Jonathan Boots Sigler: From iPhone to Award Winning Cinematographer

My name is Jonathan Sigler, most people call me Boots, and I am a filmmaker from Covington, louisiana. I actually did a short film with Brian and TJ, so I'm super, super excited to be with these guys on their podcast. I'm just really happy to be on the NOLA film scene. Man, it's been a long time coming.

Welcome to the NOLA film scene with TJ Plato. I'm TJ and, as always, I'm Plato.

Boots, thanks so much for joining us. We're happy to have you today, Welcome.

Boots. Good to be here with you guys, man, so I'm excited. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but it's going to be fun. We've got you now.

So, as Boots said, we worked together. We did a 48-hour film project was the first project we worked on and Boots was our DP and he did an incredible job and we very quickly turned around. Just it seemed like only a couple weeks later. It might have been a little bit longer. We did the Abita Springs Film Festival, which is the seven and seven. We had seven days to make the film and again he crushed it. He did the filming, he did the editing and because it was a film fest and it was just kind of a rush to get everything done, it was kind of all hands on deck, just kind of a rush to get everything done. It's kind of all hands on deck. We all shared some of those responsibilities.

And we came out victorious. I have to let everyone know that we did win. We got nominated for everything 11 awards and we won four of them Is that right, yeah. So I think I'm really proud of that. It was like two, that's right yeah. And then the 48 hour ones. You guys both got nominated for that too. Right, right, correct, yeah.

So I've lost to that guy matt whatever his name, would know anyway. But on the seven, and seven, you won for best editing editor yeah, editor which is editing same thing forgiven for that. That's right. Of course we got bad picture. I got best actor and it was the fourth best script.

I think he won he won best director and best director. He won two. And then you won best screenplay and best director. He won two, and then you won one, and then I won best editing. Gotcha Cool.

But you were nominated for. In addition to best editing, you were nominated for something else.

I guess I was nominated for best DP, so just those two.

We'll call it best cinematography, and if we're wrong, folks, we apologize. That's right yeah, talk about that later, because it was fantastic cinematography I appreciate it was a western, yeah, we went from the office in the 48 hour film to out west in the 77 and that was incredible.

All of us met our, which you might have seen. You might have met on this podcast. He writes phenomenally under pressure and he has that concise story boots his cinematography. He brings the equipment, the know-how and your editing. I was there when we were doing the seven to seven cause. We all met at a coffee shop and, I've said it before, it was like watching Beethoven on a piano. Your hands fly. I'm like they do fly though, yeah. And so.

I've got a pretty good descriptor for that. Anybody that's ever edited before. If you're editing content and you do the speed ramp effect, where you're, you're kind of doing a time-lapse and it starts off slow and then it speeds up like somebody's driving, for instance, and it kind of speed ramps it to the next scene. That's what it looked like watching you edit. It looked like you were in speed ramp mode when you were cruising.

Yeah, man, it was funny Cause I told Matt on the 48 hour one, he was like you know, you don't have to edit it, he's trying to get me on board. And I was like, well, perfect, dude, I really don't think I'm that great of an editor, to be honest. Just because of the creativity, wise part of it, you know, I think I can obviously like put things together quickly, but just to have the actual eye for everything, I was like no, I don't. He said, well, how much do you edit? I was like I mean, I edit every single day. And he's like every day you edit. I was like yeah dude absolutely.

And so he's like so you think you can do it, and I was like, yeah, I mean I can probably. And then once we had someone, that didn't work.

But yeah, I think the biggest thing is. You know, I listened to Team Deacon's podcast, was like Roger Deakins, and he interviews a lot of other filmmakers and they talk a little bit about like the one camera, like doing whole films with one cameras, and because a lot of times people in their head when you think of a short film or anything like that, you think that oh, that must have like three or four cameras and maybe for action scenes a lot of people do. But for instance, there's been a lot of movies like All Quiet on the Western Front, 1917, both Oscar winning films. They're only used one camera, one lens, right, and it's a matter of just knowing exactly where to put it and it makes everything a little bit less stressful. And especially, I think that helps on the editing process. It's kind of like, well, it's the cameras on Brian, say, brian and TJ are doing a dialogue scene, right, you do, maybe a, I do.

