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Ep 33 – Vance Burberry

Brett Stanley: [00:00:00] welcome back to the underwater podcast. And this week, my guest is underwater DP, Vance Burberry. Vance has had an amazing career starting as a lighting designer for Australian rock bands And now working as a sought after underwater DP in America. He’s got some great stories about using film.

He’s experienced as chasing submarines for the latest, bad budding music video and how rolling film around an edit suite can give you some crazy special effects. Just before we jump in, I need to apologize for the quality of this week’s episode. As I did a total rookie mistake and forgot to check my microphone before we started rolling. And so the whole interview is recorded with my laptop microphone.

Making it a bit crap. So, yeah. Sorry. Okay. Let’s dive in.  Vance welcome to the other one, a podcast.

Vance Burberry: [00:00:45] thanks for having me, Brett. And, it’s kind of fun. I’m looking forward to it.

Brett Stanley: [00:00:49] yeah. I mean, it’s great to have you on here. I mean, I’ve, I’ve kind of known you from, from the industry and around LA, and we’ve, we’ve chatted a few times, but it’s awesome to kind of get time to dig into your, your kind of background. Cause you’ve had an interesting career working from, you know, film and TV and commercials, but also a lot of like music videos and stuff as

Vance Burberry: [00:01:07] Yeah, it’s been pretty interesting road. I’ve got to say sort of, it was an unexpected one and I just followed my nose and wound up here and still going happily.

Brett Stanley: [00:01:18] no, that’s great. So, so talk us through that. So, so w w have this all start for you

Vance Burberry: [00:01:24] long, complicated conversation, that not probably for this place, but I ended up, being on my own at 14 years old in Australia, in, in Sydney. I was born in England, but moved to Australia when I was like nine years old.

Brett Stanley: [00:01:38] Oh, right.

Vance Burberry: [00:01:39] So it’s on my own. Got a job working in theater.

like as you go for, and then kind of landed up, getting involved in the lighting side that, that sort of led to me, starting doing lights for bands and pumps in Australia. That went on. I kind of grew and I landed up working for Australian bank who coaches was, there was a lighting design out the angels, Swanee, which was, another thing.

And then I landed up working with an access as their touring lighting designer.

Brett Stanley: [00:02:09] So just some small bands in Australia.

Vance Burberry: [00:02:11] Um, during a little bench, then I moved, I came to America on. On our love water. That’d be the second mall tour with them. We did a bunch of shows opening for the Go-Go’s and the day before I was supposed to fly back to Australia, I got a call from Tom , the tour manager at the Go-Go’s saying that they’d fired their LD and where I like to come and take over the tour. I did and I stayed and then ended up staying, doing some tours with light and sound designers, lighting tech, and crew chief, and, things like that. and I, then I kind of went up the road for awhile and I got a job at sir. which was two years in rentals. They had a stage at that time where the Technicolor building is now at sunset gal by sunset Gower studios.

And they wanted to, build a concert lighting system. So I kind of put that together with them with light and sound design and just one day I’m on the stage. And I think, I, I  believe it was James Taylor. Was doing a music video in the stage three and they were going, Oh, we need a lighting electrician.

could you come? And, do you know anyone? I said, well, I know lighting. It’s just lights, maybe lights, a good. And I land at work. He’s an electrician

Brett Stanley: [00:03:34] yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:03:35] quickly. I moved up, And mainly because I was, my concert lighting design background at that time, heavy metal was kind of buying up this around probably 1985, 86, And I will, nobody in rock and roll knew about trust, concert, lighting or anything. So I then ended up designing and building these, lighting systems for music videos, you know, Janet Jackson’s control and whole bunch of a whole bunch of stuff. So, pretty soon I became a DP. I worked with this director.

Turo is a GAFA named Nigel Dick. And, uh, I bugged him like crazy to, uh, let me shoot for him. And finally he let me operate on, welcome to the jungle for guns and roses, which I was so, so gaffed and lit. And, um, after that, I, I shot, he let me shoot something for them. It was first thing I think was called, something for an artist name, Joe Winbush, R and B artist.

And, then I did a video for, was not, was called walk. The walk, the dinosaur with Don was. music at the one I’m a music producer. And, after that I shot sweet child of mine for guns and roses, and that kind of blew everything up from that. So it was kind of an interesting, interesting road,

Brett Stanley: [00:04:54] Yeah. That’s such an interesting way to get there from, from lighting through to, uh, to DP. That’s that’s really? Yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:05:01] Well know the job is lighting rapper. All right. I

Brett Stanley: [00:05:03] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We’re just capturing the light and you’re basically manipulating the light in different ways. Does that, and not to, not to disrupt, to derail your story, we’ll come back to it.

But is, does has lighting sort of given you a good perspective of what can be done, like with your background in lighting design?

Vance Burberry: [00:05:21] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because, you know, for me, I pull from, you know, theater definitely has its approach and concert lighting has its approach and cinema has his approach. And so. Just sort of bringing all those elements together. And what I do is been something that I’ve always done and I really enjoy it.

And you know, there’s a lot of old theater techniques that can, that can be applied in the film world. And, you know, the light to me is the heart of everything anyway. so, without it, you know, your images have no soul without, and that’s actually some of the things I’ve loved about your work is the way you.

Not only capture beautiful images, but the way you use light and the way the light interaction or images. So I think

Brett Stanley: [00:06:07] Well, thank you.

Vance Burberry: [00:06:08] a lot of value to that. And I think that really emotionally connects the viewer to be images they’re seeing or the story that’s being told. You really need to draw people into the world and get them immersed almost on a subconscious level.

And I think light and shadow really, really does that.

Brett Stanley: [00:06:27] yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I’m a firm believer in, um, in, in the color of the light, the temperature, and then the direction that it’s coming from can, can change a scene so dramatically

Vance Burberry: [00:06:38] Yeah. In a heartbeat, right?

Brett Stanley: [00:06:40] Yeah. And I, I remember when, when I was starting, you know, the first time I sort of took a lot and pushed it way off to the side and just went, Oh my God, this is totally different.

You know, started to shape things. It gave like a 3d car. Look.

Vance Burberry: [00:06:52] Yeah, exactly. I mean, it really, the position of a light can make just such a huge difference and, uh, there’s no, standard sort of photography, reprise for lighting where you light a sphere like a cube, light a, um, light, a cone, and really.

