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[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00] John Knoll: Just comped it in as you would expect. But man, does it look good! You have no idea that the ship is a miniature or was added later.

[00:00:12] Jenny Ely: Welcome to the Lighter Darker podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. Thank you for joining us for our 14th episode. That is 14 of 20 episodes planned for our first season, releasing every other Tuesday. It's great to have you with us, and I am not Rob Bredow, I am Jenny Ely, producer of Lighter Darker. Rob is actually out on vacation, so I am stepping up this week to co host with Todd Vaziri.

Hi Todd!

[00:00:40] Todd Vaziri: Hey, Todd Vaziri here, compositing supervisor and artist at ILM.

[00:00:45] Jenny Ely: Yes, and we work together at ILM in the VFX, animation and immersive entertainment industries. Today's guest started his career as a technical assistant at ILM. He went on to become a visual effects supervisor for franchises such as Star Trek, Mission Impossible, and Star Wars. He is the co creator of Photoshop and won an Academy Award in visual effects for Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest.

And most recently, he was the visual effects supervisor for Skeleton Crew, streaming on Disney Plus. We are, of course, talking about our very own John Knoll. Welcome to the show, John.

[00:01:19] John Knoll: Hello.

[00:01:20] Jenny Ely: I think Todd maybe wanted to just ask you one question about your bio.

[00:01:24] John Knoll: Oh, hit me. Yeah.

[00:01:26] Todd Vaziri: What is one thing? that you've done in the past that maybe people don't, it doesn't end up on that intro paragraph for John Knoll. Like,

[00:01:34] John Knoll: Hmm.

[00:01:34] Todd Vaziri: a thing that you'd like to share that maybe doesn't get shared very often?

[00:01:39] John Knoll: Um, back in 2008, I participated in the, uh Colbert Green Screen Challenge. Um, and two of my entries made its way onto the show.

[00:01:50] Todd Vaziri: Yeah.

[00:01:50] Jenny Ely: more. Tell us more.

[00:01:52] Todd Vaziri: Jenny, we might have to do a whole show about the

Colbert green screen challenge

[00:01:56] John Knoll: Hmm.

[00:01:56] Jenny Ely: know. I thought he was going to be like, I'm a professional crochet artist on the side, but this is like very cool. What did you do?

[00:02:03] John Knoll: I'm sure you all remember, there was a speech that John McCain gave against a bright green background, and Colbert made a bit out of, well, it was very kind of him to film this against a green screen so that, we can do whatever we like with this, or something like that. It was not a particularly exciting or energetic speech, so the idea was, Put something exciting back there to make it interesting. And, uh, and I was actually on vacation with my family when that episode aired. And, you know, there was a link to where to download the green screen footage. And. I decided to download it and I had a couple of ideas of things that I thought would be funny and, uh, and so I started playing with them and I just, I started making myself laugh by doing some of this and thought, okay, I, I've got to upload this.

So I uploaded one and then I started thinking about doing another one and a little bit elaborate one, and I did those, and they made their way onto the air, and it was kind of amusing. A little bit later, I got an email from, uh, from some staffer on the Colbert Report, saying, hey, um, would you be interested in a, position with us, you know, creating digital media. I said, you know, I've, I've got a day job. Uh, it keeps me pretty busy, so I don't think I'm available, but thank you.

[00:03:30] Todd Vaziri: Oh, that is good.

[00:03:31] Jenny Ely: That is so funny. You should have taken it. That should have just been, I'm retiring from ILM. Oh my god, that's so funny.

[00:03:38] Todd Vaziri: I remember the Elvis one that you did of John McCain playing the guitar, and I think you had some rights issues with the music as well, it was playing an Elvis song.

[00:03:48] Jenny Ely: That's so funny. Uh, yeah, I remember when you remember when the queen of England wore that fluorescent green outfit and everyone was doing green screen on her outfit. That's, it's so funny. It's just a gift when anything green screen happens.

okay. Well, that's excellent. Excellent. Um, bio point. So, uh, On today's show, we're going to do an ongoing feature, one final, one CBB, where we ask John about a show that he's worked on, where he had one final shot that he loved, and one final shot that could have been a little bit better. We're also going to talk about Skeleton Crew, the new Star Wars show on Disney Plus. We're going to take some questions from the mailbag, and of course we're going to end with the martini.

[00:04:27] One Final, One CBB

[00:04:27] Jenny Ely: So we're going to start out with one final, one CBB. So John, you want to tell us, do you want to start with your final and then we'll go into your CBB?

[00:04:37] John Knoll: Um, you know, it's always a difficult thing. You know, which one of your Children do you love the most? I love them all. Um,Picking something that I feel still really holds up well, I was super pleased with how it turned out and I don't feel like you can look at it and see any evidence of fakery in there anywhere, is we did a shot on Pirates 2 where Will arrives at the Cannibal Island and he's kind of wading up through the surf and it's a big helicopter shot, and he was knew where to, uh, go because he saw the black pearl was careened up on the beach.

And we had a big helicopter plate. and we had a, uh, set piece that was built that was just a, a black shape to represent the hull of the black pearl, but it wasn't, uh, didn't have any finishes on it. It was only sort of the right shape, but it was something to cast shadows. And, uh, we took our 24 foot model of the black Pearl and we match-moved the helicopter plate. And we had that so that it could run on a motion control system. and we had that 24 foot model, careened up on a tabletop that we dressed to look like sand, And. Just comped it in as you would expect. But man, does it look good! Um, I feel like that's completely convincing. You have no idea that the ship is a miniature or was added later. It's just, you know, I think pretty seamless. Very pleased with how that turned out.

[00:06:11] Todd Vaziri: It's such a gorgeous shot. The, the match move not only had to be perfect on the helicopter plate, but then to have it scaled and translated back to the miniature and then have it all comp together and any sub-pixel you know, there's, you could look at that with a microscope and it seems like everything just matches perfectly in terms of camera motion. Um, that is a beautiful shot. I love that shot.

