Don’t be tempted to jump straight into DPing your first gig.
This week Bryan Folwer, DP & Steadicam Op, shares how you can get started as a DP. In this episode, he talks about setting your daily rate, unions for DPs, and skills needed to be a DP other than knowing how to light.
Watch now to learn how you can get paid to be a DP.
Key points:
1:55 – How he got started
7:04 – Question to ask a DP when hiring
18:40 – BBC Documentary
20:25 – Favorite types of shoots
23:27 – Unions for DP’s
25:27 – Setting up benefits
32:30 – Using a steady cam
34:29 – New gear
41:58 – Something going wrong
Links
Fowler Films
Covert Coffee
Prolycht Orion 300 FS Kit
Godox Parabolic 128 Reflector Kit
Transcript
Bryan Fowler (00:00):
You can’t get an education from somebody on YouTube. You can learn some things, but you can’t get experience from somebody else’s experience. I mean, I’ve seen people give reviews on products that I’ve owned and they said, “Oh, it’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s everything else and this is how you would use it.” I was like, “That’s not my experience and that’s not how I would use it.” I’m no better than them, but there’s no barrier to entry for someone to give you advice on how to light an interview.
Tanya Musgrave (00:33):
Welcome to The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by The Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today. On today’s show, we chat with director of photography and steadicam op, Bryan Fowler, who tells us the ins and outs of shooting commercials and music videos. Find the full transcripts and more at thepracticalfilmmaker.com.
I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave. Today, we’re talking to Tennessee-based DP, Bryan Fowler, whose work can be seen in commercials and television ranging from Fairwood on Crackle to Delta, Exxon, and Microsoft. He also does steadicam work that can be seen in music videos from artists such as Halsey, Keith Urban and Ne-Yo. Welcome to the show.
Bryan Fowler (01:14):
I’m so welcomed. Thank you.
Tanya Musgrave (01:17):
You feel so welcomed.
Bryan Fowler (01:21):
I was like, “Wow, those are cool things.”
Tanya Musgrave (01:23):
I’m pretty legit.
Bryan Fowler (01:26):
That’s not what I meant, but thanks for having me on the show. What’s a… What’d you call it?
Tanya Musgrave (01:26):
Podcast.
Bryan Fowler (01:26):
Yeah. I’m so old.
Tanya Musgrave (01:38):
If you go back to the early, early days, we go way back. I was a senior in film school. At that particular time you were a colorist and you did the color for our senior thesis film. From colors to DP, I mean, how about even before that? How did you get here?
Bryan Fowler (01:53):
I graduated from the same place that you graduated from Southern Adventist University. I graduated before the turn of the century so I went straight into working for a corporation, had a few years where I left the company and then I came back to work. It was basically a production company and yet that production company, I started just as an editor. Then I began to write things for that production company and then I’d shoot them with the team. We had a small team and we’d hire people as well for big jobs.
Then I often would edit them. Since I was doing the editing, I also was learning color correction and it was way before the days of Resolve. I was using software that used to be called Final Touch that ended up being adopted into Color by Apple, if you remember that. I left to be a freelance steadicam operator at that time and one of my clients said, “Would you like to DP this commercial?” I was like, “What?” I asked a friend of mine, David George, who you probably know-
Tanya Musgrave (02:56):
Yeah, we actually had him as a guest on this show as well.
Bryan Fowler (03:00):
I had hired David as my director of photography when I was directing and so I called him and said, “Hey, I don’t know what to do.” He gave me a few tips. That’s a very unfair question. Like, “Do you shoot a video?” He gave me some advice and it went well, that client liked me and we did a lot more stuff over the years, stuff like with Sears and Subaru commercials. I can’t even remember all of them. That’s how I got started doing DP work that was about 2008 when I left the corporate life.
Tanya Musgrave (03:36):
You’re Tennessee based.
Bryan Fowler (03:36):
I am.
Tanya Musgrave (03:37):
You split your time in between, I’m guessing just predominantly Nashville, Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville. I don’t know.
Bryan Fowler (03:45):
Over the years, it’s been fairly consistent. Here in Chattanooga, I’m about three hours from five or six different major cities, Nashville-
Tanya Musgrave (03:53):
Wow.
Bryan Fowler (03:53):
… Birmingham. You could throw Huntsville in there, Atlanta, Knoxville. Lexington and Louisville are a little bit further, but I do work there as well.
Tanya Musgrave (04:02):
Wow.
Bryan Fowler (04:02):
Asheville, North Carolina, and even Greenville, South Carolina, it’s about four hours. That sounds awesome but you’re also not the guy in all of those towns. You’re the guy that comes into all of those towns. That’s what I found myself doing for years, was traveling. At that time there was not very much production here in Chattanooga to speak of. There was production, but they all had internal people that were doing everything so I didn’t work in town hardly at all, so it was travel.
I just got back from Los Angeles a couple of days ago, working on a job there. We’ve done stuff as far, most recently… Well, more recently, Vermont. I went up there to work with a client. Schenectady, New York, Boston, Chicago.
Tanya Musgrave (04:51):
Dang. Dang.
Bryan Fowler (04:51):
Colorado, Portland. That sounds super impressive but I mean, it’s basically just… It’s the path of least resistance, right?