You know, I think for the most part I do a lot more of interview work, you know, I guess kind of like documentary style, you do interviews with B-roll, and so that's kind of what I was used to. And then it was kind of cool to explore the short film world where you could kind of break a little bit more rules, have a little bit more fun right and get the film actors right. That's like the best part.

Nice, yeah, I didn't know those other films. Just use one camera and one lens.

Yeah.

I need to go back and like, watch and think about that, which I love learning. It's kind of a bad thing from going from fandom to working, you know, one side of the camera to the other it's like, oh, this is great, oh, that's how they did it.

Okay, that's still cool.

You know what I mean. A certain short actor, action star, might be standing on an Apple box all day. I'm not going to say who I might think that is. But, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know, I guess that's an older term for but to bring somebody like an actor up to the height of an act.

Yeah, it's still used. It's still used. Yeah, the most helpful thing you can sit and eat some lunch on it, right, yeah?

Yeah, and I think our next step is to get like I just did a short film and they had a sound person and they had a person just working the a little lost in the terms, and then PAs and assistants, I think as we grow, Because on those 48-hour films it's a tight crew and you have to do everything.

And so movies I've done with Matt full-length features. Tj was there too. He had to make all the decisions, so everyone had to come to him and decide on every little thing. So it took away a little bit. He was able to handle it, but we need to be able to, even as a small film, let everybody do the job that they excel at. Yeah.

And not divide attention. That makes it really really challenging.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's hard because I feel like it's something that I always tell people with the film, you know, you call it film industry or just content business. Nowadays, with all this equipment essentially becoming cheaper, to where the buy-in price to get a good camera and to get a good light and good sound equipment is so much cheaper that it makes it a lot more accessible for everybody else, right, which means that it leads to a lot of people doing run-and-gun jobs. Right, I can do. You know, just show up me my camera, my backpack, maybe a light, and I can do a cool restaurant video. Right, you can just knock it out yourself.

And at the same time, though, if you look at all the movies and the documentaries and stuff, it's a team that did a lot of this.

Right, there's supposed to be someone that handles the lighting. There's supposed to be a DP that handles the camera, the lenses, the director, and a lot of times, with those people running around with backpacks, it's dropping the price down a lot to where people are kind of like well, we can't afford a whole crew. I might as well just hire Jerry here to come with his backpack, and he can just make something really cool for me that he's just starting out, and so I feel like it's a lot, because, you know, I'm 26 years old, so I kind of started out when the era of a lot more solo videographers, and so I think that's something that struggle from going from solo to then expanding to crew members and kind of getting that budget and having enough clients willing to pay that budget to then, you know, pay your bills. I think that's something that's harder to find nowadays, especially with all the strikes and everything like that too.

I think those big sets aren't there, so you have to kind of make a lot happen on your own. Yeah, yeah, it certainly made it a lot easier logistically that you had all the kit because, you know we're talking about it in advance.

Okay, who's got a field recorder, who's got camera, who's got a boom? And you came as a full package deal. It just took a lot of weight off for trying to find that stuff. I know we talked about it. Tell us how you got started in filmmaking. I know you started and you've kind of progressed to the point that you're at now. You did a lot of film and sports. Right, Right, yeah. So to me that's a challenge with fast moving stuff.

Yeah, it's true, and I feel like a lot of people have said, when I was 10 years old, I had, like my grandpa's camera. I was not like that, I could care less about it. I had no love or desire for any of it. I did like watching movies. Growing up, like my parents, my family, were big movie people, right. But it wasn't until my sophomore year of college. I was just working a normal summer job, right, that's at St Peter's school, moving furniture actually, and so the reason why I liked it is because you get there at seven, you get off at three, 30, and I played college basketball, so then it would give you enough time to go and train, right. And I was working with the janitors and I love them too.

They're like the best people to work with, like we had a great time, and so I was yeah, I always loved working with them because I was like, you know, you could get higher paying jobs but at the same time, if I like these guys, I'm just going to stick here, right. And so the thing was from seven to three 30, I would make $75 a day, right. So this is 2017 or so, so I think it was making like nine 75 an hour, which nowadays is like laughable, but I think back then, you know, it wasn't as bad, right, especially a summer job for college. That's right. Yeah, and I had done it throughout high school too. So I've been doing this for man, eight years.