[00:06:38] John Knoll: Uh, and then C. B. B. Um, I'll use another one from Pirates and the first Pirates film. There's a scene. I think it's the first time we meet Elizabeth as an adult, and she's asleep and, you know, darkened bedroom and she doesn't want to get up and the maid comes to the window and pulls the curtains open and, you know, all this light streams in and, it was tricky because this is one of those, classic, Daytime interior with a window, and we just had a blue screen out there, and uh, it was my own failure to not spot what the problem was going to be and have the appropriate conversations on set about this. but our DP was Dariusz Wolski's fantastic DP. Um, you know, emotionally, what's supposed to happen is it's bright, you know, it's dark in the room, and then she opens the curtains and this bright light streams, and it's like, supposed to be, sort of, annoyingly bright. And Elizabeth is sort of upset that she's being dragged out of bed against her will. and so it was lit that way with a fair amount of bright light coming in through the window. And you know, had a blue screen out there that was appropriately exposed and all of that. So I had all the tools. I needed to do this right. uh, but then in post, I realized that the way this was shot once the Windows were open was that that background should be way, way overexposed, and that was really not what Gore wanted for that moment. In fact, we were trying very deliberately to set up a bunch of geography. related to the, um, where Port Royal is. And there was a piton on one side and there's this fort on the other side. And so when the curtain opened, he wanted to see the piton on the distance so that you kind of know where the governor's mansion was Uh, so it was important that when those curtains open that you, you can really see the landscape out there.

[00:08:31] Todd Vaziri: immediately see the landscape.

[00:08:32] John Knoll: Yeah.

[00:08:33] Todd Vaziri: Gotcha.

[00:08:34] John Knoll: And so then it was a matter of trying to make it bright and darken the plate enough and then sort of do a fake iris pull as we pull back. But, I was never really happy with how that turned out, partly because now that I became aware of those sorts of problems of discussing intent with all the stakeholders on set. And I'm vigilant about discussing those things, but it just didn't occur to me.

And that's something that's really pretty common is that when there's a blue screen on set, people sort of tune out the blue screen and they only think about what's in front of the blue screen. but That's really important to go through the whole thought process of what's going to go where the blue screen is. How do you want to expose it? How does that affect what you're shooting in the foreground? Don't just tune it out and assume you'll fix it later. That's one I have some regrets about.

[00:09:28] Todd Vaziri: in terms of photographic realism, and if they had shot, if you had been on location and shot it in the daytime and built a set and everything, just done an in camera thing. Um, do you think like, cause the discussions would have happened, like how, how fast can we do the iris rack to,

[00:09:45] John Knoll: Exactly. If instead of that being a blue screen that really was a view to daytime exterior, then all those issues of the contrast range. Um, and it is darker inside than outside. And how do you make this play Gore and Dariusz could have had that discussion about. No, no, I want to be able to, like, really see the blue in the sky and the detail there. And then as we come in, I need to be able to see Elizabeth's face. And so do we do this as an iris pull or do we reduce the contrast to the scene filling in the interior room? those kinds of things. But, because there was a blue screen out there, you know, everybody, including me, just sort of tuned it out. And then we didn't think about it until we got into post. So important lesson. Think about where the blue screen goes.

[00:10:30] Jenny Ely: All right. Good advice.

[00:10:31] Skeleton Crew

[00:10:31] Jenny Ely: Well, we want to dive into our main topic now, which is Skeleton Crew. So I'm going to turn it over to Todd and then we will get into some mailbag questions a little bit later.

[00:10:40] Todd Vaziri: Sure, yeah. Skeleton Crew, the new Star Wars series, now on Disney Plus Uh, all episodes available. Um, I have a feeling that we're going to be talking about the entire show in its entirety. So if you're a spoiler averse, you should go and just watch the whole season right now. but uh, I, we're, we're probably going to be talking about stuff that's revealed on the show. So there's your warning. John, uh, you've worked on a few Star Wars projects over the years. and in the post feature film and the Mandoverse, uh, TV series as well. But how did you get involved with the Skeleton Crew? What were some of your earliest discussions and how did you get involved?

[00:11:17] John Knoll: I think it was with, uh, in a discussion with Rob about, uh, you know, upcoming projects. And, uh, he mentioned that there was a Star Wars series, in the works and, would I be interested in being department head on it. And I said, well, absolutely. I, you know, especially since this is under the umbrella of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, sort of in the Mandoverse in a way, even though there's no direct connection, it was gonna be done at Manhattan Beach Studios, which had a lot of appeal as well, because it's relatively close. uh, you know, next thing was I read some scripts, uh, read through it and it was really funny and, uh, I liked the sense of humor. And then. A little bit after that, I met with John Watts and Chris Ford, and I really like them a lot. John Watts is, uh, is, in a lot of ways an ideal client. Um, he's, a really smart guy. He's got a really good attitude. He's, he's got, uh, a really good perspective about what's important and what isn't. and he is, I found very easy to work with, and one of the first conversations I had with him once uh, I signed up and we started on the show was, how do you want the show to run? And, you know, what are his preferences for how we review shots?

And, you know, one of the things I always like to talk to a client about is or get a sense of is how early can I show something?

Because, you know, all things being equal, I would rather show something in a relatively early state if I can get good, meaningful feedback from the director, because. I want to be sure that they're happy with where we're going. I don't want to burn the whole budget to make what looks like a finished looking shot to discover that no, no, we want to do something else entirely. And now, you know, we're, we're over budget. So the earliest period I can get some feedback, the better. And he had just finished a whole series of those, uh, Spider Man. Homecoming and Far From Home and all those movies. So he has done a fair amount of visual effects work, so he was pretty familiar with the process. And he said, no, no, please show me stuff early. I'm happy to comment on things in early states. I won't get confused so that was great. And it was really nice to be able to show things in these early states. Get a sense of, um, Oh, no, let's go a little wider with this, or I want that to be faster, or I imagine this some other way. Uh, early enough that I could just steer the boat a little bit in that direction and, and not, uh, not do a major rework on something that was in a finished state. Um, you know, these shows aren't cheap to do.

And, you know, even just the way that the show was written, uh, there were a lot of things that were, kind of on the, the expensive end, you know, that the number of different places we go. You know, we'll go to a lot of different planets. And even when we're on one planet, we're never in any one environment for very long. So we don't get to amortize the development of any environment assets over a lot of shots. It's a lot of new things, one after the other. And you don't want to ask your client to compromise their vision like that's the last resort. What you try to do is see are there smart ways we can approach this work to make sure that it can fit in the box that they want. And so one of those for me is I wanted to give good turnovers to the artists when we, we start, uh, so that everybody has a pretty good understanding of what we think success means for this work and then to, uh, try to give really good, meaningful feedback to the artists in dailies so that we get to a final at the lowest take number that we can get. If I can reduce the number of iterations, so most of the time, the final that you see in the show is take three, you know, that's not take nine, you know, that that just means more bang for buck.

[00:15:01] Todd Vaziri: Yeah, well, at least from the ILM side, I think Jenny mentioned that I was the lead artist on the show. So I was on it for quite a while. Um, and from the ILM side, sending even rough animation takes to, John Watts and, Chris Ford, it was, uh, very easy to, to get feedback and direction from them, even from rough animation takes, and they got better and better as the show went along.