Tanya Musgrave (05:00):
Yeah.
Bryan Fowler (05:00):
I know this guy, he can fly on an airplane. Let’s bring him over here.
Tanya Musgrave (05:04):
Yeah. For some reason, I thought that was going to go a different way. I thought you were going to say like, “Oh, but now they’re all in Chattanooga.”
Bryan Fowler (05:14):
No. No. Those jobs that call me to travel a lot are not the big, giant name jobs.
Tanya Musgrave (05:20):
Really?
Bryan Fowler (05:20):
Certainly there are some of those that are like, “Hey, we should do that.” But it’s the maybe more established clients that already know me. They know how I work. They know what I do and the gear that I have. If the budget’s there for a flight and hotel and car, then like I said… Path of least resistance sounded demeaning, but it’s not. It’s like, this is a known quantity. We’re going to have this guy go do it. I guess a bigger client would also do that as well probably with more ease than the smaller ones.
Tanya Musgrave (05:54):
Yeah. But I think at the very least to the people who you’ve been able to build a relationship with, they would be at that place where they would be more apt to, I think, I guess what? Sacrifice part of their budget, just make sure that their person gets to them.
Bryan Fowler (06:09):
Could be, yeah. Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (06:10):
Rather than just somebody local, just like ask somebody.
Bryan Fowler (06:15):
Right.
Tanya Musgrave (06:16):
Any old body.
Bryan Fowler (06:17):
I think that comes with a little bit of experience with the producer, because if someone says, “Oh, yeah.” If they’re building a budget for a client and they just think… Even if it’s not way across country, but just somebody that’s like four hours away and it’s going to be a long drive for them before or after, they have to get hotels, a newer producer might think it’s not worth it. We’re just going to find a local guy.
That might be fine. There’s always local people, but a more experienced one might be able to say from the onset, “Hey, we need to build in travel and hotels and paying for the travel days.” From the beginning, knowing that they’re going to do that so they can ensure for their client what’s going to happen.
Tanya Musgrave (06:59):
You mentioned a new producer. What advice would you give a new producer who was looking into hiring you?
Bryan Fowler (07:05):
That’s a good question because from a freelancer point of view that can be a tricky thing. If it’s a brand new producer that’s first calling me, I got to figure out, are these people used to hiring their friends from a film school or are they used to hiring a 30-person crew? I have to figure that out. I used to try to trick people into telling me what they usually are used to doing.
I just say now like, “Hey, what kind of crews are you used to working with?” Because if they say, “Oh, yeah, we do a big crew and it’s like four people.” I know what that means. I mean, that means four is a lot for them when four is the bare minimum for me. That’s not like, “Oh, I’m so fancy.”
Tanya Musgrave (07:52):
No.
Bryan Fowler (07:52):
That just means I’ve done it enough to know that… I mean, production, it’s about being creative. I’m getting to the answer here. It’s about being creative and it’s about mitigating risk for your client. The rates that we ask for as a director of photography, as a director, all down the line, it’s a lot of money for some clients to spend and so we want to be good stewards of that money for them.
If a new producer comes to me and they’re like, “Hey, Bryan, we’ve got a show or we’ve got a job coming up.” What I love to hear from them is an understanding that they will need to provide me… If they’re asking me for myself and then also for gear, whether it’s a camera package or a camera and lighting, which I have both of those, I like for them to already understand that they need to provide me a certificate of insurance for that, which covers that gear for the time of the shoot.
That’s something that’s often missed with newer companies. Oh, it’s your gear. It’s insured, right? That’s not the point.
Tanya Musgrave (07:52):
Interesting.
Bryan Fowler (08:50):
That company needs… That’s a little different from how other industries work. For film, I need a certificate of insurance. Understanding that there is a rate for labor and then a rate for the equipment that you bring. That’s another key thing. Some people line item everything. If you were to say, “Hey, Bryan, what camera would you suggest us using?” A lot of it comes down to budget. I like it when a producer says, “This is all we have.”
I know there’s always like, “Oh, are they tricking me? Am I supposed to then… How’s this negotiating thing working?” If someone comes to me and says, “This is all we have for camera.” Then I’m able to say, “Well, that will hit you this, camera but no wireless videoed so you’ll have to watch over here or two cameras, full wireless video and a video village set up.” Having a producer that understands that things are variable is good.
Travel is another thing. At the end of the day, we’re on a 10-hour day, but you’ve got a three-hour drive home and they said, “Do you want us to get you a hotel or we can pay you overtime for that drive home?” I don’t know if she’d worked out which is cheaper, but that was a great thing to ask. Instead of just assuming, “Oh, he’s off the clock. He’s going to drive home.” It’s a long day and then a long drive. It might not be safe.
That’s something that is nice to hear when a new producer says, “Oh, I understand the time commitment to this.” If someone’s coming into the film industry and they are just getting started, they don’t work quite as much as someone who’s been doing it a long time, the small things may seem insignificant, but for someone who works 120 days a year, all those small things can add up. Whether that’s an extra few hours on the drive home or a weird lunch schedule, if you’ve got a full week of weird lunch schedules, it’s weird.
