:01:50John SchwartzmanRight.

1:01:51Jawad MirAnd it just teaches you so much about the appreciation of, you know, making sure everything stays in focus. Because in events, things are moving. It's not like, you know, everybody's locked on their spot and you're not, you know?

1:02:03John SchwartzmanWell, and the other thing is that s… there are certain, some focus pullers are better storytellers than others. So, you know, you have certain focus pullers, when the director says, "Hey, I want you to rack from here to here," and some just have the right nuance, which is, "I'm not gonna do a hard, fast rack. I'm not gonna…"

1:02:23Jawad MirYeah

1:02:23John Schwartzman... "do a slow rack, but I'm..." And that's storytelling, right? And obviously, Spielberg and Janusz and Bob Smathers, or whoever is pulling focus, they're really in tune to that, which is, "Hey, we're gonna do a slow roll here." 'Cause that is part of the language of storytelling visually. And it's not, it is certainly not appreciated by producers, that's for sure, in terms of the salaries, 'cause those guys should be making more money than they make.

1:02:52Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it's so true. It's so true. And one of the things, one of the films that you worked on which came around the same time as Truman Show did, and, Ed TV.

1:03:08John SchwartzmanWhich, to me, so the issue with Ed TV was it was 10 years ahead of its time, right?

1:03:14Jawad MirWay ahead.

1:03:16John SchwartzmanRight. So E… I love Ed TV. I think it's a really interesting movie. Technically, it was incredibly challenging, because we were shooting live video and film at the same time, and putting the live video on monitors, and trying to keep the frame delay as short as possible. So I think we, th… literally the video came out of the beta cam, went into a truck, got converted to 24 frames, went back out into a monitor, and I think we were only one frame behind, which in its day was a huge technical achievement that, Matt Morrissey, our sort of video engineer, was able to help craft. And the movie just did not spark with the, an audience back in its day. But all you have to do is turn on TV, and it's the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

1:04:08Jawad MirYeah.

1:04:09John SchwartzmanHell, that's what Ed TV was. You know? It just, we were doing it, when we made that movie, MTV had some show where they had all these cameras in a house, and they put the young kids in it. That was the only reality show. And I think we were just…

1:04:26Jawad MirI think I know which one you're talking about. Yeah, I think I know which one.

1:04:28John SchwartzmanI can't remember the name of it, but we were just ahead of our time. 'Cause I think the movie made very interesting social statements, and it's a really fun, good movie, but we just, we were just 10 years too early.

1:04:43Jawad MirWell, I mean, even if you look at, forget about, you know, reality TV, if you look at the arc of, Matthew McConaughey's character, how he wanted all that stuff, and then later, it, you know, how it affected him, mentally, I mean, that's social media for you now. Like, when you know…

1:04:57John SchwartzmanExactly

1:04:57Jawad Mir... You so much of it. It has such a toll on you. Think fame, and, you know, being in front of the people and the world is gonna make you feel better about yourself, but over time it doesn't.

1:05:08John SchwartzmanI would never trade places with a famous actor for all the money in the world. I…

1:05:15Jawad MirYeah

1:05:15John Schwartzman... The lo… the loss of anonymity would be just crushing. And in today's world, where everybody's basically got a movie camera on their phone…

1:05:24Jawad MirI know

1:05:24John Schwartzman... You know, you're screwed.

1:05:27Jawad MirIt's just

1:05:27John SchwartzmanYou know, with the film business was very insular. I certainly witnessed lots of bad behavior by movie stars on set, who had tantrums or whatever. But it never left the set. Those stories never got out, because if they did, your career was over, right?

1:05:45Jawad MirYeah.

1:05:45John SchwartzmanSo you just, you were like, "Okay, so-and-so's have, Julia Roberts is having a bad day today." We're all allowed to have bad days. I have bad days, you know?

1:05:54Jawad MirOf course.

1:05:54John SchwartzmanNowadays, forget it. You're screwed.

1:05:57Jawad MirWell, I mean, it happened with Tom Cruise when his audio got leaked.

1:06:00John SchwartzmanYeah.

1:06:01Jawad MirYou know, with, during the COVID.

1:06:03John SchwartzmanYeah.

1:06:03Jawad MirAnd it is scary. And one thing I don't know who I was having a discussion with, people, you know, let's say celebrities, like, when I say celebrities, let's say actors and actresses, like, caliber of Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, George Clooney, you know, they can't go to a gas station to fill up gas without being…

1:06:22John SchwartzmanThey cannot.

1:06:23Jawad MirAnd that's something that you know, me and maybe even yourself, we probably take it as a gr… you know, for granted, as a benefit. And, you know…

1:06:31John SchwartzmanNo, nobody knows who I am.