So I, you know, the, the, the ideal client, um, that really rings true, at least from my perspective as well.

[00:15:31] John Knoll: Yeah, it's very pleasant show to work on in that regard. And I've, I've been pretty lucky over the course of my career to, to work with a lot of really, uh, really great directors who are nice people as well.

[00:15:43] Todd Vaziri: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you oversaw the entire, uh, visual effects for the, uh, the season. Um, ILM and other vendors were involved as well. Um, what was the final shot count? You know, it's a, it's, it's a metric. But what was the shot count? Do you remember?

[00:15:59] John Knoll: Uh lower than you might think. It's, uh, 3, 200 shots for the whole season.

[00:16:05] Todd Vaziri: That's nothin.

[00:16:06] John Knoll: And, uh, well, that's, that's, Yeah, it definitely recalibrated my scale for what I think of as a, as a big show. Cause, you know, and I, I, started on Phantom Menace. That was, you know, for me, the biggest thing I'd ever worked on. I think it may have been the biggest thing that had ever been done up until that point. And it was just under 2000 shots.

And, you know, that seemed massive at the time. And then we went on to, I think, uh, Revenge of the Sith was 2, 400 shots, something like that. Um, and so those seemed like big shows. And then they became routine, you know, that, that, uh, oh, that's not the exception anymore. We're doing like six of those every summer. And so when you get on a big show like that, it still seems like a big task, and it's a lot of work to break down and parcel out and, uh, and just keep straight in your head. And now, you know, you get on a streaming show and, you know, I know, uh, Mando season two and. There were like 4, 000 and 4, 500 shots, something like that.

So this was a little bit less, and it's partly because of John Watts cinematography style. uh he's a big fan of Spielberg one er. The idea of trying to take multiple pieces of coverage and Do them as a one camera run. So you start on a close up and then the camera will pull back into a two shot and then pan over as another character comes in so that rather than three separate pieces of coverage, it's one longer bit. And so, as a result, even though the shot count is lower, I think the run time is, uh, similar to some of the previous series, um, partly because all the shots are longer.

[00:17:46] Todd Vaziri: Gotcha. yeah, we're going to probably be talking about Spielberg and the 80s influences for the show a little later.

In the early days of planning, when you're, you're getting scripts, you're getting, uh, art department, uh, renderings, and you're understanding where the locations are. How do you start, I mean, for a show like this, with this type of scale, stagecraft is going to be an incredible part of this. How do you even begin to classify, we're going to maybe do a location for this. We're going to do a partial set. Uh, we're going against a blue screen or a partial set against stagecraft. How does that kind of sort itself out as you're in the pre production stages?

[00:18:30] John Knoll: Oh yeah, well, there were a load of pre production meetings with, myself, Oliver Scholl, the production designer and Dave Klein and Sean Porter, the directors of photography, breaking down all the different environments that we had on the show and discussing methodology. and, Some of those, um, suggest themselves.

You know, there's, there's you know, the ravine that the kids find the spaceship in. That really needs to be daytime exterior. And the main question is, is it a location we can find, or is it a set that we need to build? And, you know, ultimately we decided probably needed to be something that we had control over and built locally. So that's a backlot set. and then you just go Methodically through all the different environments and talk about what the pros and cons are. Um, I find that, um, because of the work that goes into developing real time content for the LED screen, for that to amortize itself over, um, enough shots to make it worth making that investment try and get those in camera finals, uh, you know, scene needs to be more than about two pages long. And so that was one of my mental rules of thumb is if the scene is less than two pages, we shouldn't be doing this in the volume because we're going to burn a bunch of time developing this environment and making this investment. And we're not going to get enough of a payoff. It's probably better to shoot that as conventional set against a process screen if we need to do an extension. But, you know, the sweet spot, the place where you get the biggest bang for buck out of the volume is when you have a, you know, seven page scene or you're in that environment a lot. and. You know, all those multiple pages of dialogue, close ups of characters with the background, behind them, per shot charge that you do when it's a blue screen, like when I shoot something in front of a blue screen, every time you see it, every shot needs to go through a layout and compositing and and all of that phase. Um, but. you have an upfront cost in developing a 3d environment for the volume, but then once it's built, you can just keep shooting on it and shooting it on it and shooting on it. And you just have your production costs. You don't have any post costs on it.

[00:20:41] Todd Vaziri: One location that had many, many pages of, uh, uh, is the, uh, the Pirates, you know, the cove where all the other ships and the shuttle that takes them to the Pirates area, uh,

[00:20:52] John Knoll: Borgo.

[00:20:53] Todd Vaziri: yeah, and, so that was a, partial set, big set for the actors to walk around in, and in addition the LED screens behind them and in a virtual environment. Is that right?

[00:21:05] John Knoll: Yeah, that was a volume set. So, yeah, we filled the volume with a bunch of, you know, floor treatment and then a bunch of, uh, the, the stalls and, uh, stands and a bunch of extras stumbling about and it was designed so that it could be redressed. And I think we redressed it, uh, four times to be different parts of the spaceport. and, even if you only did minimal redressing, all right, we're going to swap these things and move that over there. If you change the content, it looked like something else entirely. So, Yeah, I think we got good value out of that one.

[00:21:35] Todd Vaziri: I want to ask about the um, the little shuttle that takes them from their ships back and forth, because I have a feeling this is a maybe a tail that wags the dog situation, because if you were going to film these kids in these, the shuttle, which ultimately, as we see on screen, Is, uh, bunch of basically layers of plastic with the, uh, of course, light refracting and reflecting all around. And if you were going to shoot that conventionally against a blue screen, um, somebody like me would probably like lose their minds because of like, Oh my gosh, we have to do all sorts of extra work, uh, to make that work. And that was a stagecraft load. Is that right? And, and how did, and what, what, led to what? Because. Once you know you're going to be doing that on the screens,

[00:22:21] John Knoll: Yeah.

[00:22:21] Todd Vaziri: you get all that in camera goodness, uh, for free.

[00:22:25] John Knoll: Well, if we had needed to shoot it in front of a blue screen, then I might have opted to not have the plastic present for all the reasons that you mentioned. But, uh, The way John and Chris described this, this little dinghy is they, they wanted it to look super sketchy and precarious. And you know, the plastic hasn't been uh, changed in years and there's been holes torn in it and they've just sort of taped over them and the whole thing is just supposed to look rickety and like, don't, don't, don't go in there. That's it's. This can't be good.