If it’s just one day, it’s like, “Whatever, I’ll muscle through.” Yeah, there are producers I know that are totally on my side. Not that there’s sides, but I’ve had one that has said in the past, “Hey, you forgot to put overtime in your thing. You were here an hour later than what we were expecting.” I was like, “Thanks, man. I was just going to gloss over that, but yeah. Okay.” It made me more eager to help him out in the future.
Tanya Musgrave (11:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan Fowler (11:22):
Because I felt like he had my back on that.
Tanya Musgrave (11:24):
Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan Fowler (11:25):
Those are just a few things that I can think of.
Tanya Musgrave (11:29):
No. That’s great. I mean even the COI, that was something that was definitely interesting to come across when I was producing. I was just like, “Oh, yeah, this is a thing on sets. This is good to know.”
Bryan Fowler (11:42):
Yeah. It can be expensive and if somebody has worked out their budget and then all of a sudden they’re starting to rent… I mean, if you go to a camera rental house, they’re going to ask for that. All of a sudden, there’s this added expense and people are like, “What? How do we get around this?”
Tanya Musgrave (11:59):
I am curious, what could someone who is entering this field expect for pay?
Bryan Fowler (12:06):
If someone is coming in, let’s say from film school and they say, “I’m going to be a director of photography.” You’ve heard people say they’re paying their dues or they’re coming up the ladder to PA, second AC, first AC, DP. Let’s just pretend that they’ve done all that. They’ve gone through that process then they’re jumping into AC… I mean, to a DP. For one, if they have gone through that process, they’ll already understand what a DP might make then.
It’ll also help inform them, this is where I sit. As they’re getting better and better doing their own jobs, as well as working for other people, they’re like, “I’ve pulled the best from James coming over here and I’ve worked with Sarah and now I’m going to do my own thing.” They understand how much those rates are. That’s very vague and how much it might be. Your rates as a starting DP might be 400 a day, which might be less than what you were making as an AC.
You are also in a position where it’s a lot more trust and you might have to prove yourself some for that. When I started a long time ago, I started at 500. I didn’t know where I sat to ask some people like, “Is that okay? What do you charge? Is that okay?” After a while I moved up to 800, I moved up to 1250 and that’s a little bit of just figuring out what does the market hold where you are? If I lived in Los Angeles or New York or other big cities, then that rate would be more.
I think about six years ago or maybe seven is when I made a big jump in my rate, and I was a little scared about it. I think I went up to 1250 and I was like, “That seems like an awful lot.” It can be an awful lot. It also could be a very small amount in the big picture of a production. You have to read the room and see what’s going on. I was afraid that people wouldn’t pay that and I remember thinking, “Well, if they don’t, I guess I’ll just go back to my old rate.” People paid it.
I think I told another friend, “If people pay you this amount, then you’re worth that amount to them.” If you said, “Hey, I’m three grand a day or five grand a day.” And people said, “I’ve seen your reel, we’ve done three projects together or whatever, sounds good.” Then that’s what you’re worth for that person for that project. That’s probably a super vague answer.
Tanya Musgrave (12:06):
No.
Bryan Fowler (12:06):
Like, “Oh, it could be anywhere from $5 to-
Tanya Musgrave (12:06):
No, no, no. That’s good.
Bryan Fowler (12:06):
… 10,000.”
Tanya Musgrave (14:56):
No, a range is good. I think, especially taking into account regions. I’m curious, do you have regional quotes?
Bryan Fowler (15:06):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If somebody asked me from Greenville, South Carolina, I have clients there, what the rate is, well, for one, I understand who that client might be in that town. If they’re like, “Hey, we’re going to do this Coca-Cola commercial.” All bets are off. It doesn’t matter if they’re in Greenville, Tennessee, it’s a small town, but if they’re like, “Oh, we’re doing a tourism thing.” We negotiate to figure out what that rate might be.
If someone called from Atlanta, then I’m going to assume that they’re ready for a bigger budget and then wait to see if they say, “Whoa.” Because sometimes I get calls and I tell them my rate and then I say, “And the camera package is of course on top of that.” And they go, “Oh.” What that means is someone is out there shooting with their own camera or camera package, maybe lighting for less than what my rate is as a DP.
I look at that two different ways, man, they could be making a lot more, but maybe not. There’s more to being a DP than just producing beautiful images because you have to be able to talk with people and understand what the scope of the project is. You have to see there are politics on set, you have to be a troubleshooter, which is much like every position on set. Some people might have better skills than all those other things than dialing in the perfect exposure.
Tanya Musgrave (16:39):
Yeah. I mean, yeah, but there’s a lot to… I mean, there has to come with it a lot of trust. I remember… I mean, okay, yes, this is when I was a student and everything. I mean, looking back on it, it was awful straight out of camera color. I remember us fighting for them to have those purple skin tones. It’s like those blueish-purple skin tones. You had, of course evened it all out so it was good and we were just like, “Oh, I don’t know-
Bryan Fowler (17:13):
Oh, this is-
Tanya Musgrave (17:14):
Huh?
Bryan Fowler (17:14):
You’re talking about Blue.
Tanya Musgrave (17:15):
Yes. Yes. I’m talking about Blue.
Bryan Fowler (17:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Tanya Musgrave (17:18):
I’m just like, “Oh, yeah.” But the title of the film is Blue.” I still remember you sitting me down and just being like, “I will do whatever you want, but-
Bryan Fowler (17:33):
However.