You know, sophomore year, going to college, I was like, okay, so I'll go train with Matthew Bender and slide L. He trained professional basketball players, college high school guys, just basketball player development. There's a guy that was working out before me. His name was Drew Guillory and he played in Slovakia. He played basketball in Slovakia, right. And so he was like man, these are some of the best workouts I've ever have gotten.

You know, he's telling the trainer like you go to Los Angeles and all these guys have cameramen and that's why they're so big. You know, if you need to get a camera guy, you had a camera guy, you could expand your business and this could be huge for you. And he's like dude, if I knew someone I'd pay him. I just don't know anybody and I literally had taken like video editing one-on-one, and I kind of had, like dabbZA in high school, edited a lot of that, and so then I edited some in college, but, man, I wasn't paying attention that much in class. I was mainly focused on basketball having fun, and so I kind of leveraged myself, though I was like hey, I could use some extra cash, you know?

Hey, man, you know I can edit the video for you, but I don't have a camera. He's like dude, you should use your phone. I'll amazing, you know. So I do it with my phone and my buddy said my grandma gave me this for Christmas. So you put it like in your cup holder and it comes out for your GPS to hold your phone.

He's like I figured you can use that and I was like okay, so that's what I did. I like stood on the home Depot bucket, I did a little GPS movement and stuff like that, just kind of like laughable camera motions and all, and I made a video of him working out to send to his agent and all and everyone loved it and he's like dude, can you come back tomorrow?

And I was like, yeah, I can come back tomorrow, kind of put a bug in it, Right. And then I went back to school a week later and he calls me when I'm on spring break and I was like, hey, what's up? And he's like dude, I'm going to the NBA combine. You know, I just got in with an agency in gosh, I'm going to have to buy a camera. He said no, no, no, you just use your phone. I was like I want something better than a phone if I'm going to the combine so I can stand out.

I'm thinking this is going almost into my senior year now, so I need to try to figure out a job, right? I go to B&H and get an interest-free credit card with no money to my name and buy it EOS 90D. I get out the box, you know, just learn how to use it and then everything kind of shuts down with COVID and I was like, oh, this isn't good. The whole world shut down.

And you know, I was like, what am I going to do? But luckily, when I moved back home, that gym that he was training those guys in was privately owned, so that one summer he went from training just the you know two or three pros to now 17 professional athletes, and I be better. What are the pros use? What do they do? What are their styles? What are their methods right? How do they edit? So?

you know just kind of getting that education.

nowadays, with all this YouTube knowledge and podcast knowledge that we have now, you can really learn a lot. And then eventually, at the end of the summer, I was like you know, what I should do, even though I'm done school, was I should really go back and use my fifth year of eligibility and then kind of get another major.

So my first major was multimedia design, which is more graphic design, and then I went back and got digital production and broadcast and you're learning a little bit more about cameras, a little bit more about audio, kind of asking a lot more questions in school, telling them, hey, I have a camera, can I use my camera to shoot a sports game or something like that? Right, that's just kind of like all those reps, though added up, it was something that I was doing as almost like a side hustle throughout those last few years of school and then kept on applying to sports teams, being like you know I'm with the videographer position or photographer, and they're just kind of like.

You know, your resume is not there.

I don't really. You're filming guys in the gym, it's cool, you're getting a lot of likes online, but there's nothing that we can use here. So then I basically was like, well, I need to create something for myself then. So I basically was saying, okay, well, the athletes are going to be there. If I can essentially convince a business guy or two to do business work for them and then maybe get involved in New Orleans working on set, if one of those three things is down, the other one might be up, All right. So that was my game plan going into it, and you know, still to this day it's been almost three and a half years now. It's pretty much stable, like that I would say. I don't really film as much sports nowadays. It's mainly more of helping out on set or just doing a lot of my own work, but primarily with businesses. And in New Orleans I worked with Elephant Quilt Productions for a while and they gave me a huge opportunity. Man, I was a PA for probably like a year and a half.

It was a small production company like a year and a half. It was a small production company like three to five members, so I feel like I got a lot more reps of wearing a lot of different hats and learning about lighting and book lighting. You know different techniques and learning how to work with a crew Right, and so I think those reps were probably the most important out of everything you know. You can learn a lot on YouTube and all but once you kind of get a lot of those hands-on experience with guys who are a little more obviously more experienced than you are, it helps a lot.