So when they get in there, the whole thing kind of, you know, springs around and you want the kids to have the feeling that this is not a good idea, I don't know if we should be doing this. The whole design of Borgo was meant to sort of evoke, you know, pirates. Uh, so that you know, this aqua environment is meant to feel like, you know, the water in the Caribbean. And then, uh, the, All the ships kind of moored there with all their docking lines and all of that. And then the dinghy was meant to be kind of like, well, when you park a boat in the harbor at, um, back in the 1700s, you go into a long boat and, uh, you know, row to shore. So it was meant to sort of evoke that.

[00:23:46] Todd Vaziri: Very cool. Um, for At Attin, especially in episode one, where, it's an environment that almost everybody can relate to, a relatively suburban environment, Um, shot mostly in daylight, particularly supposed to evoke the feeling of a lot of Spielberg 80s films. I was hoping you could talk, I mean that's also where I spent a lot of my time working on the show. Um, one of your, photography design philosophies is if you can shoot something that's supposed to be outside in broad daylight,

[00:24:18] John Knoll: Oh yeah.

[00:24:18] Todd Vaziri: Let's shoot it outside in broad daylight. Um, but you see the show and you see all of these homes, um, the, the streets, the sidewalks, can you talk about, uh, how much you built for real and

[00:24:31] John Knoll: yeah.

[00:24:31] Todd Vaziri: What we ended up doing with that footage?

[00:24:34] John Knoll: Yeah, I mean, originally we had ambitions to build more of it practically than we ended up doing.

Um, you know, they, I think the original intent was we were going to build a street sidewalk, uh, two or three lawns and the facades of like two houses. I think that was the original intent, But you know, as, as often happens, the budget reality of what you can really afford comes crashing down.

And, um, and we were told, uh, uh, we've got to economize. We've got to save some money here. We've got to cut this much out of the budget. Got to get it to fit into the box. so there were a number of deletions from that. And over the series of a number of rounds, you know what we're going to build practically shrank and shrank.

And we ended up with the street sidewalk. I think we had one lawn. Two driveways and just the facade of the, like the garage

door of one house. Uh, and then the rest was just a, you know, a big sea of blue screen. So, anytime you're in the neighborhood, I think there isn't a single shot that isn't a visual effect shot to extend the background and even things that you might not think are visual effects.

Like when we first meet Wim, and Neel. And they're doing their little play lightsaber fight in front of a playground. You know, that's all visual effects back there. There's, uh, you know, there was nothing. Practically there. So even just, you know, where you see them against, uh, trees that are blowing in the wind and, uh, a neighborhood house, that's all, uh, visual effects as well.

[00:26:07] Todd Vaziri: I spent, uh, as you well know, a lot of time on the shot of Wim, uh, leaving his house late for school, running across, leaving his house, jumping over onto the lawn and then running down the street. And what was great is that every single thing that he touched, was, you know, something that we're going to keep. He walked out of the little facade of the garage. One more foot and it's like literal nothingness. It's a, it's a blue screen back there. He jumps onto, uh, his own lawn and I think almost every step he takes is on real grass and he does go onto the sidewalk. Of course, Right, you know, literally two feet away from where he's running is a giant blue screen that's flagging off the sun.

He's going in and out of the sun. And what was really fun about that shot is that it was a real camera move, uh, real actors, real framing. I think we did a slight tilt up at the end of the shot so that we can actually, uh, see, like, the city downtown and orient ourselves. But, shooting, with a real Real camera, real daylight. Uh.

[00:27:16] John Knoll: A gigantic lens flare covering the whole frame.

[00:27:18] Todd Vaziri: Well, it wasn't that big, you know. I tried to keep it modest.

[00:27:24] John Knoll: Well, no, we shot a giant flare into it.

[00:27:26] Todd Vaziri: Oh yeah oh yeah, I had to fight that atleast it gave me something to match to.

[00:27:30] John Knoll: Oh yeah, I was feeling for you there. You know, I, all things being equal, is it better to shoot with the flare in there or not? I mean, I, I, don't know. We should talk sometime about whether that was a good idea to leave. Let's go ahead and shoot the flare in.

[00:27:44] Todd Vaziri: I'm more than happy to open up those files again and uh, reintroduce that trauma into my life. Um haha

[00:27:46] John Knoll: Anyway, Yeah I elected to go ahead and shoot with the flare. We'll figure it out. And, you know, doing that complicated split, we're replacing two thirds or three quarters of the frame and trying to get everything to blend perfectly with no seams through a giant lens flare. I appreciate that that was a big ask. So my apologies.

[00:28:10] Todd Vaziri: No, No, it was super, and just doing anything on At Attin, and uh, coming up with a lookbook of 80s Spielbergian films like some of the shots from ET and Close Encounters, heavily influenced the look of that, uh, that environment. So that was, it was a super blast, uh, to work on.

[00:28:28] John Knoll: Oh, yeah, I would get emails with

screen snapshots from Explorers and E. T. and all of that. Try from John Watts as references for, I think we had that shot, the establisher in the alley behind Fern's house or KB's house when they were working on the speeder. and it was supposed to look like dusk. And, you know, what does dusk really mean?

Is, you know, how late are we saying it is? And, yeah. John Watts pulled some references from Explorers and E. T. like, yeah, this is kind of what I want this to look like. It's really helpful. But it was clear, you know, where the influences were coming from.

[00:29:04] Todd Vaziri: Yeah, I did that shot of Neel and Wim walking. It's a, it's what it's, it's a lovely long shot of really nothing going on. Uh, you know, Neel's kicking that can, um, which is, you know, ultimately in great contrast with the whole rest of the series, which is just go, go, go. And, and, uh, it's meant to be, uh, in contrast to the action that they're seeing later. But when I saw that, I was like, Oh, this is like that one shot in ET, at Halloween when ET and, uh, Elliot and his brother are walking down the hill. And, uh, I remember that as an extremely dark contrasty shot with the sun back there. Um, we went, we did a lot of tests trying to evoke that

[00:29:48] John Knoll: Yeah. Well, it was also shifting around in the edit a little bit, you know, they were reordering some of the scenes of, um, you know, with KB and Fern in the garage working on the bike and, uh, uh, and Wim and Neel. They kept moving the scenes around to see, well, does it play better like this and then this? And so we're trying to have a meaningful progression of like how, you know, we're late afternoon and then we're kind of sunset and then we're kind of at dusk here and they slid around a little bit. I think the shot you're talking about with uh, Wim, and Neel, at one point was supposed to be like. See what you can do to make this pretty orange. Like, uh, like, you know, we are like right at sunset. Uh, and then thankfully it got moved a little bit earlier and we could sort of strip some of that back and go a little bit more natural on the coloration. So, yeah, that was, that was a fun shot.

It was, it was tricky. It's another one of those, uh, you know, you're replacing two thirds of the frame and, uh, and you know, there was another big flare in that one too, as I recall.