Tanya Musgrave (17:34):
… I would not suggest this, if I didn’t think that it would make it better.” I think that was when I was just like, “All right, we can trust this guy. I mean, obviously he’s very good at his job.” But I mean, the fact that you had the sensitivity to just be like… Even in a teachable moment for a student who’s clinging to some trash. I think having a crew member that you can trust is a big deal. I mean, yeah, you’re paying for so much more than just somebody who can set exposure. Yes. It’s true.
Bryan Fowler (18:10):
Yeah. I mean, there are clients that I am a glorified camera operator. The director knows very precisely what he wants. I light the scene for him, and so that’s a valid skill. As for picking lenses, I’m just tweaking what he has in store, nothing wrong with that at all because my job then becomes to improve on what his ideas are, which is again, not abnormal.
Then sometimes it’s whatever I want. I worked for a director, we were doing a thing for the BBC, a documentary on the Everly Brothers. They flew over from the UK, trying to get to know… It was just a three-man… Did we have an audio person? I think we had an audio person. It was producer, director, me and an audio person.
Tanya Musgrave (18:58):
That’s a lot of people.
Bryan Fowler (18:59):
Yeah. That’s a lot… Oh, that’s a big set.
Tanya Musgrave (18:59):
It’s a lot.
Bryan Fowler (19:02):
Audio person? Can’t you do that yourself?
Tanya Musgrave (19:07):
[inaudible 00:19:07].
Bryan Fowler (19:08):
Yeah. Right? We did the interview first and when we got done, he said, “All right, let’s get some shots of this and this and this and this.” At that point, wireless video was kind of new, I mean, wireless HD video, like what we all have on set today. I handed him the monitor and said, “Do you want to watch this?” He said, “No, we hired you because we like what you do. Have fun.” He just walked away. I was like, “Thanks.”
I shot a bunch of stuff and then the next morning he said, “Oh, hey, good morning, Bryan.” He said, “I looked at the footage.” I was thinking, “Oh, crap, I’m going home.” He was like, “Looked great. All right, so for today.” That’s the other extreme of not micromanaging, not managing at all.
Maybe you’re a DP that doesn’t fit with that, you need that collaboration with somebody else, or maybe you’re someone that totally is like, “I don’t want you to tell me what to do. You hired me.” I’d like to think that being versatile get you more jobs.
Tanya Musgrave (20:20):
Between commercial or music videos or TV shows, which one’s your preference?
Bryan Fowler (20:26):
I like commercials, everyone’s persnickety which can be annoying, “Oh, move this truffle, rotate it a quarter turn. Oh, now people will buy our chocolate.” That stuff annoys me but there’s usually a high attention to detail, which I appreciate. We shoot for one day or four days for just one or two spots. I like that kind of stuff and look to do more like that that has a creative aspect to it instead of just a documentary like, “Oh, let’s go see what we can find.”
That’s fun too. There’s a higher stress of course, to the commercial projects. That’s something that if you’re the producer or even a new director that’s coming into it, man, all the information you can give is good. Of course there’s overkill, but you never know what might come in handy. Oh, we’re doing this on a dock? Are we going to be in the water? Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. Yeah. Do you have waders? Do we have insurance for water?
Yeah. I like commercials. Narrative stuff is nice too. We’ve done a handful of shorts. We’ve done a TV show. We’ve done a feature. Those are nice for different reasons. We still want them to look great but yeah, those are also fun. Trying to think if there’s jobs I don’t like. Exteriors in the summer with no shade, I don’t like those.
Tanya Musgrave (21:51):
You just throw up some silks maybe?
Bryan Fowler (21:55):
Oh, I’m just thinking for me, I’m hot. I’m not worried about how it’s lit. I can handle that. I’m just like, “Man, I’m sweating.”
Tanya Musgrave (22:05):
That sucks, especially if you’re wearing a steadicam too. That’s a whole other thing. You got this huge [inaudible 00:22:10] 70-pound rig.
Bryan Fowler (22:11):
Yeah. You asked about producing anticipating stuff like that. As a producer, if you are DP for those that aren’t looking at video, I’m pointing at myself, doesn’t think, “Oh, it’s the middle of summer and I’m going to be sweating my butt off. I got into a situation when we started coming back into production during COVID of the first year where we were filming outside and I was overheating and there was no solution for it.
It was probably providential that where we were shooting there was this outside gazebo that had this massive fan and we just happened to… I was like, “Can you get that fan and bring it over here?” I was DP and also doing steadicam, we would do one take and I’m just dripping sweat and heat exhaustion, whatever. I don’t know which one of the heat things it was, but we were lucky to have that fan there to cool me off.
The producer on that job is awesome. I love them. But next time I’m going to be like, “Hey, are we outside? Can we just make sure we have some cold drink, something to cool me off? Shade.”
Tanya Musgrave (23:23):
Yeah. You’ve talked a lot about new producers and things to be aware of. For cinematographers, I know that there are guilds and unions and being part of IATSE and that kind of a thing. Is that something that you’ve ever considered? Are you part of it? Are you in it?
