Stuart Dryburgh, ASC: candlelight and naturalism in East of Eden

STUART DRYBURGH: I'm Stuart Dryburgh. This is the Cinematography Podcast and today we're talking about East of Eden. STUART DRYBURGH: So episode four was probably the most challenging for me but part of that was just because we started there and it was like a lot. For me the challenge was that I was still finding my way with still finding the shooting style, finding my way with working with a new director for the first time and a new cast. It's a challenging show, it wasn't. always entirely obvious. Trying to work with these low lights and the natural lights caused me some headaches. ALANA KODE: This is Cinepod, the cinematography podcast, a program about the art, craft, and philosophy of the moving image presented by Hot Rod Cameras. I'm your host, Alana Kode Today on our show, I speak with Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, ASC whose credits include The Piano and the Amazon series Fallout. Most recently, Stuart shot episodes one through four of Netflix's East of Eden, working with director Garth Davis. This episode is a look at how restraint, natural light, and trust in the writing shape a period drama where the photography never calls attention to itself. We dive into how naturalism won out over a period look. Stewart let the production design, costumes, and performances capture the time period, an approach he used in his work with Jane Campion on The Piano and Portrait of a Lady. How practical and natural light sources were key. Candles, oil lamps, and firelight did the heavy lifting. How New Zealand became the Salinas Valley. As a native Kiwi, Stewart was extremely familiar with the locations. Some of the area's historic houses were used in the film, while others were built on location and replicated as two-story stage sets. How a camera can observe rather than announce, Stewart favors moving and interlocking masters with close-ups rationed, even in the show's most harrowing scenes. After the interview, stick around for our short ends, our pet obsessions of the week. But first... Find out what's going on in the world of entertainment in a segment called Close Focus. ILLYA FRIEDMAN: All right. It is time for our Close Focus. It's what's going on in the world of entertainment. Alana, what's going on this week? AK: Well, this week, Netflix has laid off about a thousand people kind of joining the mass amounts of layoffs that are going on in certain places. IF: Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot of conversation about the the trades right now and a bunch of headlines. Me just looking at the headlines right now, I see stories on The Hollywood Reporter and on IndieWire. And it's things like no one left to fire. Ted Sarandos is feeling the heat as Netflix struggles. Dan Lin was fired from being for being. Dan Lin. And then Netflix doesn't want investors to worry despite recent shakeups and layoffs. Netflix Q3 revenue meets Wall Street's expectations, but their stock is at half the value it was last year. So yeah, there's a lot of ink being spilled about the whole Netflix layoffs right now. AK: Yeah, definitely. And it seems that maybe they decided to overspend even though they had the money to buy Paramount and were planning on buying it or had certainly made an offer. But it seems that they spent it on NFL, buying more sports stuff for the NFL and on podcasts because you can stream podcasts on Netflix now. I don't know exactly how much they spent buying certain podcasts, but like stuff from iHeart radio and from Barstool Sports places like that and now you can stream their those podcasts on Netflix so but i think those deals were worth you know A lot of money. IF: Yeah, lots of money. But what's interesting, though, is that Netflix reported revenue of $13.4 billion for the three months through September, which is up 11.5% from the same period last year. And its operating income was $4.5 billion, which is up 37% year over year. even though the company's stock price is falling. So it's interesting. They're making more money. They're making profit. They're up from last year. They're up year over year. But the stock is really, really down. I don't know if anyone can explain why that is, except for maybe there's just no confidence from the investing community right now. AK: I don't know. I think it's possible that just like some other streaming services, there's only a certain, you know, you can only go so far. Like, you know, maybe they've... reached the amount of people who are going to subscribe. I don't know. IF: Yeah, they're a total addressable market, the maximum number of people that they could possibly subscribe. I don't know. Netflix talks a pretty big game about how they're really growing overseas right now, how they're bringing in new people. But the stock value isn't representative of how much money they're making. So I don't understand. AK: I don't know either. I mean, and of course we... don't necessarily know because they still don't let people know everything. So they're not very transparent. IF: Well, it won't be boring to watch. I mean, Netflix has kind of gone down this path of deciding they kind of want to be YouTube. And I don't really understand that because YouTube is YouTube for a reason. And YouTube is clearly not trying to be Netflix. So why does Netflix decide it's got to be YouTube? I don't understand this idea. AK: YouTube's kind of trying to be Netflix. They have subscription fees and things now if you want to like, you know, for certain things. IF: It's not the same though. You're not watching original movies. You're not watching original series. You're watching, you know, at best clips of like reality shows or old legacy stuff that's sort of in the public domain or uploaded illegally. There's not, it's