[00:30:56] Todd Vaziri: we talked a lot about, actors on the ground, But there's a lot of space shots in this show, and we've got, our typical, hybrid of, miniatures, ships, shot motion control, and our CG ships to go along with that.

Now, you've been, you've been, you and John Goodson and, and the model team has been, have been building miniatures ever since, uh, well, the, the Mando season one, um, a custom made motion control rig. Now I want to ask, like, how have things changed since the very first Razor Crest shoots that you did, uh, all those years ago? Uh, How have things evolved and what kind of flexibility has that given to the production as these things go on?

[00:31:38] John Knoll: Well, the miniature work that we did on season one of Mando was a very seat of the pants done in a huge hurry kind of thing. Uh, and what had originally happened was we were doing our first shot of the Razor Crest, uh, doing a flyby in space, uh, you know, heading towards Arvala, I think. And, John didn't, uh, didn't immediately say, Oh yeah, no, that's, that's beautiful. You know, there was a lot of hemming and hawing, but well, I don't know, would it reflect more than that? Would it have a brighter ping when it, uh, catches the sun here? Um, and, You'd think that doing bare metal in CG is a easy thing. It's actually surprisingly tricky, especially when you're doing these, slightly dull and isotropic metallic surfaces, you know, like the bottom of Pepsi can kind of thing. And, uh, John suggested that we should build a miniature to do some lighting tests with because he thought, you know, we're going to learn something from doing that. And, uh, Landis Fields, um, who had, major 3D printing enthusiast, uh, He got very excited about wanting to build that model.

Um, and immediately started thinking about, well, if we're gonna build this model and if it's gonna be, we're gonna put enough detail and work into the surface finishes to make it a useful lighting reference. Boy, wouldn't it be cool if we shot some elements of it and put them in the show? I was an old motion control guy.

I mean, that's what I got hired for originally at ILM. Uh, and I operated motion control for, my first three or four years at the company. And, I'm one of like, uh, three people left at the company that used to do motion control. Um, and one of the things that I did was I used to build some of my own hardware. You know, sometimes when you're solving a problem, you, you know, need to go and bolt some goofy rig together just to get a shot done. And so I got pretty familiar with, um, just going down to the machine shop and making some little mechanism to use in a shot. And, you know, I had some, um, experience with digital and analog electronics, um, in high school and then in college, and some experience doing software development.

And, uh, and so it occurred to me that, um, uh, I could put together some. relatively simple motion control gear to be able to create the kind of shots we had. And, The tricky thing was it all had to be done in ultra, ultra cheap, because we had already had our budget approved for doing everything in computer graphics.

And one of the main reasons why you don't see as much miniature work done anymore is it's a bit more expensive than doing it as CG. So we couldn't just go back and ask for a whole lot more money to do this. So if we were going to do it, it had to fit in the budget that had already been approved. And so the way to do that is it has to be a garage operation.

Like I can work on this stuff, uh, on a, on some weekends and, uh, you know, John Goodson can build a miniature for us out of his garage and, uh, and, you know, we'll, we'll do it that way. So I sat down and kind of figured out what the bare minimum deliverable requirements were for motion control on this. You know, one, I have to be able to get closer and farther away from a model. So I need some kind of track and our stage is 50 ft by 50 ft. And if I run the track diagonally, that gets me enough distance away. So 50 ft track on the, um, in the stage running diagonally, gets me far enough away from the model. Pan tilt head, uh, mounted on that track. Let's me put the model anywhere in the frame that it needs to be. And if I have a mover that I can mount the model on, uh, that's a three axis mover, you know, with a roll pitch and a yaw, that means I can present the model at any angle that we need to see it from. So in theory, I can kind of do any shot design we need, that way. It's a little bit of a cheat because you can't really, you know, you only have one translation axis, but by. You know, panning the model around in the frame and turning it on the model mover, you can kind of make it look like that one translation access is multiples, and enough that we can get away with it on the show. So that sort of determined what the, uh, a lot of the hardware needed to look like. and then initially I was looking at, um, at using CNC controllers for driving, uh, the motors, but, uh, it became apparent that I really needed seven, uh, drivable axes, and, uh, the CNC controllers that you can, you can get, uh, cheaply only drive six at, at the most, and the more I, I was getting into it, the more I realized I really need to control the software stack that, that was driving it. And, uh, another, uh, bit of coincidence was that back during my motion control career, uh, I owned one of my own motion control systems. I bought a Tondra system that I used for doing freelance work. It came with a developer kit and being somebody who was interested in software, I, I had these ideas of, um, a scripting language for motion control.

And I started writing some of my own software that ran on the Tondra system. and the, one of the first things I did was I wrote a work like the Tondra system that used, you know, operated the same way and used a lot of the same command language. Uh, and then I started writing some of my own software on top of that.

And. You know, then later I moved into supervision and I sold the motion control system, but I still have, uh, backups of all that code. And, uh, I suddenly became really enamored of the idea of, hey, what if I took all that old motion control code that I wrote back in 1989 and got it to run on a little tiny microcontroller and had that drive the system?

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was just delightful. And I wanted, wanted it to. Be just like the Tondra system that I used to use the same command syntax and all of that. And so I, sure enough, I got it to all compile and run on this little Teensy microcontroller.

[00:38:03] Todd Vaziri: hmm.

[00:38:04] John Knoll: uh, and I had to rewrite all the stuff that actually talked to the motors and uh, ran the system back and forth. But all of the move editing commands and all that stuff are, you know, this code that I wrote. 35 years ago. Yeah, it was super fun. So the, the, the first system I put together, the electronics were all kind of this hand soldered prototype.

You know, it was, um, uh, we got through the shoot and it was all fine. And then I, my thought was that, uh, when we decided to do more of this for season two, that, uh, well, it's time to upgrade the electronics a bit. So I made a custom printed circuit board and a more professional looking control panel. Uh, and I was very deliberately going for a kind of very retro 1980s, uh, you know, uh, dedicated hardware displays and switches. Uh, and one of the aesthetics that all the motion control systems had were black control panels with white engraved lettering on them. And like you can see, I'm definitely, definitely trying to evoke some of that just in the design of the hardware, because, you know, this is a exercise in retro fun.

[00:39:09] Todd Vaziri: As an aside for our listeners, it's like, it's a great privilege to be able to run into John on a Monday morning. And he's like, he just brought in some, something he worked up over the weekend. He's like, Todd, Todd, come in here, check this out, check out these switches, check out this, check out this lighting board that I just made. It's an incredible privilege to see you all lit up, uh, you know, with enthusiasm over this stuff. It's so great.