Those three shapes are really what everything is, is sort of built prom. So once you, once you get that, that foundation, it really allows you to understand how I affect something. By the way it’s positioned. It’s really cool.

Brett Stanley: [00:07:26] Yeah. And so I just totally derailed you.

Vance Burberry: [00:07:29] did derail away. I mean, you know, these conversations to me were always a journey and one thing leads to the other. I’m like, you know, you know, for me, this is the heart of, it has always been the heart of it for me, the emotional, the emotional connection between light and an audience has always been everything to me.

So. I mean, I think that’s the heart of a conversation anyway, in many ways,

Brett Stanley: [00:07:53] so in terms of, in terms of lighting, so when you’ve, when you’ve gone underwater, cause you’re now doing a lot of underwater stuff, as well as your land-based. How does the lighting setup kind of change once you get down there?

Vance Burberry: [00:08:05] you need a lot more of it. That’s

Brett Stanley: [00:08:07] Right.

Vance Burberry: [00:08:08] that’s probably the first thing is like, you know, once, once light hits water, it. Actually, obviously it slows down and it all shut speed of light reduces once he goes through water and yeah, refraction, it also scatters. So, even though the shape of light doesn’t change the amount and the way you control it does change.

So it’s a combination of, you’re putting light above the water. You’re putting light. Using lights under the water, but I still like to take the same creative approach to it. Likewise, you still getting the same feeling, so you get the same sort of emotional feeling, but obviously the light works in a responds in a different way.

And, and, that’s really how it changes. It’s also, you know, a lot more, painstaking and time consuming, working underwater as you know,

Brett Stanley: [00:09:01] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How do you deal with color underwater? Like, you know, being alone designer, I assume you have a lot of feelings about color. And a lot of colors don’t work underwater as well as they do above. What’s your kind of approach to that?

Vance Burberry: [00:09:15] well, obviously you I’d like to go stay the call and walk cooler, warm again, it’s sort of, for me, it’s, you know, it’s a job by job approach. I mean, uh, the use of color. I find, I mean, I think that I don’t find work, work well and maybe yellow yellows tend to not work so well. reds can turn a little, little Magento if you’re not careful.

So you have to be really saturated on those colors. but again, it’s really, a lot of it is about, again, just creating that mood as opposed to, Getting, yeah. What am I trying to say? What I’m trying to say is that I don’t, I don’t really, yeah, I’m very much about being in the moment. I have an approach, but it is about, very much about being in the moment.

See what inspires me in the moment, in the moment with, you know, with what I’m writing. interesting. Certainly there is design and there’s preparation. I understand what light I’m using and I sort of have a color range in mind where a lot of the time I’ll put something in, I look at it and go that doesn’t work and I’ll change it, within that sort of, you know, that preparation that I’ve done.

Brett Stanley: [00:10:21] absolutely. And so, so a lot of the work you’re doing is it is a driven by you. Like, you, are you kind of designing a lot of this or is it, is it quite kind of directed by the director and by the production?

Vance Burberry: [00:10:33] I mean, certainly. Certainly once you get under water, you know, the way the camera moves, you know, you’ve had a discussion with the director about the way the camera moves and the way the light looks is I have a pro a pretty big sign on it because it’s interesting that, Unless they’ve done underwater work before they really do not understand their limitations or, you know, how optics change or how the light changes.

So you, they kind of look to you to lead a little bit. but at the same time, your trying to give them. you know, what they actually need. it’s about creatively. So it’s kind of a collaboration, like, as it should be, obviously in the film industry, we got a bunch of people working together. So I think at the end of the idea is a collaboration, which, and, I say yes, so now they’re depending on, what they’re asking for, whether it works or not in the underwater environment.

Brett Stanley: [00:11:28] Yeah, whether it’s actually feasible or whether you can pull it off with the resources you have.

Vance Burberry: [00:11:32] Yeah, exactly. there’s never enough time. That’s usually the big one. You’re just like, they never really allow enough time unless they have a lot of experience in underwater work, you know?

Brett Stanley: [00:11:42] Right. So what would you say is the least amount of time you’ve had to pull something off? Have you had to do some MacGyver sort of stuff to get things to happen?

Vance Burberry: [00:11:52] Oh God. Yes. I mean, literally they literally, I’ve you know, had. Had, you know, a couple of house to, to do something which really I need half a day for. and you know, you’re not at the end of the day, you’re not probably super happy with the way it turns out because you just, you basically just scrambling, but yeah, you, you get it done and you get it done professionally and you figure it out.

But, specifically, God, it’s, it’s just time really. it really is time and the amount of coverage you can get in the amount of time you have. So in those situations, I tend to like lighting wise. I try and keep it really simple. If I can just put one light above and, one light above in the right place without having to put lights on the water.

I’ll do that. just to get, you know, just to get something cool on. No on film or digital, sorry. I’m an old film guy. Can’t help it.

Brett Stanley: [00:12:48] But no, I mean, that’s, that’s kind of what you came up through, right? So like digital would have been like in the second half of your career,

Vance Burberry: [00:12:54] Yeah. Well, more than that, I mean, until the Alexa came along, I refuse to shoot digital

Brett Stanley: [00:13:00] right?

Vance Burberry: [00:13:01] I wouldn’t, do it. you know, they were just. It was, so it was so harsh compared to film and, and didn’t have that depth and less of the film had. So, it was definitely, uh, I definitely pushed back hard for a long time.

And even when the Alexa came along, I still, if I had any choice here, I’d always go film

Brett Stanley: [00:13:23] right.

Vance Burberry: [00:13:24] Even though I have to say underwater, I just did a, I just did a project for a bad bunny when I was at five days on the water work shooting 35 millimeter film. And I got to say in that environment, it’s much more practical and efficient to work digitally than it is to work on film, you know, going through that.

So.

Brett Stanley: [00:13:44] I wanted to ask you about that project actually, because it looked really, it looked really interesting and that the creative decision to use film, I wanted S to see if there was a reason behind that, because it was it’s very action orientated kind of

footage,

Vance Burberry: [00:13:59] certainly the director and cinematographer the land. I only did the, was in charge of the underwater work on that job. So they wanted to shoot film and, uh, so. I’m like fine. the HyperFlex use their deep water housing. you know, and a lot of it was I, explaining to them, uh, you know, underwater optics and how they work differently to on land and so on and so forth.