So I definitely took a lot of that information and, you know, try to apply it kind of like the competitive athlete in all of us. So you just want to get a little bit better every day, right?

So you just want to get a little bit better every single day and then it adds up to now you become experienced right. Then you can kind of handle a lot on your own and try to fit into a role nowadays but, like we talked before, it is hard now with the strikes and everything and there's not tons of set work. So it's a lot more on what can you do on your own. But it's definitely a fun career, it's a fun job and, like I said, I know I've talked for a while but it really has been an interesting journey. I feel like not many people kind of start on an iPhone and then, like you know, come back up to a camera, to PA, to camera world, to A lot of twists and turns in it. You know, yeah for sure.

Everyone's story is going to be different. It's never cookie cutter Doing auditions. Everything they tell you is true, but when you break from the norm that might get you the job.

Yeah, interesting.

Kids start out out of high school and they start taking acting and their career takes off or drops down. They come back or I started late in life and boom. So that's fantastic, you've shot a Western, you've shot a mockumentary, commercials, sports I don't know if you've shot anything else. What's next? What's the goal? Where are you aiming for what would be a dream?

Man, my dream would probably say you know my wife asked me this a lot is I would love to be a commercial DP. I would love to be a cinematographer for commercials. You know a lot of people I think really want to do movies and all, and I think that'd be amazing too, but it is such a hard world to get into and all. I would say I would really like to be like a DP for commercials. You know it's a very hard, hard path to get there.

You know it's, it feels like it's something that would be my dream, but there's no map to get there and most of the commercials in New Orleans area are from out of town DPs and then's his favorite guy to work with.

You know, someone told me like you can drive like a box truck and eventually work your way up from like third to second. I think it just takes a little bit of luck At the same time with that being hard to attain, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to get there, I think. For right now I label myself as you know. I'm basically a freelancer, but I also have like a production business, right, production company, the JSB Productions, and so I'd say, just try to kind of continue to do that right, continue to work with businesses to tell people's stories.

I think that's something that can't be replaced by AI. So try to invoke more storytelling, even if it's something like dude, we want to do a video on our basketball team. Well, can we do like an interview with the coach and can we get maybe some stage shots to kind of add a little bit more storytelling and try to bring a little bit more production values to the jobs that might not even have the budget for it, because then it's going to prove your worth, and I think working with businesses and then doing some documentaries I think would be something that I'm really interested in talking with the guy now. But I just think the documentary world is really interesting and I feel like that might be a road pass that you know, maybe lend yourself and you do a good documentary, you have a short film experience, maybe your resume looks better for a commercial DP right. But you know, we'll see where Yacht takes us, just kind of taking it one day at a time.

Right, yeah, well-rounded experience yeah, that seems to be the key and that's what you said. You hit it on something really big when you said there's no direct path, and I think that's kind of true for everything in the industry. Sure, there are some traditional routes for a lot of the different behind the scenes things I mean on camera as well that everybody finds a different way to get there, and it's kind of hard to plan out this career because you never know what twist is going to take you another direction. You might come across somebody and a new opportunity comes up. That's completely different than what you were thinking. I've been trying to learn some of the stuff you were talking about with the cameras as well, for my side hustle, and I kind of feel like shooting on a phone is like learning how to drive with a stick If you can get great video with that, with all the little ins and outs, without using lenses and special stuff.

Then by the time you work your way up to cameras, then you have the foundation and that's what I'm trying to do now. I'm trying to learn how to use the camera, all the features on it, and it's kind of fun.

Yeah, it is very fun and I think you know what's important is, all these cameras nowadays are just like, packed with all these features. Right, for instance, there might be a camera that the features are more suited to someone that's doing like on set role with a lot of people that are working with you. Right, that even the little markings and the lenses are for the camera team. Right, for the guy. That's point focused on the right side. And I think, for just filmmaking in general, you don't need to know as much about the actual guts of everything, right, to break all the rules as much as you need to know, like, what's the story you're telling. And I think a big thing that people overlook is the lens choices. Right, the lens choices, what gives a character, and especially the focal lengths, right, you know, do you want to have a distorted background? Is your thing more of like a? For instance, the chosen is a great TV show, right, I don't know if you guys have seen the chosen thing. It's the largest crowdfunded TV show of all time. Now, right, it's on Amazon and this guy loved 19,. Like seventies movies. Right, like, or old school kind of movies where it doesn't have a shallow depth of field, which means that the background is not super blurred. You can just see the sky in the background, right. And so instead of shooting wide open and using the built-in ND filters, like these features are cranking today, he prefers to just stop it down to T4 or T8, right, so you can kind of have nothing really blurred. It just looks like I'm actually seeing this like an old movie and that becomes your style, and so that's kind of a good example to explain.