[00:39:33] John Knoll: And a, and again, for the, three people that'll see the video of this, this right here, this is the, Uh the system that I put together for doing the miniature work on Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew. and the reason I needed new electronics for this is the, as you know, the Onyx Cinder has got, uh, those pivoting engines. So, uh, the system consists of track, pan, tilt, focus, roll, pitch, yaw, so that's seven, um, axes of motion. and so these systems here could drive eight channels, uh, but with the four motors that had to turn on the, uh, Onyx Cinder, that meant I needed 11. Channels of, of control. So figured, um, I was going to rearchitect the electronics and so this system is a 16 access system. So, that was a big rework for my most recent work.

[00:40:27] Todd Vaziri: Right. And those, those, Onyx cinder, uh, engines help propel that. So, I mean, and you're also using, you know, led screens for bounce light and reflections now at this point. That's it's gotten pretty elaborate, the system. So was it just the Onyx Cinder that for Skeleton Crew in multiple environments, right? Not just space.

[00:40:47] John Knoll: Yeah. We did, I think, 24 shots of the miniature for the show.

[00:40:53] Todd Vaziri: Thank you for that. Um, we were gonna, Jenny's gonna go over a lot of mailbag questions in just a second. One, one consistent mailbag question was about droids. Uh, how you approached, or what techniques you were going to use, uh, to depict droids. And I think we'll just focus on SM 33. uh, you know, looking at the script, how did you decide, uh, the approach for SM 33?

[00:41:17] John Knoll: Well, in the Mandoverse, we've been using these Boon Raku style, um, puppets for humanoid sized droids, a number of times already, and it seems to work pretty well. And the paint outs aren't too bad. So one of the first thoughts um, seeing the designs of SM-33 was, Hey, can we do this as a practical puppet for 75 percent of the work? Because just reading through the script, it was pretty clear that there are times when he has to run, when he has to fight with pirates, and none of that seemed like, at least in the wide shots where you see full figure and he's got to move quickly, uh, were really practical to do with the puppet, but almost everything else, it seemed like You know, whenever he's there in a scene and he's talking and making hand gestures and all of that, uh, those are, those are all perfect for, for doing as a practical puppet and it keeps our, shot complexity down and, um, keeps cost down.

So, uh, Legacy built this beautiful puppet and, uh, you know, we saw a bunch of tests of, uh, of here it is attached to a performer and, uh, uh, You know, trying to get that very stilted peg leg kind of walk into it that they just did really beautifully.

[00:42:30] Todd Vaziri: Yeah.

[00:42:31] John Knoll: there's some really, really complex puppeteer paint outs in the show that people just don't think about it all. so, like I say, about percent of the time when you're seeing SM 33, he's that, that practical puppet. Um, and Almost all of those shots. There's, you know, a guy in a gray suit right behind him. Um, and we're painting him out.

And, uh, that was really flawlessly done. I think that the team that did that just did spectacular work. uh, then the rest of them, we built a really nice CG model of him, and we spent a lot of time studying exactly how the puppeteer that was doing the Boon Raku rig was moving and trying to make sure we could. duplicate that, the character of the walk and the motion style as closely as we could.

[00:43:15] Todd Vaziri: What's great is that if you're watching the show, you just, oh, that's SM 33. You never, there's never that, that clear delineation of here's the puppet. Here's the CG. It's just, it's just SM 33. It works really, really well.

[00:43:29] John Knoll: Yeah, there's definitely things that people wouldn't think, like, uh, When SM-33 is in the Onyx Cinder cockpit, he's sitting at the seat driving the ship. We didn't have a good way for him to be puppeteered, actually moving his hands on grasping the control stick and then flipping switches. so. In those cases, we just left the arms off and what we photographed is just his head and torso. So there are CG arms on all those shots. and again, I think it's pretty seamless. You know, you don't really notice the,

[00:44:05] Todd Vaziri: Yeah

[00:44:06] John Knoll: that we're switching techniques all the time.

[00:44:09] Questions from the Mailbag

[00:44:09] Todd Vaziri: A couple weeks ago. I opened it up on social media for any questions about visual effects for Skeleton Crew, So Jenny, can you open that mailbag and let's see what we got?

[00:44:18] Jenny Ely: Yes, we got so many good questions. I think we maybe have time for two or three, so we'll start with some of my favorites that came in and we'll get through as many as we can. So first question, my son is very much into KB's headset. How much of the headset was done practically?

[00:44:34] John Knoll: Yeah, there was a practical visor that we had that she could see out of it that had uh, a, fine, uh, mesh grid on it so that she could see through it. It doesn't move up and down. So there are a half dozen places in the show where she pushes a button and it either flips up or it's up and it flips down. And one of the complications that came along with that is when it's in its up position, it almost acts as a hairband. So, um. When it flips up, it pushes her hair and her hairstyle is different when it's up than when it's down. And so that meant that any of the shots, because it wasn't a practical thing that they could motorize and do, that was always something that we did. All those shots were, we're also doing, if you see the visor move, that's CG hair on her as well

[00:45:23] Todd Vaziri: Yeah, one of the shots that I spent a lot of time on was a shot where there was nowhere to hide uh, where KB was working on the speederbike. It is a close-up of KB, uh, cranking away at the underside of the speeder bike, and she pulls off a piece of the bike, and then she flips up her visor. Well, the way that was shot was with her visor in the up position. So the task was, oh, we can do a computer graphics version of the visor for that first part of the shot. We can nail that. That's something we can handle. However, as John said, when her, uh, when her visor is down, her hair is in a different configuration, and also we have the not so small task of painting out the visor in the up position.

So, uh, we spent a lot of time on that. Again, no, no, it was a closeup. There was nowhere to hide. The match move had to be perfect. I jotted down some of the people that worked on it. Uh, Talmage Watson and John Levin handled the match move for that. Dave Weitzberg, uh, oversaw the, uh, the entire philosophy of how we were going to do this. uh, Sam Stewart and, uh, Alan Travis did the paint out and roto work on that. And Ed Siomacco, did an amazing job on the CG hair, which turned out to be probably the easiest part of the shot. And then I composed it all together. And, uh, what's really great is that hopefully nobody's even thinking about it. It's, uh,

[00:46:50] John Knoll: Yeah.

[00:46:50] Todd Vaziri: One of those hopefully invisible effects shots

[00:46:53] John Knoll: yeah, there's, uh, there's a lot of things like that on the show that, uh, you know, there's all the big bombastic stuff of, you know, spaceships crashing and, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's very clearly the only thing it can be is visual effects, but there's also a ton of stuff that's in there.