But Krista DP, Chris Ripley, he was very, very cool and collaborative. So we were actually able to do, you know, to work very well together and he understood the, The problems and adapted accordingly. So it was a very, fun if not challenging project, especially the ocean work.

Brett Stanley: [00:14:42] Yeah, I saw some of the BTS that you posted on that. And then there’s like a, I think you were chasing some jet-skis and you’re being dragged on a jet, jetski yourself with this massive film camera.

Vance Burberry: [00:14:53] well, actually I wasn’t dragged, but I had basically, I had a rescue board and I had jet skis blasting by me at high speed. And literally, literally there’s a, I think there’s a shot in there. It made it in the video where they’re literally, they’re about two feet. Either side of me, they go right by me and then.

Blow a water over the camera. We did a lot of work on the surface with that, and that’s pretty challenging. But, again, I was working with, I had an amazing Marine coordinator and, Matt O’Connor who he actually was the Marine coordinator on the latest habitat films. So working with him in the water was really, really helpful because we were able to.

your sinker Bowie, and actually use that to as our reference position so we could always get back to it. Also, there was incurrent, so it held us in position to avoid drift so that when these, jet skis came by real close. I wasn’t in a drift in front of them, or drift out a position to ma to create a dangerous situation.

So, that was a lot of fun, um,

for sure. But then we were, you saw there was the submarine set up, which we shot out in Catalina.

Brett Stanley: [00:16:06] Yeah. That looked in cloud the crazy cause they were like, like new, like personal submarines, right? Like they just like glass acrylic Spears with motors attached to them, basically.

Vance Burberry: [00:16:16] Yeah. Yeah. and you know, you had getting that to position again, we had to get a reference position. We were already about 15 feet, deep, 15, 20 feet deep for that,

but trying to get the right position on that was, was pretty challenging. We did have it rigged out at one point with a speed rail, which was painted out in posts where I actually rigged the cameras. They were extended pretty far out forward and AFT. I had the 35 millimeter film camera at the front and then put up black magic 4k up the back. That we were actually rigged. So I dropped down, break the camera, rolling, focus, the cameras, roll the cameras and move away. And then there was stuff in the water where I’m I’m just with the 35 millimeter film camera, just cruising around, picking off shots with the shop Moraine, but it, it was a slow process

for sure.

It took a lot of time to get those few shots.

Brett Stanley: [00:17:13] So with those shots, is it the talent driving the, this opposites? What.

Vance Burberry: [00:17:17] no, there’s actually, there is actually, if you look in, there is two people in that submarine. So there is somebody else controlling the, the controlling, the submarine.

Brett Stanley: [00:17:28] right. So there’s a pilot.

Vance Burberry: [00:17:29] There was a pilot. Yeah.

Brett Stanley: [00:17:31] Yeah. So with us, with a situation like that, how are you communicating with everybody? How are you kind of getting them to go back and restart? And that just sounds like a nightmare.

Vance Burberry: [00:17:41] Yeah, well, they had control on the surface. They were taught, they were, they had radio communication to the submarine on the surface. They unfortunately, they had no video assists because. You know, with a submarine floating around under there, I’m not going to have a cable flying around. So the tree would we’d shoot one pass, I’d pop to the surface.

There’d be a support boat, right by me. I’d talk to them. They’d communicate to the submarines and Marine. I dropped back down. It was a really, it was a lot of hard work, physically, really demanding. And, you know, I’m popping up and down, you know, originally only from 20 feet, but. Still you’re popping up and down all day and you’re spending a lot of time under the water.

It was definitely physically challenging.

Brett Stanley: [00:18:23] How long were you, did you end up doing those shots for it? Was

that

Vance Burberry: [00:18:25] that was a full day out of Catalina. Yeah,

Brett Stanley: [00:18:27] Wow. Yeah. Which is amazing because I’ve seen that music video. and it looks amazing, but it, you know, it’s, it’s almost 10 seconds worth of stuff.

Vance Burberry: [00:18:36] yeah.

Brett Stanley: [00:18:36] It’s so much work for such a small amount of footage that ends up in there in the edit.

Vance Burberry: [00:18:41] And that’s, you know, working in the fashion is special. It is especially challenging as you know. So, getting all those elements to coordinate at once and just to pull up those few shots is, is quite the challenge. And, you know, we shut, obviously there’s a lot, we shuttle a lot more than was actually in the video,

Brett Stanley: [00:18:59] Yeah,

Vance Burberry: [00:19:00] but even so, You know, it’s still pretty, it’s still pretty challenging and that’s kind of the health Waterworld works to get those few shots.

You can take a lot of time under the water. So, you know, and, like I said, it’s especially challenging in the ocean. So,

Brett Stanley: [00:19:15] Yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:19:16] once you’re in a pool, like the, the lightest stuff in that room, That was with the girl in the water. And then when they sunk the room, that was, you know, a lot easier to deal with, obviously, because you’re in a very controlled environment.

Brett Stanley: [00:19:31] Absolutely. Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about that room too. Cause I saw Acton, I think it was Rob posting some, some BTS of, of that rigging of that room. and that looked incredible as well. Just the, the mechanics behind that.

Vance Burberry: [00:19:44] Yeah, I mean, we had a construction crane and then a trust support system with a chain motors in place that allowed it to, to, raise and lower, TJ white. The stunt coordinator really was, This design a lot of the engineering behind that and how it was supported. Uh, once the was in place, the rig was actually supported by the trust system that was supporting the room and the chain motors, but at the same time, the construction crane was, was kept in place with tension, to about if anything breaks, you got basically a great big safety.

So no BS. Nobody gets hurt because you know, we’re under that and the doors are actually on either side. So when I’m shooting that stuff in the room, I’m pretty much got jammed up against the wall of the tank or the poor. So it was really tight in there. So if anything had broken or shifted. The chances of getting hurt were pretty high.

So, a lot of safety precautions were put in place and, you know, TJ I’ve worked with the years and he’s like one of the safest guys. I know. I mean, that guy is so safe and, I never have to worry when I’m on a set with that guy. So it was a pretty, uh, fun experience overall.

