Back On Topps – You Are A Jew
I just watched this again for the first time since it was released in 2008. Randy and Jason Sklar are hilarious. I’ve known them for 70,000 years. Neil Mahoney is a brilliant editor and we shared an office over a dispensary on Santa Monica where these episodes were cut. Please enjoy this.
Photos from the Emmy Shoot
All of these were taken by Jason Uhrmacher. You can Find Jason on twitter here.
Me and Jimmy getting the opening shot. Notice my extremely comfortable shoes.
This is my Concerned look. The opening took longer than expected due to exposure differences between the bright outdoor location and some large LED screens that had the Emmy logo on them.
I love Jimmy's expression here. Also I have to admit that when Kate Gosselin arrived on set I got super excited.
As a tool to make things go faster on set, we shot and edited a full version of the video a few days earlier using dancers, so I
Jimmy is awesome to work with. This is photographic evidence.
Blocking the final shot with Jon Hamm.
2010 Emmy Show Open
4 or 5 months ago Mike Shoemaker came to me and said, “You know that vacation time we have in August? We don’t have it.” That was how I found out that Jimmy Fallon would be hosting the 2010 Emmys. That was how I got to direct the show open this year.
Some details as they come to mind. In no particular order.
- We shot the dialogue scenes in 4 hours on Friday 8/27.
- We shot the music sequences in 5 hours on Saturday 8/28.
- Charlie Haykel is an awesome guy who wears classy shirts.
- I think it’s my best steadicam work to date, and that’s a straight up boast. Deal with it.
- I love Chris Tartaro (the editor) and Amy Ozols (the writer) with all of my heart. In the past year I have pulled literally 9 thousand all nighters with those two clowns, and it’s basically like having a high school sleepover, only in an edit room.
- Thank you to Canon USA for loaning me two XF 305’s to shoot this. The cameras performed beautifully.
- I use autofocus when I’m on steadicam. It really works with the 305’s. They have face detection!
- Joel McHale scream-sings from the heart.
- Robin Antin and I share an awkwardness at parties which translates into dancing.
- Thank you Bruce Springsteen for doing most of the work for us.
- I bet there is a Jewish gentleman somewhere named Bruce Springstein, and he always has to correct people and say “It’s Spring-STINE”.
Mad Men Emmys Commercial: My RAW Epiphany
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This is a technical post is for a narrow band of director/operator dudes and ladies like me who toil every day with prosumer cameras, trying to elevate the look of their work so there is no “sumer” left in the viewer’s mind, only “pro.”
I got to shoot this spot with a Red camera on the Mad Men set, and this was the first time that I really understood the power of working with the RAW format. When setting a look on the morning of this shoot, I balanced the camera to 5600K. 
This homogenized everything, giving it distinctly yellow/gold patina. It was a strong choice which added to the vintage feel. We shot the spot and everyone watching on the monitor was fine with it. When I got back to New York our editor Chris Tartaro and I looked at the footage in Red Cine X. We had the option to completely undo my color temperature choice from the shoot, and look at the same footage as if I had shot it at a more neutral 3200K.
Soon as we did that, I realized 2 things: 1) When a production designer and scenic artists have put a lot of work into something, the palette they choose should be allowed to speak for itself 2) The reason I have developed this tendency towards giving the entire scene an (occasionally over the top) unifying color bias in camera is because 70% of the time I am shooting in ad hoc locations that we don’t have the time or budget to repaint entirely. This technique has been valuable for me, but as I work on better and better sets I need to back off on this.
The RAW thing. Mad Men taught me to appreciate it.
Photo by Michael Yarish
Digital Day at the DGA
Check out this photo of me making an awesome point at Digital Day at the Director’s Guild on July 31st. I was on the panel with Randy and Jason Sklar, Ondi Timoner, Akiva Schaffer, and Jesse Warren. I’ve known Randy and Jason since college, but it wasn’t until around 1997 when I had to crash for two weeks at the apartment they shared with Eric Friedman on 54th and 8th that we became super duper tight by going to standup shows all night then coming home to get high and listen to that one Pearl Jam cd that has Release Me. In ’07 and ’08 I directed the web series Layers and Back On Topps for them.
Jamie Babbit moderated the panel. I’d never met her before, but we walked into the DGA together and I thought “hey there’s a stylish lady.” Then two minutes later I was sitting on stage with her talking about production stuff. Not my best story, but I’m leaving it in.
I see Akiva Schaffer a lot at work, usually at the NBC commissary. Akiva directs all the SNL digital shorts. I was explicitly told when they hired me at Late Night that they wanted their own Akiva, and I felt like that was a lot to live up to. SNL digital shorts rule. His work is outstanding and he’s a super nice human.
A big highlight for me was sharing the stage with Ondi Timoner. She’s the one speaking in the photo below, and illustrating the size of the talent boner that I have for her. She directed Dig, which is tied with Sherman’s March as my absolute favorite documentary. Since the panel I’ve gotten caught up on all of her other films because I have grand plans of asking her to coffee and explaining how she’s inspired me. I always have this point in a documentary project where I’m jabbed with the reality that if I stopped working on the project, not a single person in the world would care. In fact, no one would miss it except the one or two people who are in it, and maybe some of them would even PREFER if it was never finished. Those are tough moments, because you are usually paying for everything yourself, which feels like you’ve turned recklessness into a powder and sorted it. When I’ve hit that wall on occassion I’ve thought of Ondi’s work, and imagined her perservering through the doubt. It has helped just a little. If you watch her movies, Dig especially, you will see. A person has a very limited mount of movies like that which they can produce in one lifetime. I think the official limit is 5.
Contest idea, what is Jesse Warren (all the way on the right) thinking about in this photo? Two random guesses: Obama, Playstation 3.
This nothing to do with Digital Day but I should mention I’m writing on my non-unibody macbook pro, and this thing gets so hot that if it were a tray of baked goods coming out of the oven I would think “clearly this is too hot to hold, I had better put this aside for a moment.” But because it’s a laptop I somehow think it’s fine to place it on top of my balls.
Ukulele Music
Here’s what happened. Deetch was softly playing ukulele at his desk and Bashir intoned “Ukulele music is annoying when you’re trying to get work done.” I told everyone to stay where they were and I got some gear, then we recreated the moment. It was like watching an instant replay in Midnight Club, LA only instead of a virtual racing environment it was my office.
Will Ferrell, Fake Arms
I wrote this with my pal Amy Ozols a couple days ago. A natural successor to our show’s other Fake Arms pieces, we wrote this as a pre-tape. Thankfully Shoemaker/Gavin/Miles/Jimmy all wanted to do it live. This was definitely one of THOSE bits. You know? Like…a bit that you find to be so utterly hysterical, a bit that is such complete nonsense that it makes you cry from laughing and even though you were part of its creation you don’t really understand what the joke is exactly, and deep down you are convinced that no one else could possibly be as tickled by it as you. We’ve all had bits like that and very often our fears come true because usually those bits make absolutely no sense. This bit makes no sense.