Bryan Fowler (23:39):
I am not. I’m not in the union. I wouldn’t mind it, but I’ve had the paperwork, I even had one job that said, “Hey, are you in the union?” I said, “No, but I can be tomorrow.” Then they went with someone else. Because I’m in Chattanooga there are very, very few union jobs that come into town and the ones that do, they bring their people from somewhere else so there was no benefit for me to do that. If I lived in a larger city like Atlanta or New York or Los Angeles, then I think it would be a good thing. There’s-
Tanya Musgrave (24:16):
Even when you’re traveling to these other jobs, has it become more of a thought in your head that that might be something to pursue or no?
Bryan Fowler (24:24):
Oh, I will probably join the union when a job I’m on requires it. I don’t think being in the union increases my skill level. There are classes that they offer and there are things like that that I… I mean, maybe I’m incorrect about this, but what it probably would do, would give me opportunities that I might not have otherwise.
Tanya Musgrave (24:24):
And benefits.
Bryan Fowler (24:45):
Yeah. And also benefits and also $12,000 fee. Is that what it is now for director of photography?
Tanya Musgrave (24:54):
Oh, oh, is it? That your minimum?
Bryan Fowler (24:57):
Yeah. Plus a percentage of every job that I do, whether it’s union or not, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Having benefits is great. Being able to have somebody that you can call if something that feels weird about the set that you’re on. I’ve been lucky my entire career, aside from a couple of times when I was like, “This feels a little sketchy.” The next day it was like, “Oh, sorry, that was sketchy. We’re not going to do that.” Sketchy like safe, just annoying.
Tanya Musgrave (25:25):
What advice would you give to somebody who is just starting the freelance life in order to set up those benefits that you don’t get when you are in the union?
Bryan Fowler (25:25):
Marry someone with a good job.
Tanya Musgrave (25:25):
Find you a sugar mama or a sugar daddy.
Bryan Fowler (25:37):
Yeah. Be like, “Hey, do you have benefits?” It’s like, “Yeah. All right. What?”
Tanya Musgrave (25:37):
I guess I’ll do.
Bryan Fowler (25:50):
All right. Yes. What? What was your name? Where’d you come from? Yeah, that’s a good question. I mentioned that early in my career I was corporate so that took care of our benefits. When you’re just starting off as freelance I’m sure it can be super hard to both have health insurance and be saving for retirement or even having an emergency fund.
Although both of those things are very important, especially as a freelancer, because you never know when… You might have five solid weeks of great work and or months of great work and then two or three months of barely enough to get by. I remember talking to someone we hired as an actor from Atlanta. She got a big break on a movie many, many years ago. We were talking about how much she brought in for the movie. I said, “Does that make you feel good like you’re set?”
She’s like, “Oh, I saved every bit of that.” I said, “Oh really?” She said, “Yeah, I took out what I needed to live and then I put the rest in savings because I never know when the next job might be.” I was like, “Ooh.” I thought, “That’s really smart.” I was corporate at the time, but I still tried to do that when I went freelance, which is hard because you’re like, “Oh, it’s February and I’ve made $19. Let me put seven of that in a savings account.” Obviously you have to eat and pay your rent or mortgage or whatever.
Tanya Musgrave (27:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One thing, it sounds crazy, but I had never met with a financial planner before and I thought, “You know what? It’s time. I’ve got money in savings.” I even watched… It was a silly little TikTok, but it actually wasn’t that silly because it was saying, “Not even the banks keep their money in the bank.” I was just like, “Oh, hey.” Well, and I’m just like, “Okay. I’ve got some savings, but I also feel like there’s something that I could be doing to figure out some life.”
I’m not married so I don’t necessarily have the spouse’s benefits or the spouse’s double income or that kind of a thing. One of the things that he said at the very, very beginning, he’s just like, “Okay. If you feel like you’re stable, that’s great. One of the first things that we want to do when you feel like you’re stable is protecting what you have. Along with health insurance and stuff like that, put some thought towards possible disability insurance.”
Because especially as a freelancer, if something happens to you… I’d always heard of it, but I had never actually considered it. Anyway, it was just something that I was curious about.
Bryan Fowler (28:44):
When we’re 24 or seven or 32 or whatever, we feel much younger than we are, especially the older we get. We still feel young sometimes and then out of nowhere, you’re over the hill and you’re like, “The heck. Where did that come from?”
Tanya Musgrave (29:08):
I pulled my back emptying my dishwasher. I wish that that was not a true story.
Bryan Fowler (29:17):
Oh, I had a friend who he’s a… A good friend of mine is a steadicam operator like me and he broke his ankle walking into his house, just rolled it on a little thing. It was just a freak little enough to where he broke it. I mean, it was a couple of months and now he had to continue to work while he was recovering. He actually went to set and shot for two days with the broken ankle while doing steadicam.
Yeah. Anyway, the point of that was, you never know when something might happen and if you start… If you’re 27 and you’re like, “All right, I’m going to go be freelance.” And you start squirreling away 20 bucks, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks, every paycheck or whatever, there’s this funny little magic thing where when it’s in a savings account, it feels more painful when you take it out to pay for whatever, something else.
For me, at least when it’s just in my checking account or… I don’t even have checks, but a checking account, it’s like, “Whatever, I’m going to spend this money.” But once it’s over here, it’s like, “Oh, I can’t touch that.” This is a cool thing. Start saving now.
Tanya Musgrave (30:31):
Yes, yes. Get a Roth IRA and disability insurance.