Brett Stanley: [00:21:01] I mean, the footage that you got from that, and even then that room, because it’s basically a big silver metal room, which I think is, is it slowly filling up or is it. Ends up being filled.

Vance Burberry: [00:21:10] they, they started with about a six inches of water and six inches of water. So we get a little bit of water in the bottom and then half full, and then they sunk it, with some room at the top. So, the artists could. But you’re up at the top. And then he had dropped down and perform they’d run lighting, we’d broke camera on that. he kept repeating that he was pretty good. Actually, it wasn’t a, I hate to say it. I forget the guy’s name. It wasn’t bad bunny. It was the other artist in the video that did all the underwater stuff. he was really cool. He’s a very sweet guy and, was really all over it. As far as getting underwater.

He had no, no issues at all. You know, so that was pretty good. That sometimes comes up. When you putting people in the water, they put people that are very water competent in, then it becomes highly problematic. But with him, it was, it was great. So,

Brett Stanley: [00:22:02] Yeah, I was going to ask cause he did seem very comfortable in there. I wasn’t sure if he was, if it was a stump D or if he was the actual artist

Vance Burberry: [00:22:10] now that was the actual artist and, he was very comfortable, had no issues in the water whatsoever, which was great.

Brett Stanley: [00:22:15] So one thing I wanted to ask you, and I kind of touched on it before was when you do a job like this, and you’ve got so much amazing footage, and then you see the final edit where it’s, you know, on each one of these setups, there’s maybe 10, 15 seconds worth. How do you reconcile that with yourself in terms of going there was so much awesomeness.

But it never, it never was going to get to see the light of day

Vance Burberry: [00:22:36] I, you know, I get it. And you have up to 34 years of doing this and being disappointed, not only underwater, but on land of things that don’t make it, you kind of like, Oh, well,

but it’s in there. It was cool. And then you get a surprise. Like, uh, if you, if you look at my site, there’s an Intel spot where I shut.

I didn’t spend that much time under water, relatively. To the overall spot, but I was beautifully surprised about 80% of the spot was all the water work. So you get those surprises as well.

Brett Stanley: [00:23:10] right. Yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:23:11] It goes both ways.

Brett Stanley: [00:23:13] Yeah. Actually.

Vance Burberry: [00:23:14] You’re either screwed or you get, you get, you get to see the stuff you want to see.

Brett Stanley: [00:23:19] do you get most latitude to do any stuff with the, with the outtakes later, like via social media or for your, your

Vance Burberry: [00:23:26] not really, you know, because they own that stuff. It’s pretty hard to get. Um, you know, my wife has a production company. so we do keep masters here of all the raw footage from these jobs that we do. So occasionally grew up from my wife’s company and, you know, there’s times when I can pull sharp and, you know, strong as we get permission from our clients, I’m able to pull stuff, but mostly it’s usually I’m just pulling from the final piece and I don’t get to have any of that cool stuff that I wish I had, unfortunately.

Brett Stanley: [00:24:00] Yeah, totally. And are you putting a reel together every year or are you kind of, do you need to real these days? Like how, how you kind of advertising yourself to get more work as adjust from the work you’ve done previously?

Vance Burberry: [00:24:11] a lot of it’s word of mouth. People know me. I’ve been around a long time. So you get a lot of that. I have a website, Vance, burberry.com, and I put stuff on there. I update that. my wife’s production company, has, a site called Simeon, which is very similar to I drive where all that, all my work, as soon as I get it is encoded and put up onto that website.

that’s also actually where all my material on my website links to, but. I can go on there at any time. I have everything I’ve done in the last probably 10 years is up on that website you know, agent or call, you know, we got a job featuring Bob, blah, blah, this, this particular type of work. Can you put together a reel for me?

I can literally go into the website Simeon, go to build a real, build a real in like, you know, 10 minutes with. A real and I’ll move it around and, and get it how I want it. I just literally drag and drop clips into the real

Brett Stanley: [00:25:11] Oh, yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:25:13] And then I send it to my, send the link to my agent. And that link goes out.

Brett Stanley: [00:25:17] so you just go on. So this is like a library of all the stuff you’ve shot, and then you can just go in there and they’ve got a tool where you can basically do a quick edit and piece stuff together, and then just send that out. That’s

Vance Burberry: [00:25:29] It’s just drag and drop and it really does. It really does, help a lot because more and more these days, you know, quick story, many years ago, I was up for a dog food commercial that was shooting in Maine and agency was like, well, we need someone that shot a dog food commercial in Maine before.

Of course, good luck finding that guy. So, you know, I didn’t get the job, but you know, they get so specific. They need to, they want to see, they want to see specifically, they want to see for a certain project. So. Once you understand what those sports are and what that projects involve. You try and shape a real to have as much content with that kind of work in it.

Whether it’s say it’s a white psych job or a green-screen job, or it’s a water job with, with synchronized swimmers or it’s a, whatever it may be, you know, you try and build that real to really specifically target what they’re looking for.

Brett Stanley: [00:26:31] And I would say that that would make you stand out from the rest as well, because you’ve, you’ve given them exactly what they put there after, you know, giving them your, you know, your 20, 20 reel, which has all sorts of stuff in

Vance Burberry: [00:26:43] Exactly. I

Brett Stanley: [00:26:44] It’s really

Vance Burberry: [00:26:45] it’s really targeted and I think that’s the way you have. There’s definitely the way you have to do it. Now you’d have to, you have to be really targeted. So, You know, like I shoot a lot of concept films, so I, you know, have a concert film comes out if I’ve got a multicam concert though.

And then I I’ll build a, a real clear pieces from all these multicam concept films, et cetera.

Brett Stanley: [00:27:09] Yeah. So that, that side that you’re using, is that something that, that is available to the public? It can, can anyone use

Vance Burberry: [00:27:16] anyone can use that Simeon it’s it’s called Simeon and you can sign up and, you know, I forget what it’s not that expensive. you know, I think, I think pays rent $300 a month, I think, but that’s for, you know, we got like a huge storage, there’s different plans. So for an individual there’s much cheaper plans than.

That they can put their work on and build this it’s I think it’s a great tool. it’s a little cheaper than why I drive, which does the same thing. And they’d been a great company. We’ve been with them probably 10 years, I guess.

Brett Stanley: [00:27:51] Is this what you’re using to, to basically send the final footage to the client as well as is it, is that what it’s for?