You know, sometimes the features are there, like the built-in ID. I can go walk out outside without a map box and get shallow depth of field and it can look freaking awesome. But at the same time you can get creative with it and break the rules a little bit, and then you kind of find your little style. So sometimes the features it might not all apply to you, but at the same time you can use it to create your own style, which I think is awesome, especially for people that are starting out too and just learning, because you can just be like. The possibilities are infinite almost. And even with iPhones with the portrait photo lens, it's kind of like the same thing, right, you could do portrait mode on your phone now blurs the background, or you could just take a normal photo, whatever you like best, and that's at our fingertips. It's really a cool, cool time to be a part of this. I think it's harder to find like on set stuff and all, but at the same time it's easier to just create whatever you want to create. Yeah.

And your choices become part of the storytelling.

Yeah, that's right.

Set design lenses, like you said. For us, it's the choices we make as actors. Am I going to be a mustache twirling villain or grounded villain, Like some of you might meet in real life, who just happens to kill people? What effect is that Comedy versus all those things? It's always story. Ai will never get that right.

You know what I mean. It'll be bland and it'll be.

I will tell a movie. It's that human element of storytelling. But I find that fascinating.

Just never thought about it from a lens point or from a technical point like that yeah, no, it's, it's true, man, and, like you said, it comes with acting too, and that's what makes good acting, makes beats all good, camera settings right. You know, if you're at, if it's great acting, it's great acting. So it's pretty cool to hear you guys side of everything too.

Yeah, it's like we're all working towards the same goal.

I'll ask you guys so are you guys, you know, trying to work in a certain you I'd rather work in comedies, or I'd rather work in drama or reality or are you kind of more open to whatever role kind of comes about? I'm always curious, like with actors, because you know, you see, sometimes Leonardo DiCaprio do multiple different roles, right, I don't know. But then you see some guys where it's like I only do comedies or, for instance, I only do sci-fi stuff, like there's a lot of people that their whole career, if you look at their filmography, is literally just like sci-fi work, right, right.

Yeah, yeah, some people do just like you were saying. Your style with filming body work ends up being a style for some people. They only do certain things. There are some actors that only do commercials. Commercials pay really well. You don't see them doing a lot of film or tv for me. I think I'm more geared toward drama, darker roles, the bad guy, the mean guy. But I have done some comedy as well and I mean I like doing both and I don't know. I don't think I'm as funny as brian. Brian's got more of a light-hearted personality and it's easier to see him in that role. I think that's probably what threw people off with me in the 48 is people aren't used to seeing me do the lighter stuff, but I do enjoy comedy a lot. I don't think there's anything. Yeah, I don't think there's anything. So far that I've done that I didn't like.

Yeah, I don't know, I don't.

I don't think so.

Yeah.

What about you, Brian?

I love doing it all. I really love the monster makeup, like being deaf. Everyone knows me as a nice guy. I think I am. I try to be comedic genial, but I've played like four bad guys in the past three months. You know what I mean, right? What do you mean? He killed him, you know. So that's fun. And we're at the point in our career where we can't be too choosy, right, we can kind of choose what we submit to. Yeah, as long as the script was good, I'm there, money's okay. It's one way to look at it, but I can't think of anything that maybe like if I was trying to be Rambo like a big action.

So, but no, it's interesting though, because it's kind of like, whenever you're starting out, it feels like you want to take almost everything that comes your way right, because you're just trying to get experience.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, I'm like that too. It's the same boat, you know.

Yeah, my comedy is big and broad and I like being goofy. I like dad jokes, even you know what I mean. That's what acting is all about. So when you can hit that mark because there are days you try and you just don't feel it- you can relax and just get into it.