They just wouldn't think about it all. Um, you know, for example, I'm speaking again about KB and her visor. Um, You know what? The kids are in a lot of dark environments where they don't have flat floors. And so it's actually dangerous for her to walk around, even with the mesh grate there because you can barely see out of. It's pretty dim. It obscures your vision. So we had versions of the visor that had that whole mesh piece missing that we'd have to add back in later or some cases where she just took it off entirely and we added it back in, um, so that she wouldn't trip and hurt herself. Um, same thing with Neel. Um, that, uh, that we had. You know, 70 percent of the time, that's a, that's, um, an animatronic head, um, with a visibility grate that we're removing or we're patching just the eyes and trunk for getting more, uh, nuanced performance out of it. But there were times when Neel was running around in a dark environment with a flat floor and, you know, dangerous things to trip over where it was just not safe to have a performer doing that with that animatronic head on. And so in some of those cases that the head's gone and, um, and we're just adding a CG, entirely CG head over the top.

[00:48:31] Jenny Ely: I actually think that's a really good lead in to another question that we got, which is, With so many child performers, how did that change how you approached directing them for visual effects related tasks?

[00:48:42] Todd Vaziri: It's hard enough to, to direct uh, you know, adult performers for like, imagination type things. Uh, what was it like different with the kids and stunt rigs and,

[00:48:51] John Knoll: yeah.well, some of the big things that come along with having a cast of Children is that you have limited hours with them, right? So I think we had six hours a day with the kids. So we always had to be as efficient as we could with their time. Um, and then when we, uh, when they pumpkined, as we said, you know, so when, when, uh, when they turned into pumpkins and had to leave, um, we did have adult, uh, doubles that we could shoot for very distant shots or if we're looking at their backs. Um, so we would schedule those for the end of the day, or You know first thing in the morning before the kids show up. We can shoot some stuff with the doubles And there's a surprising number of shots that, uh, you know, I could point out and say, those are the doubles there. Those are the doubles there.

Those are the doubles there. Um, because, you know, we just logistically could not shoot everything with the real kids. So we shot the stuff that was most important to shoot with the kids. The other thing was there were a whole bunch of safety restrictions that came along with not putting the kids in any kind of danger as you would not want to do. And so that that you know, one of the guidelines we got was that at no time can the kids ever be more than three feet above the floor unless there is a, uh, stunt pad underneath them. And even then, They don't want to have to fall more than three feet, even into a stunt pad. And so that meant that things that you would otherwise do with a, you know, a tagline on a performer or, you know, some of those things were prohibited. and also, How we shot the speeders, you know, the kids spent a lot of time zipping around on speeders and some of the approaches that we've done in the past with, uh, actually putting somebody on a vehicle and, um, or on a prop and towing it through an environment or doing something to get that speed and dynamism, you know, that was not safe to do with, with children.

And so it all really needed to be just done, in front of a blue screen and, um, Do what we can to make it look like they're really traveling through an environment.

[00:50:56] Jenny Ely: All right, I think we have time for maybe one more question. So, I'm going to go with a question that's not necessarily specific to Skeleton Crew. It's kind of just a general question. So, this is from Matt Brown. And Matt asks, Do people working on effects have a preference for working on something in a dark environment that might hide some more mistakes or rushed work versus something happening in a bright environment where any mistakes might be much more visible.

[00:51:20] Todd Vaziri:

I think part of this, one of the reasons I like this is because there's this, the mythology of visual effects is that, oh, it's at night, you can get away with so much more stuff, or it's way easier to have a sequence take place at night. And, uh, I, I would push back on that for a few reasons, but what do you think John?

[00:51:38] John Knoll: I agree. I would, uh, I would say that's not been my experience. Uh, one of the things that comes along with nighttime is, trying to fight stylization. At night, um, because daytime you have, there's plenty of light so you can see things that you need to see. And when you're at night, this is kind of artificial and almost by its nature stylized, uh, environment. Mostly when you're outside of a big city, when you don't have a lot of motivated light sources. So if you're kind of in the countryside, uh, well, it's a movie, you need to see things. So how do you see things at night and make that look naturalistic and not feel like you're looking at an illustration? and there are a bunch of stylistic conventions that have been developed over the years for, you know, what does movie night look like? And everybody's trying to find a version that works for your show. I'll say Sean Porter, uh, lit some of the, our first night scenes and boy is he he's really good at doing, uh, naturalistic feeling night lighting. And I was trying to channel the way he was lighting things when we were doing our nighttime scenes. But, uh, no, I don't think it's. It's easier. In fact, trying to find that, like, how far can you see before it looks fake and, how do you make sure you see what you need to see, you know, those things are, are. Those are challenging.

I got, I got accused on Pacific Rim of, um, you know, we had probably two thirds of the, the effects work that we did was nighttime stuff and a lot of it was in the rain and, you know, I would hear these, uh, oh yeah, well they did that cause it's easier, you hide all this.

Like, no, no, no, no, no, That stuff was much harder because we did it at night and in the rain. I think of all the light sources we had to do and all the, the layered simulations that come along with the, the rain and the mist and all of that.

[00:53:30] Todd Vaziri: From a creative point of view. I mean, you have to, you're starting with a blank canvas. It's night. There's no light. So you have to craft the light. You have to. And, and there's so many phases in Hollywood, like. Just look at Westerns how they deal with nighttime scenes

There was the day for night phase. There was a strong moonlight phase there was just 10th of the film phase and then you get into the 80s with like John Carpenter and Jim Cameron doing the Uh, strong blue moonlight, uh, look. Um, you, you're starting from nothing. You have to craft the light. So, it's a whole, like, art direction aspect that is less of an issue for daylight. So, uh, yeah. Not easier.

[00:54:11] John Knoll: Mm hmm.

[00:54:11] Todd Vaziri: Not easier.

[00:54:12] Jenny Ely: All right, question answered, not easier. uh, okay.

[00:54:16] The Martini

[00:54:16] Jenny Ely: Well, I think that takes us to our martini. So this is how we end every show. We talk about one cool thing that we're into, whether it's, you know, an app, a book, doesn't necessarily have to be film related. So, uh, let's start with you, Todd. What do you got this week?

[00:54:29] Todd Vaziri: Uh, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I really like movies.

Uh, I'm going to do a movie recommendation. I'm going to do another twofer. I'm always looking for, uh, ways to introduce people into movies or filmmakers or genres that they may not necessarily be exposed to at this point. And, I'm always looking for, like, a director or a genre, like, the, the best movie to, to have somebody jump into. and if there's something intriguing about that movie to that person, they may dive deeper.