Vance Burberry: [00:27:59] Well, yeah, I can do what, what, what’s nice about it. You can, you can just create a quick link. And you can send out that quick link, with that you get it’ll, it’ll follow that link and you’ll get tracking information. You can see where, where it was viewed, how many people viewed it. How long, how deep into the real they Intuit, they got how many clips in the real they got.

So you can kind of get a sense of if you see them they’re in and out of it in, in a minute or so, you know, you’re probably not going to get the deeper, it goes. The more chance, you know, you’re going to get the D you’re going to get the job,

Brett Stanley: [00:28:40] Yeah. Yeah. So if they’ve watched, if they’ve watched the whole thing, you know, they’re, they’re somewhat interested.

Vance Burberry: [00:28:45] Yeah, exactly.

You know, and it’s really important when you’re building those reels is, is how you put them together is you want to hit them hard. you know, with the internet these days, people’s attention spans are really short. If they don’t see what they’re looking for in the first 30 seconds, they’re not going to go any further.

So it’s really important that you shape your reel really well and really target. What you’re going after and show the very best work you have first to get their attention.

Brett Stanley: [00:29:17] Yeah. Yeah. You don’t want to start off with the, yeah. You don’t want to ease them into it. You want to,

Vance Burberry: [00:29:21] yeah, you got to hit them hard and past

Brett Stanley: [00:29:23] yeah. So, so coming from a photography point of view, as I’ve always had through this career, how, you know, you got to put a portfolio together and to try and get commercial work and stuff. And a lot of the time it’s, you know, good work to start with, and good work to end with. Is it the same with a reel like that? Or are you kind of just trying to put a little best stuff at the beginning?

Vance Burberry: [00:29:42] Yeah. You know what, honestly, honestly, for me, because, because it’s motion and because they’re actually going to view, view, clip by clip. I always the best stuff first. and, and I don’t go out with a bang because 90% of the 95% of the time, nobody ever watches all the way through.

Brett Stanley: [00:30:03] And how long would, would an average reelect this pay?

Vance Burberry: [00:30:07] it depends on what it is. you know, commercials, usually at 30, 60 seconds. If it’s a music video, it’ll be a one to one minute 22nd clip. If it’s a concept from same thing. So you don’t want to be any longer than that. People people’s attention span is not, it’s just not there.

You don’t want to put, you don’t want to put home whole videos on their nest is a really specific reason to do so. Otherwise you just, you give them a minute 20.

Out of it and that’s it. And, you know, commercials at thirties and sixties. So you can just throw those on it’s the music work and if all doc work or other stuff that you’re doing, where you have to kind of, you know, cut them down.

which I do prior, I always everything I load up if it’s, if it’s long and I want to cut it down, I cut it down before it goes up. I don’t put the whole thing up.

Brett Stanley: [00:30:58] right. Okay. and the other thing that we’ve, we’ve spoken about, and I know you do, you do teach this stuff is, is, is coloring and grading. underwater footage. Is that, is that just something you got into, out of necessity or is it, was it just something that you wanted to do?

Vance Burberry: [00:31:15] I kind of wanted to do it. You know, number one is, you know, I’ve spent 34 years as a DP in 34 years. I’ve shot. I God, I would have to say many, many, many thousands of hours sitting in collar base with, you know, some of the, actually some of the best colorists in the country. You know, David, David Hussey at company three, Stefan Sonnenfeld, boldly own Marshall plan.

Who’s my current colorist. They, these guys are, these guys are really amazing at what they do. And, you know, certainly you learn by that. You sort of see what they do over the last five or six years. Since I really got into town has really only become accessible to us. Normal folks are to do at home in the us.

Yeah, 10 years. And only now I think it’s becoming prevalent now that you know, black magic who pulled out their mini panels and you know, the development at DaVinci resolve software and, and you’re now able to actually call her at home and you’re learning the software as part of it been at it for like six years now, learning the software is one part of it.

But that’s in a way, isn’t it, the small part of it, learning how to use the software and how to build the right note sequences, how to achieve certain looks, how to go about achieving certain ropes. It’s an ongoing learning process. I mean, and I’m continually learning. And fortunately my professional colorist Marshall is also a close friend of mine and, And he teaches me a lot.

I pretty much, every time I go in with a session with him, he’s teaching me about node structure and how he approaches certain things because everything’s a little different.

And so I’m learning that I’m a guy like that is, has been so incredibly helpful and made me a better colorist. And for me, I think, I think for me, it was a lot of jobs you used to go in, in the film days used to grade everything.

Like you take the film in all the footage you shot, it would be graded. It wasn’t nine times out of 10. It wasn’t done later on if they grade everything and then it goes into editorial. Yeah, because they’re not going to be cutting on film. And a lot of the time they’re not going to just cut off guidance.

They want to cut on final lock. So, you get in newer ways, you get invited to color these days. You do not always get invited to color impact, nowhere near, like you used to certainly long form projects like concert builds and things like that, for sure. But commercials. Not very often. So when I do get the opportunity to do that, I go for it.

But in the ma otherwise what I’ll try and do is if I’m shooting a job, I’ll T I’ll have a couple of clips pooled and put on their drive that I’ll take home after day one or after the job. And I’ll go into my Bay and I’ll grade them. How I want the stuff to look. And the send that to the client. So they have some sort of referenced for

Brett Stanley: [00:34:30] okay.

Vance Burberry: [00:34:31] final telephony at another time they go for, or they get pretty good close to it, which is really helpful.

So really it’s being able to control the look of the work you’ve done, especially you’ve shot it to look a certain way and it will come back. I’m like, that’s not the way I shot this or what I tended

Brett Stanley: [00:34:48] Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:34:50] and it’s kind of wrong. The, they don’t do that. This is a thing that in Europe, it’s not that way, but here, for some reason they take it away.

It’s done. You have really no say, and that’s pretty frustrating because to me, you know, printing the printing or grading, that’s the second part of your job. You’re not, your job is not complete until you’ve been involved with the color grade. So,

Brett Stanley: [00:35:14] absolutely.

Vance Burberry: [00:35:15] So being, having this, having a grading suite in my house, it’s allowed me to at least be able to say, okay guys, this is what I’m thinking.