It's a great feeling. And then I told y'all about this movie this past weekend without going into any details because I don't know if it'll be released by the time this comes out. I did a scene. He's a him. What I'm going to break my own arm, pat myself on the back. It was really good. We did a take two for just in case for coverage, and they go cut and a crewman goes. How did it get creepier? I did better than I did on the first take, which I thought was great. That's phenomenal, especially when you look back to your first classes and you're nervous and you want to be an actor and you're fidgety and everything's wrong. So when you, when you hit that stride, when you hit that moment, there's nothing like it.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So, Boots, what's something that's unique to you? You might've heard other cameramen and DPs talk about certain things that everyone knows. Every DP knows. Hit our listeners with something that's just you.

Yeah, man, Something that's unique to me is I just feel like the journey has been really unique. I know everyone else kind of starts off with different journeys, but I feel like a lot of these people nowadays that are, you know, DPs of short films or something like that, a lot of them went to film school, a lot of them worked on student films and they kind of got their experience that way, Whereas I think it's not just me, it's a whole pack of us, but there's a lot of these guys that essentially learn from being online or learn from being in just normal school. Right, it's kind of like a generation of videographers and editors that are just so talented but they're not taking the traditional like DP route to things. Right, they're almost just making it happen on their own with a camera lens from B&H Photo and they're just getting super creative.

And I think that's also something that not a lot of people talk about. It's becoming not as much of like oh, this guy can fit in this role. He could be a great gaffer, a great grip, and a lot of times it's just kind of like we can call you know, jeffrey or something. He can come and make this video awesome. Maybe he brings another guy, almost kind of like a photographer You're just coming, you're like doing a second shoot of a video and like two main crew just knocks. This is supposed to be right. I think we're supposed to be doing what we are great at, but a lot of times there are these, you know, group of us that are just so. You know we wear so many different hats, you know. They say it kind of like you know Jack of all trades, but master of none, and so that's the one thing that's kind of hard that no one really talks about either, is that, although that is great and I think that's the future right, is guys making it happen on their own, but at the same time, when it comes down to like you know, fitting into a role, right, like, I want to be a DP? Well, look at your portfolio. You're doing everything on your own but at the same time, like you, had DP experience of you just being one, you know. Or do we just hire you because of the products that your business puts out looks really good? And can you operate Aria Alexa right Because good. And can you operate Arri Alexa right Because, although you have all this great portfolio work, you might've done this on a Sony that you got online, but do you know how to work with a gaffer and operate different kind of cameras? I remember when I was just kind of like PA and what I talked about with Elephant Quilt they asked me to set up the cameras. I never worked with Sony. I film all the time, but I just don't film with this camera. Well, you're expected to know like this camera needs to. You know this is the base ISO. This is what we need to set up. This is how you meter exposure.

I just think that the landscape of everything is so unique and I think that me, starting from sports and all, is something that's different. I think a lot of guys don't start with that. They start with passion, projects and all. So I think that's something that'll make me a little unique in that I've pretty much done a lot. I feel like a lot of people more yeech down and that's kind of like my fall. I'm not doing good enough job, but just like niching down. He says, like a Western, I've done weddings, I've done Westerns. I've done, you know, a lot of mockumentary. They're like nine or 10 mockumentary things and I've done business or corporate things, many documentaries. You know, a lot of highlight mixes. So I feel like I don't do a good job of niching down. I've kind of done a little bit of everything.

That's good though. Yeah, that's good to build that resume up.

Yeah, it gives you a cool perspective.

Yeah, you can't niche down if you don't have the opportunity, that's right. So if we were, let's say, in Arizona, they'd probably film a lot of Westerns there. Just because of what it is, they may have more chance to keep, and it would be the reverse. You know what I mean. Right, it's coming.

Yeah, no, it's kind of crazy because they start off in sports. Right, I want to be a sports specialist, this is what I love to do, I'm passionate about it, love it. But then you're like, you know, think of it like this, nfl hires salary guys, college sports have students that do it for free, and then they also have one or two salary guys. Right, you have your high those avenues. What are you going to do with sports If everyone's taken up with salary positions? You know, some of the salaries are not very appealing. It might be 40 grand a year to come film for these guys. And you're like, okay, well, I might be able to make that on my own if I just freelance it rather than just trying to chain myself up and work for them.