Bryan Fowler (30:36):
Yes. Something.
Tanya Musgrave (30:38):
Okay. I’m going to ask about some tools of your trade now. I would love to know what gear or gadget is a good old, reliable, or resource?
Bryan Fowler (30:47):
There’s little things that I do appreciate. In doing handheld work, which I do a fair amount of handheld work, the camera sits here and it’s nicely balanced and everything’s fine and there’s a little shoulder pad and it fits right there. Then when you tilt up and the eye piece is in the wrong space, sometimes you have to move the camera forward and on every shoulder pad there’s this nice soft thing and then there’s hard, I don’t know, poison spikes or something before and after the thing.
As soon as you go, it’s like and digging into your shoulder. In the bottom of my cart, I always have a shoulder pad that Amy, my wife, made for me. I could have bought one for like, I don’t know, $6,000 or 150. I don’t know how much they are, but I was looking at a website and Amy said, “I could make that.” The next day I had a shoulder pad.
Tanya Musgrave (31:41):
That’s amazing. Oh, it’s so amazing.
Bryan Fowler (31:44):
It’s not something that I always use, but it is something that I want to have with me. A runner-up to that is a little foam pad, like a garden pad or something so that if I’m kneeling down in wet grass or gravel or the same poison spikes somewhere, if I’m lucky my grip or maybe the second AC will have that handy and give it to me. Sometimes it’s not enough time. Sometimes it’s like, “Whatever.” I’m just going to push through and I’ll get the shot and keep on going. But those pads, shoulder and knee, are really good.
Tanya Musgrave (32:24):
Just to give a little bit of background, Bryan so awesomely walked me through a makeshift steadicam rig. There’s a concert up here and they didn’t have incredibly high standards that’s why they got me to run this steadicam that I had never run before. As anybody listening would know, nobody just picks up a steadicam and does stuff with it and it actually looks good. I had no idea how to balance it.
Bryan was amazing and came on for like two hours and showed me how to balance things, things to look for. This is where you spin this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, super helpful. I walked around my house, followed my cat and got to know the rig before I had to spend a lot of time in it. I tell you those pads, you really feel it after a little bit.
I still have a little bit of a bruise on my hip from this because there is a pad in specific places, but where there’s not a pad and it is just the buckle of stuff, oh my stars. Oh my stars and stripes. Okay. I had my camera bag and so I was ripping the pads out of that and I put the camera bag-
Bryan Fowler (32:24):
Oh, to put it… Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (33:41):
Yeah. I put those on the hips and I was just like, “We’re golden.” I feel like the sore spot is from before when I was practicing, not from when I actually was wearing it. It was pretty sweet.
Bryan Fowler (33:51):
You touched on something that is probably an interesting thing between the steadicam, which is the real steadicam and then I think what you had was a flycam? Is that what they called it?
Tanya Musgrave (33:51):
Yeah. Yeah. It was like a-
Bryan Fowler (33:51):
From-
Tanya Musgrave (33:51):
Yeah.
Bryan Fowler (34:07):
Yeah. That can still get the job done but what you have to do is fix those kind of problems. I’m glad that it worked out good for you. I’m glad you didn’t fall off the stage. That’s a good thing.
Tanya Musgrave (34:16):
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. I’m glad that I wasn’t just physically broken by the end of it. That’s also a good thing.
Bryan Fowler (34:22):
That’s true. There you go.
Tanya Musgrave (34:25):
Okay. For the new gadgets, the ones that revolutionize how you work, what can you dig up for that?
Bryan Fowler (34:30):
Something that I just recently purchased will solve a little pain point for me. You see softboxes labeled is parabolic softboxes, but they’re not parabolic. Years ago I was a steadicam operator for a Belk commercial and that was the first time I saw a Briese light, which is a true parabolic fixture and source, and makes a beautiful image for a photography or a video. They’re also crazy expensive and difficult to put together, but they look really good.
Part of the benefit of a parabolic light gets… Well, all of the benefit gets negated when you put diffusion over the front, because that light then it just becomes a soft box, which still can be a pretty light. The second part of a true parabolic light is the light source is not at the back of the softbox, but in the middle pointing back. Then it gets reflected onto the subject.
There’s Aperture, Nanlux, other companies are making these LED chip on board COB lights with a little Bowens Mount for the… Stealing stuff from the photography people. That’s where you see the majority of these fake parabolic things. We were at Cine Gear last week and saw a true parabolic fixture-
Tanya Musgrave (35:55):
Interesting.
Bryan Fowler (35:56):
… that was not $12,000.
Tanya Musgrave (35:58):
Fantastic.
Bryan Fowler (36:00):
K5600 makes one too. They call it the Kurve and that works with Joker heads but they’re also quite expensive because it’s complicated. The one I found would work with any of the Bowens Mount lights and offer a true parabolic source. I’m sure there’s caveats. It’s probably not quite as nice as the one that costs as much as a car. That is my newest purchase to go with some of the COB lights that I have.
To go along with that, I got another light from Prolycht. I think it’s the 300 FS. I chose the Prolycht because it’s a full color light and they’re able to get a better color rendition than just a bicolor light that goes from daylight to warm, to cool, warm to cool, because there’s something missing in the middle for that. It shows up in a day and we’ll see if it’s a good purchase or if I send it back to B&H.