Here you go. So it does allow a lot of work to land up looking how you wanted it to look,

Brett Stanley: [00:35:31] Yeah. And, and a lot of times I find with those sorts of things, especially with client work is if they don’t have any idea what you were after, then they, they don’t know where to start and they can start anywhere. But if you give them a little bit of input, like you say, like you give them a grade, then at least you’ve put that in their minds and they know, Oh, okay, well he’s probably shocked this to be around this area.

Yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:35:53] You know, growing up in film, there’s sort of a trend these days that it’s, Oh, we’re going to do it all in the grade. They do things in the grade of my colorist, complains all the time. It’s like he said, you know, no threes, you know, you have five scenes and nothing matches. you know, growing up in film, you couldn’t get away with that and color correction.

Wasn’t what it was. If you didn’t do it right in camera, they weren’t going to do it on the back end. So still to this day, to me to light and shoot in camera, right. How it, you want it to be is really important. So when your colorist should be able to see that, like Marshall. I can send, send it to my calories, Marshall and say, Hey man, just take a look at this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he’ll know exactly what I was going for. Again, we’ve worked together for 15 years, so that does help

Brett Stanley: [00:36:47] Yeah, exactly.

Vance Burberry: [00:36:49] but I can get my guy on it. Yeah.

Brett Stanley: [00:36:51] Yeah. And it’s really interesting that you say, you know, that the, the coloring and the grading is the second half of the job, because for me coming from a photography standpoint, you know, like I’m shooting. As flattened image as I can, so that I’ve got as much to work with in post-production.

And a lot of my clients don’t get that. They’re like, can we just have the, you know, the unedited images? And I’m like, well, no, because they’re crap. It’s not until you get in there. And you know, that’s when the sculpture comes out of the rock is when you do the grading and the coloring. And so for me now getting into more film stuff and I’m starting to get into resolve and Divinci and trying to do that same kind of thing.

It’s so frustrating because I’m so good at like Photoshop, but when it comes to DaVinci, it’s a whole new world and it does my head in, cause it’s got to start from scratch.

Vance Burberry: [00:37:40] Yeah, I mean, it is, it is a whole, it is a whole new world, for sure. Obviously you’re dealing with a moving image. And a lot of the times changing light for that image. So, so it is a, it is a different beast. I mean, I suck at Photoshop, but I’m, I know the lighting room really, really well, and I’m happy to see that the new latest version of light room actually has color wheels in it,

Brett Stanley: [00:38:01] Yeah, it

Vance Burberry: [00:38:02] which makes it a little simple.

And a lot of the time I actually. Bring I’ll end up bringing stills into resolve and grading in resolve, because I know it so much better, you know,

but like you say, you’re starting with a flat image and you know, when I shot film and I still shoot film when I can, you’ll always want to have the color grading, you always wanted a fat negative, goes back to the old saying of, ex expose for the shadows print for the highlights and.

And you do want as much information in there. I mean, in the novel, that is when I was just shooting a lot of those big hip hop videos for not hype Williams. Like, I dunno, look where your eyes can’t see with Busta rhymes, you know, LL cool J’s phenomenon and things like that. We were overexposing two and a half to three stocks, all that stuff. You were getting a very flat negative, but obviously with the dynamic range of film, you could do that. So when you came, when you bought it in and you wanted really Chris crunchy blacks and, and, you know, nice contrast and clean roll off in the highlights that allowed you to get that in post,

Brett Stanley: [00:39:10] right.

Vance Burberry: [00:39:10] you know, as opposed to, if you do optical printing, you wouldn’t do that.

It’d be a little different, but, you’d still probably have a fat negative, but maybe it, maybe it’s a stop as opposed to a stop as opposed to two and a half and three. So you know, optical printing and, electronic color correction were definitely two different animals. and I still apply a lot of that today with,  when I’m shooting for, uh, digital it’s I still have, I don’t whatever I do not.

Underexpose. digital. Unless I intended to be dark and stayed up if you try and lift stuff up. And I see the, you know, I see people complaining on all these different users sites back magic one where they say, Oh, I got so much noise. while you’re gone.

I, it, and that’s what happens, you know, with filming. You’d add grain with digital, you add noise. It’s. You know, you really got to be smart about the way you expose now, understand where you’re going to go on the backside to make sure you expose things in the correct way

Brett Stanley: [00:40:15] Right.

Vance Burberry: [00:40:16] you the maximum range. And you know, this, you just said, it’s, that’s what you need to do.

And you’re right. It applies across both mediums for sure.

Brett Stanley: [00:40:23] And there’s an interesting thing too, with digital, where you have a lot of people that are getting into film into, you know, sit in the cinema, don’t understand this is that you have a native ISO for your camera. So you have an ISO that it is. Specifically made for, and then any ISO above or below that is just pushing or pulling it up or down.

So if you’re not shooting in those native formats, you’re going to get noise on either side of it.

Vance Burberry: [00:40:50] correct. you’re. I mean, you’re, if you’re overexposed, if you’re pushing 800 to 1600 Euro, all you’re doing is adding gain. You’re not, you’re not changing the native by, so, and this obviously the, you know, some that your camera’s have June 80 bias, but I always shoot a native eyes up.

Brett Stanley: [00:41:06] yeah.

Vance Burberry: [00:41:07] never go outside of it.

Brett Stanley: [00:41:09] And, but that’s, I think that’s what I learned from you when I saw you at Hollywood divers recently, and I was renting the black magic 4k because it has a, you know, a native of, I think it’s 430 200. And for me as a photographer at 3,200 is crazy going that high up in the ISR, but I shot the project on it and it was amazing.

It was so crisp and so little noise. It was, it was great.

Vance Burberry: [00:41:33] Yeah, no. And that’s the thing, you know, it’s your nightie bias. So stick with it. And I, people complain. You realize that I, you know, I shot, you know, film at 500 ISR, 500 ASA, you know, 100 ASA, two 50 ASA, 50 ASA, 500 was the max. Ever and you know, was able to create beautiful images. So complaining about 800 having a $9,800.

So I’m sorry. It was a little silly

it’s a different world out there. I mean, there’s are a lot of young guys out there doing a lot of really interesting experimental stuff. That’s. That’s great. I never want to be the old guy, you know, like, Oh, well we know it was a lad. We used to, you know, we used to like stuff with glow worms, you know, but what I do, I do love trying to innovate, trying to approach things from different way, latching on to these new techniques.