Obviously, every opportunity is different, right, but it's a crazy field, man, and I feel like it's changing so much. And I used to get paid to do IGTV videos and then it was like 59 second mixes and then it was YouTube stuff. And then you know, tiktok came out and then changed the game with the reels and then you know, can we have any vertical stuff? Can we get with this branding video that you want to do? So it just changes a lot, you know, and that this is only in the span of what? Two or three years? Yeah, how many other businesses and fields change so much in one to two years? It's crazy how fast this is progressing and how different avenues are being opened up. Like you said, tj, I mean the future might be filming on iPhones. There's videos like the Apple shot on iPhone commercials that they have nowadays. That looks amazing. It looks unbelievable.

Yeah, yeah, I was actually going to bring that up. Yeah, I was going to mention that, but you brought it up. That's a great point. The filmed on the iPhones, on the Apple commercials are just incredible. I would say lighting is very, very important when it comes to that.

Yeah, and that's something that's changed so much too. Man, it used to be tungsten fixtures, right, that'd get so hot you have to get gloves on and LED lights came out and they were kind of crappy and make everyone's skin look weird and you know you can get fired for that. You know you have your actor come out of makeup and then they're like green skin. Yeah, it was just like the bad led lights on me and not making it look good. And then they're like well, you know you're the dp, you gotta make it look good.

But nowadays the amount of power that you can get for a price that you pay, with aperture and small rig and you know they have like four foot tubes that can change different colors, you know like tubes and the quality of leds has gotten so much better. It's just crazy. Like the nfo sidelines, if you ever watch them, they have astra 6x just like a normal white panel, right like a 4x4, just slap a v-mount battery on it. You don't need to plug it into anything. You know you do little interviews at a sideline power button knob going and it looks great and you're like wow, it's just crazy how the simplicity of everything and the quality of fixtures were as 20 years ago. You had to plug in a whole like tungsten fixture and make sure you don't blow someone's outlet out and it's going to get so hot afterwards and you can't dim it down unless you get a dimmer.

But nowadays you can get a Bluetooth app in your phone and just wheel it down. It's to be getting easier to light things now too, that's right.

You're saying what can you do with your sports filmmaking knowledge? Make a sports movie. We need a full contact checkers movie and you're the guy to do it. That would be fun.

I'm kind of partial to tackle basketball, but that's just me.

What can we do with croquet? I don't want to ask about cornholing no-transcript.

Then your screen's right there and you could have a vertical 6k camera for $3,000. Canon c400 just came out. You could also turn it sideways with the rig. Screw it in, you have a vertical camera. You can flip the screen up, and so you know camera companies are making it to where you can film vertical content easily, and tripods have always been the one where you can rotate the screen up, and so you know camera companies are making it to where you can film vertical content easily.

And tripods have always been the one where you can rotate the tripod and make it vertical. But now, with the cameras being able to rig vertical and I have the old Black Magic, the 6K Pro if I turn mine sideways, the settings will change, so it's all forward. So then you can do it like that vertical filmmaking man. It's crazy, because those will get more views and get more attention than something that's filmed horizontally. Unless you have a big name actor or someone that's in for the most part, these reels will outperform the nicer content Now, which one has a longer shelf life can be more value to your business. That's something that's different, but it's something to be said that, yeah, it's definitely a future, and pretty much every job that I do nowadays, people want reels out of it. So it's kind of like I have to accept that. For a while there I was like I don't do social media work. I only want to do stuff for your website, youtube. I quickly just like this is a terrible game plan. Social media is exploding, you know. So it's the future.

Yeah, it is, and there's a plugins now that help with that as well. We were talking off camera before we started about game streaming and OBS, and there are other softwares, too that you use to record screen record when you're game streaming. They have plugins available now where it'll pull it out and give you vertical clips at the same time that you're recording your regular standard yeah. It's all about creating content and churning out product.

Yeah, it's turning us into machines, unfortunately.

It is. Ai helps a little bit. Yeah, I know right Not the AI that takes us over and pretends to be us, but as far as editing goes, Right, it's fun, though I mean.

I think it's like I said, it's more accessible. So you get to do more, you get to work more. It's a little nuances, but at the same time, like no one's going to have a job, that's just. Everything's a hundred percent perfect all the time.

Yeah.

Even people think, oh, these professional athletes, like they're so happy. It's like most professional athletes are very unhappy with their situation.

Yeah.

Either they're not playing enough or they want new money.

Physical pain. They don't feel like yeah, physical pain.