1:06:33Jawad MirYeah.

1:06:34John SchwartzmanYou know? Which is great. I mean, I get to do my job, and no one knows who I am, yet I get to entertain, you know, a billion people over the course of my career. And I must say, it's lovely. It's a great, it's a great privilege to get to do what I do. I still enjoy showing up every day on set. I certainly prefer, and what made Jurassic I and III a lot of fun, and III more fun in some respects than I was the fact that it was all in front of the camera.

1:07:10John SchwartzmanThe, all the dinosaurs were being puppeteered. I, you know, I just finished a movie with Jennifer Lopez, and she's lovely, but so much of it is, foreground set and a green screen background. And I don't, you know, I kind of know what the background is 'cause I have to inform how I'm supposed to light the foreground, yet that background is in someone else's hands to create later. And that's a very difficult way to work as a cinematographer versus walking outside and going, "Wow, I think it's gonna be cloudy today. We thought we were gonna shoot this in the sun. How do we embrace this? Do we try to overpower the clouds by over-lighting it with hard light and making it feel like it's sunny? Do we embrace the clouds?" I mean, that's the joy of walking outside with actors and putting it in front of the camera versus being on a stage with an actor in a motion base and a screen behind them, and the planet's supposed to be on fire, and you're like, "Okay, what, where is the fire coming from? Is the fire over here? Is it over there?" "Well, we don't know yet." And it's like, "All right. Well, I'm gonna do what I think looks good, and then you can follow my lead later."

1:08:27Jawad MirYeah.

1:08:27John SchwartzmanAnd that's more challenging than going and standing in the middle of the road in, Texas with sh… with Woody Harrelson and Kevin Costner and doing a dialogue scene where they're standing next to a 1932 Ford, right?

1:08:43Jawad MirYeah.

1:08:43John SchwartzmanThere's a great joy in the simplicity of that. I mean, it's never simple, but you go home… ... At the end of the day and you have it all in the camera.

1:08:54Jawad MirNo, I completely get that, and I, and I totally appreciate. I mean, that's one thing that I love about, you know, Tom Cruise's films or even Spielberg films is that the practicality of sets and locations and all that. And, you know, it…

1:09:10John SchwartzmanYeah, I mean, look. I mean, Maverick was an incredible experience as a movie.

1:09:16Jawad MirYeah. It was.

1:09:18John SchwartzmanI mean, the fact that they put all those actors in those planes made a huge difference.

1:09:24Jawad MirThat's what made the movie, period. I mean, I think that's…

1:09:27John SchwartzmanYeah

1:09:27Jawad Mir... What it, what it was and if anything else. But

1:09:29John SchwartzmanI mean, I'm sure the actors probably would've rather been on a motion base 'cause I think a lot of them got sick. But it certainly, you could see it, and it was, it gave a level of reality that was real. I mean, it was insane.

1:09:45Jawad MirYeah. I mean, I have to tell you, I, the, I was talking about the shower scene, from The Rock with you earlier. You know, whenever I'm making a film or trying to figure out a scene in post, I will watch certain films like The Godfather being one of them, or I watch Forrest Gump or Schindler's List or Jurassic Park. But for that shower scene, for some reason, I don't know, it got stuck in my head all these years, and I, that's what I always think about when I think about The Rock. So I had a feature document, feature narrative documentary about a protagonist and follow them through, a detention center, and the end sequence, the way I cut it, I don't, it's, it has nothing to do with The Rock scene of the shower. But I watched that scene over and over again, and that inspired me to cut that and be… in terms of the way the angles of the shots were and the cuts. It was nothing like that, but I just wanna let you know that how inspirational that scene was.

1:10:42John SchwartzmanOh, that's, well, you should thank Richard for that as well. I mean…

1:10:45Jawad MirWell, I did that.

1:10:46John SchwartzmanOne of the things that... So remember, this was an era also when if you shot something in slow motion, you couldn't bring it back to 24 frames, right?

1:10:56Jawad MirRight.

1:10:56John SchwartzmanNow there's software where if you shoot within a multiple of 24, you can take it back. If you shoot 72 and you go, "You know, I want this to be 24," yes, the shutter angle is slightly different, but you can do that and it's, and it's fine. You couldn't do that in '92 or '93 when we were making The Rock. I will say Michael had a great understanding of how to intermix m… 24 frames, 48, 72, 96, 120. He was incredibly skilled at mixing frame rates within a scene without…

1:11:37Jawad MirYeah

1:11:37John Schwartzman... And it didn't take you out of the scene. It actually sucked you into it even more.