And I think it’s really, really cool. But I still believe that you still need to understand the real fundamentals of image capture, whether it be on film, whether it be on digital about, you know, that fundamentals still applies. They all thing of, you need to know the rules, you understand how to break them and

Brett Stanley: [00:42:51] absolutely. Yeah. If you don’t know how your gear works, then how can you push

Vance Burberry: [00:42:56] Yeah, exactly. So really understanding the fundamentals of cinematography, I think is really important and then go crazy do crazy stuff. I mean, jeez, with film I use is baking in the oven and, you know, pour chemicals on it and do all sorts of weird stuff. But I D I ended, I did it from a place of knowledge, not a place of like, Oh, you know,

Brett Stanley: [00:43:20] Let’s try this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, that’s a really interesting point, actually. And I’d love to hear what your take is on this is, is back in the day when it was film and you were, you know, and you’re doing these music videos and, and they probably not underwater, but, but music videos of you and you’re renowned for kind of pushing the boundaries of visually what can be done if you were trying to do some crazy effects or anything like that, like, what were you doing with the film to kind of, to kind of push those things?

Vance Burberry: [00:43:49] well, like I said, I went bake, bake some thumb in the oven for a, you know, I’ve baked print in the oven and actually.

just to, just to mess up the color of the image really

you’d, you’d get these very weird effects happening in the, in the footage and, and, you know, it would be raw. It would be somewhat random, but you should test, obviously you don’t just go and Richard, okay.

Give me all your films. I’m gonna stick it in the album. Yes.

Up at it. Uh, But you’d, you’d tell your cheek tach and you show the director and then, Oh, that looks really cool. Let’s go for it. I mean, we used to do things too before, uh, When, uh, you had the old, rank diamond, the rank us a diamond and why France and all those old, old tell us any machines that you put the film up on to.

They, they, they scan with a CIT, not a CCD as they did later on with like the spirit. So you were able to do things like I’d put diffusion in the Telus, any guide Like, if you put it on, on the camera, maybe your highlights or bloom, you could put a diffusion in the telephony gate because you’re coming off a negative.

You’d actually make the blacks bloom

Brett Stanley: [00:45:05] Oh, okay. And the tiller scenery is, is basically how they were scanning the

Vance Burberry: [00:45:10] there was scanning the film. So you’d actually color correct. Straight off the negative.

Um,

you know, black magic still have a, have a. Have a film like telecine machine, but you weren’t, it wasn’t like a digital scan today where you’re, you know, like the Aerie scans where you’re actually digitizing and then your color grading off that digitized image, you were actually color grading right off the negative and then putting it out to tape through, through the rank us or, and then along came, It’s the spirit, which then became a CCD scanner, a net, then, then you couldn’t do that stuff in the gate anymore, which is kind of,

Brett Stanley: [00:45:52] Oh, so he lost it. Yeah. Oh yeah. DIY effects.

Vance Burberry: [00:45:55] Yeah. I mean, I’ve even done things where I’ve taken. I I’ve, you know, we’ve color grade film, you take them one role and I actually. Rolled it out, all around McCullough had the facility have walked on it and stamped on it and scrubbed it poured Coca color on it.

Let it all dry out, run it through a cleanup, but they have a machine that cleans all the dust off and it’s a cleaning machine.

Run it through the cleaner and then run it back through the Telus mini and then retransport it with all these scratches and

a messed up damage to the negative.

You know, they wouldn’t do it all the negative, but certainly certain things.

Brett Stanley: [00:46:35] there’s such a romanticism with, with doing that sort of thing, because I mean, today we could do that cause there’s a, probably a plugin for it, you know? And you’re clicking a button that’s done there, maybe not, but if you’re doing it to the film and you’re taking it, you know, half an hour to roll it around the editing suite, there is such a like, I dunno.

There’s. Yeah, exactly. And there’s a DIY aspect to it, you know, like you’ve made those effects.

Vance Burberry: [00:46:59] Yeah. You did. I mean, just the things like you could do, like yes, we can go and do a bleach bypass look individually resolve, but, but skip bleach, skip bleach, silver retention, whatever you call it. skip bleach, doing it actually on a negative. Has its own quality to it. It’s just not the same. if you look at a movie like seven or a David thinks has seven, that was all skipped bleach. The quality of the way that film looked was really, really beautiful,

it got that feel. And that was just to be clear when you skip bleach your. Your skip bleach on it on an intermediate, not all out of print, you skip bleach on in the media print, not the negative, because the negative has the opposite effect

where everything gets kind of, kind of blown out and hot as opposed to de-saturated crunchy blacks and so forth.

That would happen off a print. So.

Brett Stanley: [00:47:55] so you will do a print from the negative and then skid plates that,

Vance Burberry: [00:47:58] bleach that,

and then you, you know, then you’d make a, you would make her into positive from that, and then you saw it and so forth.

Brett Stanley: [00:48:05] See that’s, that’s what I find interesting. And I have a fascination for the whole film industry, like going back to the 18 hundreds of how they would, you know, the special effects they would do, you know that didn’t involve computers? That stuff fascinates me.

Vance Burberry: [00:48:19] It’s really fun. I mean, even things like the Las mats and Oh, during the old glass match and, using risks for in projection and beam splitters, and, you know, there’s so much cool techniques and it’s interesting. it starting to come back in a way. I actually did a movie a couple of years ago where I did.

I read camera’s on a vehicle and drove around downtown, and then all the interiors of all the vehicles were all done. with rear projection screens.

Brett Stanley: [00:48:48] Oh, right. So you re projected the footage you’d already taken.

Vance Burberry: [00:48:52] Yeah, so that you’re, you’re driving down the street and over the shoulder, you have a large RPE screen in front of you or to decide new whatever you were doing.

You’re able to actually do it poor man’s process on a stage using rear projection. now with this company called, unreal engine.

Brett Stanley: [00:49:11] yeah, the void. Yeah. What they’re doing on the Mandalorian.

Vance Burberry: [00:49:14] What they’re doing on the Mandalorian now, you’re sort of you age modern, techno, Knology doing in a way old school, projection techniques.