Tanya Musgrave (36:55):
Ooh, interesting. The one that you just got, have you gotten a chance to play with it yet?
Bryan Fowler (37:00):
I was only able to play with the light at Cine Gear and those are hard to evaluate because I’m like, “Hey, Amy, stand in front of this light. Oh, look, you’re brighter.” We’ll see how it goes when we’re on set. Perfect.
Tanya Musgrave (37:12):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was curious if you already knew of any quirks of it. It’s always interesting and they’re always great until you figure out some of the quirks.
Bryan Fowler (37:21):
I was going to say, I suspect that for the price that this parabolic reflector that works with the Bowens Mount, I suspect that there’ll be some parts of it that we need to treat with kid gloves. I’m not a rental house, so I don’t have to worry about anybody coming and messing up the thing. If it gets messed up, it’s me or my crew. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll last for years to come or just this next shoot next week.
Tanya Musgrave (37:48):
On a technical note, that parabolic reflector, does it throw light similar to a beauty dish? I mean, a beauty dish is just like you have a hot spot in the center and it’s a quick fall off.
Bryan Fowler (38:00):
For the parabolic light, there is a video that Meet The Gaffer did, that Luke did over… I think is it’s number 220 and it’s called lighting for tabletop. They go through what it looks like between a true parabolic light, like the Kurve from K5600 and then a 4K Farnell and then diffusion on top of that and you’re able to actually see the difference between the two fixtures and between the two methods of light in it.
They all look good, but you’re able to see it instead of just being like, “Oh, I think this is better.” The parabolic light is focusable because that fixture can move four and half within the parabolic frame to focus the beam on the subject that you want. Traditionally they’re used for faces and that’s why I’m excited to get it, but it also can be used in product photography as well because of the way that it handles shadows.
Tanya Musgrave (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you just listed off somebody who sounds like a really awesome resource for DPs. What are some other current resources that you could think of you could point people to?
Bryan Fowler (39:11):
Oh man, I’m not good at that. I don’t trust people on YouTube. You can’t get an education from somebody on YouTube. You can learn some things, but you can’t get experience from somebody else’s experience. I mean, I’ve seen people give reviews on products that I’ve owned and they said, “Oh, it’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s everything else and this is how you would use it.” I was like, “That’s not my experience and that’s not how I would use it.”
I’m no better than them, but there’s no barrier to entry for someone to give you advice on how to light an interview. What you can do though is see what kind of jobs those people are called to. Luke Seerveld, never can say his name right, he’s a super cool guy. I have had lunch with him a couple of times, hired him actually a long time ago when we were out in San Francisco, it was right before he started his Meet The Gaffer stuff.
Again, I think he had a couple of episodes, but anyway, Luke is a great resource because he’s a guy that’s working, he’s showing us examples of the stuff that he’s done and then gives us reviews based on some of that stuff. I know he is not a review site, but he’s someone who talks to us about it. YouTube is a great resource. I can’t say it’s not.
I just think we have to be careful, especially younger filmmakers to realize if you’re looking at what a camera does and what a lens does and all this stuff, look at the imagery that it captures or look at something else other than just that one person that does it or that is giving it a thumbs-up. I don’t know.
Tanya Musgrave (40:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s definitely a thing. I remember being in that stage and just devouring everything having to do with photography and there’d be these reviews by people and then I would see the results and I’m like, “I don’t want to listen to you anymore.” It’s like, “That’s not [inaudible 00:41:13].” Yeah.
Bryan Fowler (40:54):
That’s not to be-
Tanya Musgrave (41:16):
That’s why I want to know the ones that you trust.
Bryan Fowler (41:19):
Yeah. Look, Luke’s stuff is great. There’s not really that much more that I go to. I’ve enjoyed watching the videos from Cooke, the lens company. Yeah. They give a good sense of what these other DPs are doing. They have some round tables. Maybe this is a fault, but I struggle to get any inspiration from social media with filmmaking.
Tanya Musgrave (41:43):
No worries. Yeah.
Bryan Fowler (41:45):
Maybe I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing.
Tanya Musgrave (41:48):
No.
Bryan Fowler (41:48):
Like, “Oh, you’re missing out so much.”
Tanya Musgrave (41:49):
No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. Another favorite question of mine is the stories of when something went wrong, I would love to hear a story of when something went wrong and what you did to fix it or grow from it.
Bryan Fowler (42:03):
Oh, on this shoot for the Radiohead’s… This is not Radiohead. This is American aquarium. We wanted to use haze so we could get some nice light beams. If you’re on the video, you can see this night’s glow behind his head and that wouldn’t have been possible if we weren’t able to have atmosphere in the room. We asked beforehand… Always ask if you’re going to do atmosphere. We said, “Hey, can we do haze in here?” They’re like, “Yeah, we do it for concerts all the time.”
Okay. Cool. Getting the stuff out, “Hey, we’re just checking. We’re going to pump a bunch of haze in here. Is that okay?” They’re like, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do it all the time.” We might have even asked a third time. The fire department showed up because the alarm went off and so I mean, we filled that place with haze probably more than a concert, but it looked great.
Tanya Musgrave (42:54):
Oh nice.