1:11:43Jawad MirYeah, I mean, there's a lot of directors that have tried to mimic Michael, and they don't even come remotely…

1:11:48John SchwartzmanNo

1:11:48Jawad Mir... Close. I mean, there's, there has been a lot of attempts, but it just doesn't work. It's be… it's, it's, it's not in their DNA. I mean, Michael's DNA is different than Steven Spielberg's and…

1:11:56John SchwartzmanCorrect

1:11:56Jawad Mir... You know, your DNA is different than Janusz Kamiński, so it's…

1:11:59John SchwartzmanRight

1:11:59Jawad Mir... It's that, 100%. What are you working on now?

1:12:03John SchwartzmanI just finished a movie called Grand Death Lotto.

1:12:08Jawad MirOkay.

1:12:08John SchwartzmanAnd I think it's based on a video game, and it's a movie I did with Paul Feig. It's my fourth movie with Paul. Paul did Bridesmaids. And Paul and I went to college together, and it's a movie with…

1:12:20Jawad MirRight

1:12:20John Schwartzman... John Cena and Awkwafina, and it's a, it's kind of a raunchy action movie that I think is gonna be really fun. I finished it, technically I finished it last week. We did, I mean, I, granted the writers' strike happened.

1:12:37Jawad MirRight.

1:12:37John SchwartzmanBut I did a couple of days of just doing visual effects plates for, the movie. I, 'cause we shot some scenes in cars against blue screen, and I had to go out and shoot the exterior plates. So I did that last week, and now I'm technically off, which is nice.

1:12:56Jawad MirThat's good. Paul Feig also did, I think, Freaks and Geek. I think he came around…

1:13:00John SchwartzmanYeah

1:13:00Jawad Mir... The same time as Judd Apatow, right?

1:13:02John SchwartzmanYep. Yep, he did.

1:13:03Jawad MirYeah. Great. I didn't know that.

1:13:05John SchwartzmanYeah, he's a very smart, funny director, and I enjoy working with him. He's a lot of fun. He's not a… the visual stylist that Michael Bay is, but that's okay. It's always fun to, as a cinematographer, s… stretch yourself in different ways, you know?

1:13:24Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree 100%. Is there a particular director that you would love to work with that you haven't yet?

1:13:31John SchwartzmanBoy, that's a tough question to ask. I mean, yeah, Billy Wilder, but he doesn't exist anymore, right? I mean, of the, of the modern directors, no. I think I work... The ones I work with I enjoy. I'm always happy to see really good work by other people. I think the Daniels are brilliant. But, you know, I don't know if I would be the right guy to shoot a movie for the Daniels. They know exactly what they want and how they're doing it.

1:13:59Jawad MirYeah.

1:13:59John SchwartzmanI certainly really enjoy, Paul and Colin and, John Lee Hancock in particular. They're, they're all different directors, but they're all, good storytellers. John Lee Hancock and Paul are also both screenwriters, which is a really... And so is Colin, actually. So most of the directors I work with are also screenwriters, which is a great advantage when you're on set and everything goes ass over tea kettle, because they have the skill to figure out a way out of the problem. And it's a great, it's a, it's a great skill and it's a great, relief to know that these people... 'Cause sometimes you show up and you're expecting something, and maybe the location just didn't work out the way you thought or the weather's wrong or…

1:14:48John Schwartzman... And when you've got somebody who also wrote the script, y… they're very adept at rolling with the punches. And as you know, making films, nothing ever goes according to plan.

1:15:00Jawad MirNever. Never does.

1:15:02John SchwartzmanNever. Never does for me. You're always going to plan B.

1:15:06Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, or…

1:15:07John SchwartzmanYou know, or plan C.

1:15:09Jawad MirYeah.

1:15:09John SchwartzmanAnd I always…

1:15:09Jawad MirYeah

1:15:09John Schwartzman... I'm, I'm very well-prepared. I spend a lot of time pr… how I prep the movie, and I prep it for, obviously, this is the best case scenario. If that doesn't work out, here's another way to go. If that doesn't work out, I don't like this way, but this is one more way to get us out of this problem.

1:15:29Jawad MirYeah. Adapting is such an important part, and I find it such a simple thing. But I've seen people, you know, not for wrong reason, that people will just freak out, like, trying to come up with solution. But unfortunately, there's only one thing to, you have to do to move forward, is figure out a solution. Now, it may not be 100% the way you wanted it, but unless you make a decision and you move forward, everybody's gonna be just standing there doing nothing.

1:15:56John SchwartzmanRight. And I think that, Kevin Costner said something to me one day. He said... It was a very interesting line, and I've, I've, I've used it a lot. Kevin said to me one day, he said, "Coverage makes cowards of us all," and that if you can tell the entire scene in one shot, that's the best way to do it.

1:16:18Jawad MirYep.