Obviously it’s a lot more advanced the fact that these images, since you moved the camera track with you,

Brett Stanley: [00:49:30] Yeah, so you get the parallax

Vance Burberry: [00:49:32] yeah, but you kind of getting that same. Although now, instead of when you’re on a green screen stage, actors trying to work in this environment, even shoot in this environment is, is challenging because you don’t get a real, emotional connection to the work you’re doing as a cinematographer.

Whereas now you’re able to, have these 3d real engine stages with these,

It really now, now you’re, immersed in the water again,

and the actors are immersed in the world and the actors like it too, because now they’re also able to connect with the world that they’re performing in. And, uh, I mean, they were actually able to pull, Cameron was able to work with unreal engine on the last season of Westworld.

To actually incorporate that on, uh, on the film medium, which was quite amazing. They actually figured out how to make that also work in a film world. And it made a huge strip once in a lot of the scenes in that film, you, especially, you know, when they’re in these sort of vehicles flying through the city and so on and so forth, bringing unreal engine was able to.

Get the light to interact, like, uh, on the, all the reflections on the the glass around these, flying parts was real. It was actually you, it wasn’t put on post. It was real interactive, light and real interactive reflections that were captured in, in the moment in camera. And I think that is amazing.

And that to me is one of the most exciting things happening right now in the film industry

Brett Stanley: [00:51:04] Oh,

Vance Burberry: [00:51:04] really, really cool. And it’s only going to get better and it’s really, really exciting. And, you know, even to the point now they can build, you know, you can put on shed a BI headsets and build an entire environment on our location and walk through it and build your sets, you know,

inside, inside this world and preview everything.

I mean, all this stuff to me is really, really exciting. as a cinematographer.

Brett Stanley: [00:51:32] But it just makes so much more sense because instead of, you know, making a green room where you put your talent in you now making, you’re basically building a world around the talent and everything that goes into that is already there. So, I mean, the VFX guys must be loving it too.

Vance Burberry: [00:51:47] Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it really does. It just elevates everything and, I think that’s really, really exciting. And obviously it’s the way technology is evolving. It’s going to evolve really fast and it’s going to be, it’s it’s, it’s a real game changer. I think

Brett Stanley: [00:52:01] well, speaking of game-changers, cause we’ve also got, motion capture, which is kind of pushing forward as well. Have you done much work with motion capture stuff?

Vance Burberry: [00:52:10] I’ve done a little bit of, I’ve done a little bit of work with MoCo on motion capture on a motion capture stages, but I’m about to jump into something that’s entirely new for me, which is a mocap underwater. Now due to. Due to a new, I understand this, is the, the refraction of light through water. You know, water.

When water come light comes through water, then it hits the front of your dome port. Now we coming into air that causes refraction. You can’t really use an optical media. To really catch a mo-cap you’ll get false readings. Like you will, there were a mocap suit, all that mocap information, you’re going to get false readings.

So, It’s very, very difficult. I actually, James Cameron spent a year and a half developing a mocap system for his new, for the new avatar films because of that, to work on the war. It was very big, difficult. I believe they spent a great deal of money, figuring it out. And they had many, many, many, many, many motion capture cameras for that film.

and he’s not telling us where they came from these kind of a big secret. So. What we’re basically doing now, I’m putting, uh, six, black magic, 12 curses, underwater for this, motion capture project. I can’t talk about it, exactly what it is, but it, it requires six cameras. There’s going to be people, somebody in the water.

We have two shooting straight up to either side, they’re going to be specific lens choices at a specific distance where they’re going to all have to be rigged on hard mounted, with quick release so we can replace them to exactly the same spot. And then we have three more on the surface capturing water entry. It’s quite challenging. Obviously we got to get six cameras in the water all the time codes all have to be St. you know, so if everything lines up

Brett Stanley: [00:54:07] are they all tempted as well?

Vance Burberry: [00:54:09] they’re all tethered. Get all tethered to the surface. They’re not going to be tethered to each other, but you’ll have Preston remote for focus.

Focus on run, stop on the service. well, jam singer bell Jamel the time coach all the time goes to match on the cameras. You’ll close the housings up, drop them on the mounts and you’re ready to go. So, and then you’re going, gonna, it’s there basically with the witness cameras capturing the underwater action.

And then, and then the agony, you put that in the computer and do what they need to do on the back end. Again, I can’t go into that too much,

for

Brett Stanley: [00:54:45] that’s totally fine.

Vance Burberry: [00:54:46] but you know how from Hollywood guys, you know, um, you know, how’s going a friend of mine for 25 years. He’s worked on me. He’s worked as my underwater safety support guy for the last 20 years easily.

So, uh, he’s gonna be involved and, They will supply all their, air in the Charlotte and so forth and he’ll help with some of the rigs and, so forth. And, the key grips soda pop, which I believe, you know,

Brett Stanley: [00:55:12] Yeah, so it is scraped too.

Vance Burberry: [00:55:14] soda is going to be my underwater key grip and build all the underwater rigs that support this stuff.

So it’s quite a fun, challenging project.

Brett Stanley: [00:55:21] Yeah, that sounds great.

Vance Burberry: [00:55:23] black magic curses have never been used to the situation. So we’re actually, uh, I have custom made base plates to, to set the cameras in the right height. They all have, they all have deep boxes on them to run the Preston system,  but for These cameras are so good. That I think they’re going to be, it’s a really ideal situation for them and for them to get really high resolution images underwater, I think it’s kind of a, it’s a kind of a note.

Brett Stanley: [00:55:52] that’s beautiful. And that’s something that I would love to check back in with you once, once year, once this come

out, I’d love to see what the results are.

Vance Burberry: [00:56:00] yeah, yeah. Once it’s, you know, I’m free and clear of a non-disclosure, I’m happy to. I’ll be happy to tell you all about it.

Brett Stanley: [00:56:08] Yeah, that sounds great. Vance. This has been so cool. This is stuff that I definitely haven’t touched on before and, and, and your experience with film and underwater. And I don’t think we even really got halfway through your kind of story,

Vance Burberry: [00:56:20] Yeah. Yeah. It’s whites. A lot of years, it’s trying to jam 35 years into 35 years of film into a, an hour is pretty, it’s kind of tough.

Brett Stanley: [00:56:31] Yeah. Well, we’ll, we’ll do a part

two later on.

Vance Burberry: [00:56:34] yeah, no, it was really nice spread. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate it a lot.

Okay. Cheers.