Bryan Fowler (42:56):
That is one where the DP-
Tanya Musgrave (43:01):
He just pointed at himself.
Bryan Fowler (43:03):
… just quietly walked over in the corner and thought, “Well, all right guys,” to the producer, “I hope you guys got that figured out.” They went and talked to them, everything was fine but that was the third time that that had happened when we had asked multiple times-
Tanya Musgrave (43:18):
Dang.
Bryan Fowler (43:18):
… “Is there an alarm system in here?”
Tanya Musgrave (43:21):
Nah.
Bryan Fowler (43:22):
That’s not a big snafu. You don’t go to jail for setting off an alarm. Maybe there’s a fine or something. They still do have Kenny. Ken. We call him Ken, but he’s still locked away because of it. He wasn’t help much on set anyway so worked out good. Just kidding, Ken. We love you. We love you, Ken. I think being able to understand what is the true root of the problem and what is the most important thing to get past it?
We were doing a video for a youth home in Alabama and was a multi-day shoot. The AD looked at the weather and said, “Guys, we have rain coming in about an hour.” We hightailed it out of the interior that we were doing. We ran down to the next location, which was a basketball scene and started getting set up for that thing as soon as we could. Then it started raining.
There was just a lot to move and did a lot to get organized for a shoot like we were doing so we had to quickly pack the cameras away, pack lighting up and we had to figure out what do we do? Because the clock’s still ticking. Nothing’s paused except the cameras. We had to quickly find a location, light a location, and shoot a location in now a quarter of the time that we-
Tanya Musgrave (44:51):
[inaudible 00:44:51].
Bryan Fowler (44:51):
… we were going to do the other one in four setups. Now we had a quarter of that time. We found a spot around the back of the building. The director is a super awesome dude down in Birmingham named Taylor. He’s with Six Foot Five Productions, can’t forget the five. He quickly came up with a little scene to satisfy what we needed for that project, wrote some new dialogue, if I remember right, maybe not. We shot it in one shot.
We did a oner with the steadicam and it looks great and the actors… It was fine. Nobody would watch the video and go, “That one feels out of place.” The reason we were able to do that is because everybody moved quickly. Everybody understood, nobody screwed up. It’s the weather. We made quick decisions and stuck to them. We also had a great experienced crew so that was not a big deal for them. It just happened.
Tanya Musgrave (45:51):
The question that I always wrap up with is what questions should I have asked you?
Bryan Fowler (45:55):
Bryan, are you available on July 27 through August 14? That’s what freelancers want to hear. It’s always frustrating when that happens and then they’re like, “Great, can you block that off? We got one day in there. We don’t know which one.” I’m like, “Oh.”
Tanya Musgrave (45:55):
Ah, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. That’s kind of hilarious. I’ve never gotten that answer.
Bryan Fowler (46:15):
One question that I thought you might ask was, what would you recommend to someone who wanted to be a DP? I kind of touched on it a little bit and that’s don’t be tempted to just jump straight into it. I had the opportunity to when my friend… now they’re friends and the client said, “Hey, do you want to DP this commercial?” I was like, “Yeah.” Because it is what I wanted to do and it’s what I had been doing.
What I missed out on was if I was able to work as a second AC or first AC and work with other DPs and watch what they did, I would’ve been better set up when I did make that move to be a DP. Everyone’s situation is different. When I became freelance, it was at the peak or the bottom of the recession in 2008 so I rode it up with everybody else but I missed out on learning from watching other people. I had a little bit of a stroke of luck as a steadicam operator.
I kind of was able to watch other DPs and see what they do and see what I didn’t want to do. Oh, that guy didn’t know what he was doing, or whatever it may be. That’s a benefit to not jumping straight in.
Tanya Musgrave (47:28):
I heard the saying once that if you put on shoes that are too big for you before you’ve grown into them, you’re going to trip.
Bryan Fowler (47:40):
Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (47:40):
I always think about that every now and again.
Bryan Fowler (47:42):
Yeah. There is a benefit to taking the jobs that people offer you and if somebody’s offering you a DP position, then absolutely you can take that and feel confident in it. I think I didn’t even realize what I was missing out on until like six years later and I was like, “Huh, oh, I see. I see what’s going on, or didn’t go on.” I think being aware of it might be all that you need and you just say, “Okay. I need to learn that stuff in another way.”
If you’re trying to be an AC so you can learn that kind of stuff and those opportunities are not there, then move on to what is available for you.
Tanya Musgrave (48:23):
How do people find or follow your work? Shameless plug out.
Bryan Fowler (48:29):
Sadly, I am not active on any social media. I do have an Instagram account that has some stuff over the past few years. It’s just Fowler Films. My website also is Fowler Films fowlerfilms.com for the website. There’s a handful of jobs there that I put on the front page that are interesting. Oh, yeah, you can buy my coffee at covertcoffee.com and you can place orders for coffee because I’m a weird coffee person and I roast coffee in my basement.
Tanya Musgrave (48:58):
Yes. Well, Bryan, thank you so much for coming on this humble show. I really appreciate it.
Bryan Fowler (49:03):
Yeah. Thanks for asking.
Tanya Musgrave (49:05):
If you enjoyed this interview, follow us right here and on Instagram. Ask us questions and check out more episodes at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. Be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on The Practical Filmmaker.