They don't like the coach, they don't like the situation, and then they go to a new one and they realize they got the same problem. It's kind of like we're not meant for this world, almost. It's just like you know. It's hard to be 100% satisfied with everything that's going on.

Yeah you can't, you're gearhead and all this stuff. But I do find it interesting that a lot of these cool companies and I did the mendizio films like a china I think I get their base out of china they make these lenses and anamorphic lenses used to be something that's what like forty thousand dollars, fifty, you know panavision anamorphic lenses were like crazy expensive and nowadays, or blizzard, for instance, is another one.

You can get three anamorphic lenses for like two grand I think, and they're like good anamorphic lenses. And then you can get the dzo. They have a bunch that are probably under 2000 per anamorphic lens and so there's like cool things like that are happening. You know they have this one dzo r list prime. It's like a one four cinema prime. They compared it to like the zeiss $20,000 one. It's not that much of a difference. I'm sure if you were using it in a real setting it might be a little bit. But man, the image quality of some of these things is. It's fun. It's exciting that you can essentially get these things at cheaper prices, you know what's your main lens that you're running right now?

on your road, mainly just kind of sigma primes right like Like photo lenses. For most jobs I don't ever use autofocus, I usually manually pull everything but, I have like the 18 to 35, the 70 to 200.

I do have a Vespid 40 that I like to do for you know, maybe some pepper in the sauce, but at the same time I do like using lens rentals a lot Like. I feel like if I'm going to rent something for, like you know, a short film, or maybe even want to elevate a look of a project, I'd rather just rent something instead of pay the big bucks and then kind of have the Sigma lenses for and maybe you could put up a dream filter on it or something to give it a little different look for something that's cheaper.

But you know to own some of these for my financial state now my wife would not be happy, right, but I would love to.

I'm running a Sigma lens on this and it's a prime lens, but it's still great, great quality and it's not expensive you know, compared to stuff that's available yeah, they use the same glass and their stills lenses that they do in their cine lenses.

So you think of it like, oh, these cine lenses are five grand. Let's actually the same glass in the one.

That's like 700 bucks, you know, and you're like oh, is it zeiss glass, or is it somebody else that's making it?

That I don't know. I think it's Sigma that makes it, but I don't know if it's I don't think Zeiss makes it.

Yeah, I have a webcam and a microphone. That's right. I love that TJ has finally got someone who can talk the minutiae and gear.

Tech stuff.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It's cool because it helps you get the unique look right. I think that's what we're all kind of after is aspiring DPs and all this. How can I get a unique look without maybe having to get a super fancy Alexa camera right? You want to try to find ways that you could make yourself stand out, whether that's lighting methods, whether that's lenses or filters.

Yeah.

It's kind of like you know how can you make your own sauce Right?

I worked on a movie Wheel of Heaven it should be coming out soon and he used a Game Boy camera to catch some footage, just to drop into something weird you know, what I mean. It just clicked Like I knew it. Oh, that's cool, but listening to you talk gave it a whole new level of appreciation for me.

So get weird folks. I know I love like the is because like there is some moments where they'll let me use like GoPros or like Game Boy cameras almost like little things and they'll rig it to the camera. So maybe if he opens the fridge and pulls the milk out of the fridge, the camera's like tracking with them. Right so like sometimes building that creative rig with that kind of stuff.

I find that stuff really interesting. You know, leave the camera on the door and as he opens it up, it stops on his face and he looks down at the milk or something you know. Yeah, Someone, no one's no one's thought of that, you know.

That's right, Like if you ever seen Bullet Train. They do a lot of cool stuff with like the water bottle scene in.

Bullet.

Train, yeah, and that was a movie where I was like this is like I love those cool ideas for those shots. Man, it's sick.

Nice, cool. Now we just got to get you a boot camera and the circle will come complete. That's right Boots. It's been a blast having you on. Do you have any social media you want to share with folks?

Yeah, you can follow me at jspproductions underscore and then wwwjspproductionscomorg is some of my work that you can see, and I'd say that the best is yet to come. Yeah, Everyone asks me like what's your favorite project, and it's of the next one.

The next one. Yeah, that's a good answer.

The next one that you, the viewer, will hire him to do. And he'll hire us.

That's right. It's the circle of life.

You guys are the best man.

I'm happy to come on anytime. Thank you, thank you, we love having you.

We appreciate you.