So for Hitchcock, for Alfred Hitchcock, uh, my go to is Rear Window. it, uh, it has, uh, Almost all of the stylistic tendencies of Hitchcock's, uh, body of work. But it's distilled in such a way that it, I think, is extremely accessible to almost any, any audience member. Uh, especially if they're not into, say, older movies. it's a really good, uh, gateway into the world of Hitchcock. And then you can maybe, if somebody sees that and likes it, they can go into something deeper, uh, deeper into his, uh, filmography. And then to go along with that.

I'm, I'm a huge fan of, uh, David Fincher, uh, former ILM er David Fincher. It's so much fun to say that. Um, And, uh, it's not even one of my favorite of the movies that he's directed, but Panic Room, I think, is a nice companion to Rear Window. In fact, there's a lot of direct homages to Rear Window in Panic Room. It is, uh, probably Fincher's most accessible movie. I love it because it, it really, strikes, uh, the theme of claustrophobia, And, the action happening in an enclosed environment, literally an enclosed environment inside the panic room, I think works super well, and it could be another gateway into somebody who hadn't seen any of the other David Fincher movies.

So, my recommendations are Rear Window and Panic Room.

[00:56:23] Jenny Ely: Is Rear Window your favorite Hitchcock movie or is it just one you would recommend?

[00:56:26] Todd Vaziri: It is. Yeah. I may have even mentioned it on a previous show, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, I had it on the other day. I'm like, oh man, I just want to watch this movie from start to finish again. I've seen it so many times. I love so it so much.

[00:56:41] Jenny Ely: Excellent. Okay, John, what do you have?

[00:56:43] John Knoll: Um, well, let me start with a little preface of, uh I grew up in the 70s, the 60s and 70s back before the internet and before video games. And, uh, you know, I grew up in Michigan. You know, when you grow up in a cold climate without some of these, uh, sources of distraction. Um, you know, how do you retain your sanity? Um, you develop indoor hobbies, right? And so that that led pretty directly to a lot of what I do now. You know, a lot of my hobbies sort of combined into visual effects, but I got into that kind of routine of, you know, in my free time, I pursue a whole series of hobbies that helped. fuel creativity and, uh, and help keep me sane when things get stressful. So there, I cycle through a whole bunch of different hobbies, uh, different times, and one of them is painting. So I, I paint and,my martini is, a documentary from, I think it's, 11 years ago called, uh, Tim's Vermeer.

[00:57:50] Todd Vaziri: love it

[00:57:51] John Knoll: And for anybody who hasn't seen this, this is a delightful film, and it speaks directly to part of why I went into visual effects, which is this fusion of art and technology. which is for me, a big part of what's delightful about visual effects is, you know, I grew up in an engineering family, and I love the technology. I love the nuts and bolts of some of these, uh, nerdy sciencey things. Uh, but I also love the art of what we do and to be able to practice both of them to make this art is, uh, is wonderful. And the whole premise of Tim's Vermeer is Tim Jenison, who, uh, was the architect of the, new tech video toaster. He had been reading a book by David Hockney called Secret Knowledge that that discusses the dramatic change in painting that sort of coincided with the development of mirrors and lenses, and it's been long thought that this This big change in painting was directly because artists started using these optical aids to make more accurate perspective, but he thinks that there's something more to it in Vermeer's work that what he was doing has got sort of a photographic quality to it that. You cannot explain just with lenses or, you know, projecting an image in a camera obscura and then tracing like the value relationships there are something that you can't sort of just paint because some of them are even hard to see. And he thought he had an idea of how Vermeer was doing it, and he decided to test it. And the film sort of documents his process of, like, I want to see whether or not I can paint something that has got the same kind of photographic realism of Vermeer's work. And so he goes to extraordinary lengths and it's really just delightful to watch. And he builds a whole duplicate of, uh, Vermeer's studio and sets the scene in front of him.

And he builds this prototype optical mechanism and then goes through the process of, uh, well, can you actually paint a painting this way? And, uh, just pure delight end to end. I spent the whole time just grinning.

[01:00:07] Todd Vaziri: It's so good. It's a celebration of art. It's a celebration of science and it's a great mystery. And it's somebody trying to solve the mystery. It's it's fantastic. Great one. Great one.

[01:00:17] Jenny Ely: That is a good one, so do you paint, like, on canvas or oil paint, water color?

[01:00:21] John Knoll: I do, Yeah.

[01:00:23] Jenny Ely: Excellent. All right. Well, it is my turn for the martini. So, uh, mine this week is a little probably unusual, but there is a TV show, a British TV show that I love called Father Brown. And I don't know if you are either one of you or anyone else is familiar with this, but I think it comes on BBC one, but I watch it on Brit box, which is a streaming service for all things British, which I can't recommend enough. There's so much good stuff on there. But, um, Father Brown, it stars Mark Williams as a, uh, Mystery solving priest. He, uh, Mark Williams is, the Weasley dad in the Harry Potter series, and he's also Rory's father on Doctor Who, if you're into Doctor Who, but anyway, so he plays a Catholic priest, uh, it, the whole thing takes place in early 1950s, in post World War II, um, British countryside, it's in a little Cotswold fictional village called Kimbleford, and it's just this very Calm, peaceful, delightful, cozy mysteries, as we would call them, but he, he has, you know, his little band of sidekicks, and he's always solving mysteries, and he has his sort of clashes with the local police force, and it's just so, it's so quaint and lovely and low stakes and I would love to say that I've gotten into this as a way to escape some of the chaos of, you know, the last few months, but I've been watching it for years. It's so good. I've actually been to the village in The British countryside where they filmed the show and, and I've been inside the church and everything.

So anyway, I highly recommend it. Father Brown, there is classic Father Brown, which is a much older series and it is based, uh, I think on a book series too, but you want the new one. It started in 2013. It's still going and you can find it on Brit box or you can watch it on BBC one and give it a chance, watch two or three episodes and see if you don't want to just get a blanket and a cup of tea and solve the mystery.

[01:02:18] John Knoll: All right, if you get a britbox subscription, the next thing you need to watch is Upstart Crow.

[01:02:23] Jenny Ely: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. There's so much on BritBox. You can just, you can just dive in there for days.

[01:02:29] Outro

[01:02:29] Jenny Ely: So anyway, that is our show. Thank you so much, John, for being with us. This has been really great. We've learned so much.

Thanks for listening to the lighter, darker podcast.

If you have a question for the show, or you would like to suggest a topic, we would love to hear from you and you can email us at Lighterdarker@ILM.Com. You can also contact us or follow us on social media. Our links are in the show notes, which you can also find on ILM.com/lighterdarker, along with the transcript for the show.

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So thank you for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast. And until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.