1:16:19John SchwartzmanAnd he's right. I mean, granted, we still shoot coverage, but I was very moved by... 'Cause he obviously, look, he won an Oscar for Best Director for Dances with Wolves.

1:16:28Jawad MirYeah.

1:16:28John SchwartzmanHe's a very bright man. And, you know, you listen to him, you know? And I thought he was, it was an interesting... And I think it was because we were, we were, like, there was a storm coming in. We're outside, we're in Louisiana, it's The Highwaymen, and we've got a two-page scene to do, but we were, with lightning and everything, we're gonna get shut down. And I think John Lee and I said, "Well, why don't we just have them walk away from us in a two-shot? We'll be on their backs. Worst case scenario, if you have to change the dialogue, you can do that in post. And, but look at h… look at this tableau. It's beautiful." And, you know, that's what we did. And I remember s… and we were like, "Okay, we got it." And we were all sort of like, you know, "Okay, there's no coverage." And Kevin said, "Yeah, well, coverage makes cowards of us all. This is a great way to shoot that scene."

1:17:21Jawad MirYeah. I couldn't agree more, and I think having limitations on people and then people finding way to break those rules and limitations is the best way when a film makes, you know…

1:17:32John SchwartzmanIt's, yeah, it's the only way to be creative. If you have all the time and money…

1:17:36Jawad MirYeah

1:17:37John Schwartzman... Y… you're, you're gonna screw it up.

1:17:39Jawad MirNo, then you're gonna screw up the story. You're gonna screw up the story…

1:17:41John SchwartzmanYeah

1:17:41Jawad Mir... 100%. And, you know, one last thing. You've done music videos, you've done commercials, you know, you've done lots of feature film. Ever thought about doing a doc?

1:17:53John SchwartzmanI never have. I don't, you know... I, it's one of those things where, I know Roger Deakins started his career doing documentaries, and I will say that I love documentaries. And this streaming has been the greatest thing that ever happened to documentary filmmakers, right? 'Cause now their stuff gets exhibited. And certainly, as a member of the Academy, you know, I get every documentary to see, and I probably, I may fall behind on feature films, but I never fi… fall behind on documentaries. And I do, I really enjoy them. It would, I would... It's not something I would say, ever say no to. I just don't know if…

1:18:31John Schwartzman... Where my skillset is, you know?

1:18:34Jawad MirRight. Well, the fact that you watch documentaries, and you watch a lot of them, I would be honored if you took some time to watch, at least two of my films, feature narrative documentaries…

1:18:44John SchwartzmanOkay

1:18:44Jawad Mir... If you have some time.

1:18:46John SchwartzmanYeah. What are they?

1:18:47Jawad MirThey're not on streaming platforms. They're just, for now, they are on Vimeo on Demand, and they're gonna get onto some other platforms. One of them is called Citizen of Moria. If you Google Citizen of Moria, citizen and O-F M-O-R-I-A.

1:19:03John SchwartzmanYeah, I see the poster behind you.

1:19:05Jawad MirYeah, and then In Search of My Sister. They're both narrative feature documentaries that I actually directed simultaneously two years before COVID and going into COVID, and then spent post during COVID. But I would love for... I mean, we've done so many screenings around the world, US Capitol Hill, Euro Parliament. They're human rights, but they're very, central focus. There's an arc on both characters. If you like documentaries, you will, you will definitely enjoy them.

1:19:34John SchwartzmanI will check them out, and I will recommend one. It's called Circle in the Square: The Story of Hypnosis, and it's directed by Anton Corbijn, you know, who did The American and was a huge, still photographer, and has directed…

1:19:50Jawad MirYeah

1:19:50John Schwartzman... Feature films. I don't know where to see it exactly, but it is the story of these two guys in England who were the big, the big, record album cover guys. And, it's their story, and it's a really fabulous documentary. Or Circling the Square, or I may... But it's the story of hypnosis.

1:20:17Jawad MirLet me just see if I can find it. I've actually sent you the link in the chat to both the films. Squaring the Circle, you mean?

1:20:26John SchwartzmanYeah, Squaring the Circle.

1:20:28Jawad MirYeah. Okay, I'll take a look at that. I've sent you the link, but if you want, like, a private link, I'd be happy to send it to your agent, and she can pass it on to you.

1:20:36John SchwartzmanPerfect. That would be great.

1:20:38Jawad MirGreat. Listen, John, this has been phenomenal. I don't know if you how much time you have in the next few months. I would love to chat with you for a couple of more films before you get busy again.

1:20:48John SchwartzmanJust, you can always reach out, and if I'm around, I'd be more than happy to chat.

1:20:52Jawad MirPerfect. Thank you so much for your time, sir.

1:20:54John SchwartzmanOh, you're very welcome. Thank you.