not a premium experience on YouTube. YouTube is a, you know, a catch-all for, you know, the world. AK: Sure. I mean, didn't they try that already? I think YouTube, didn't they have an original division, I think, for a little bit? IF: They did, but it didn't work out and it all went away. So they've tried things a couple of times. They introduced their own studios. They introduced their own large budget productions, but nothing ever caught on. So it's interesting to me that Netflix has decided, though, that YouTube is a competitor and that they want more of what YouTube's got. I think they're two totally different things. And, you know, I don't understand the business model of getting YouTubers and putting them on Netflix and trying to get additional YouTube people to now watch the same stuff they'd watch on YouTube on Netflix. It's surprising to me. AK: I have a great idea. Maybe they should go back to sending out DVDs. IF: Physical media is all the rage. So who knows? Maybe that would be really profitable for them. AK: Well, I mean, I think there is a certain amount of streaming fatigue. Everybody's got a streaming service. I mean, we're going to lose some. They're going to merge HBO and Paramount. But Netflix is the OG. So it seems like, I don't know, they should. Somehow figure it out, I guess. IF: All right. Well, I don't think we're going to discover or solve Netflix's business model in this episode. So why don't we get to the interview? AK: Yeah. Here is my interview with Stuart Dryburgh. AK: I'm speaking with Stuart Dryburgh who is the cinematographer of East of Eden, currently on Netflix. Stuart, tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the project. STUART DRYBURGH: Well, that was sort of pretty much the normal way. I got a call from my agent. You often don't really know how or why they decided to reach out to you, but they did. And she sent me the script that Zoe Kazan wrote for all seven episodes. I read it voraciously, pretty much in one sitting. And it's a terrific piece of writing. And I didn't know the book. I didn't grow up in the U.S. I probably would have done it in high school had I, but I didn't. We did some of the short novellas, The Pearl, The Old Man of the Sea, where I was in high school in New Zealand. But I hadn't read this. I hadn't read Grapes of Wrath or any of his bigger. So I was reading it for the first time and going, what a great story. Then I got on the phone with Garth and I think also Zoe and Jeb Stewart, the two showrunners. And we talked a bit about how the film would be made, although it's set in California, that it would be shot in New Zealand, presumably for financial incentives and costs. which, you know, I wasn't at all anxious about because obviously I grew up in New Zealand. I know the landscape is very, in many ways, parts certainly the South Island high country where we're going to shoot the Salinas Valley. It's almost identical to topography and vegetation, particularly up, you know, up on the hills where the Trask Ranch was going to be built. I also knew that I would find a great crew there. which, in fact, we did. Although, you know, I grew up in New Zealand, I started my career there, and now I find myself working with all the sons, younger cousins and nephews of the guys I came up with. That was great too. You know, I mean, this is a whole, so since I left, the whole Lord of the Rings thing happened, and an amazing crew development has taken place there. i've been back to do a couple of films on and off but this was the first really big project down there. AK: That's great. So what was that like? I've heard the same from people that have said that New Zealand and California look pretty similar. So did you do scouting in California to kind of compare or how did that work? SD: We had reference photographs, historical and contemporary photographs to work with, but we never went to California as such. I mean, Zoe grew up in California, so she probably is pretty familiar with the landscape. But again, maybe not the Salinas Valley. You know, it's a little out of the way. You know, she might have been to Monterey, but I don't know about Salinas. We sort of were starting with a clear palette. The California part, in a way, was sort of a slam dunk. We knew that the South Island high country would be a great match for the more sort of arid parts of the Salinas Valley. Weirdly enough, it was harder to do Connecticut. And the Trask farm, where the boys grow up, Massachusetts, where Cathy grew up, the northeast, it's harder to do because although the northern parts of New Zealand are, you know, green and farming and... But the moment you get away from the farmland and you get to the edge of the forest and the trees all look totally wrong. And so there was quite a lot of visual effects work had to be done there. AK: Oh, okay. Yeah, I was curious. I mean, I didn't know that it was shot in New Zealand even. So I thought, I just assumed it was probably done in California. I also grew up in California. So the terrain looked, didn't read wrong to me at all. SD: No, it doesn't, does it? And, yeah, we did okay with the northeast once it was cleaned up a bit. But, yeah, there's a lot of sort of odd sort of palm trees and things that show up in the North Island forests and around the edges of it, which just do not happen in Connecticut. No. Not a lot of palm trees. As I said, I grew up in New Zealand for most of my life. It was fantastic to go back there. AK: Yeah, that was what I was going to ask. So were you familiar then with the South Island and kind of like some of the locations that you guys chose? SD: Oamuru where we shot Salinas Trask Ranch. was not a part of the country I was particularly familiar with, not that particular part of it. But the general area of central Otago, I spent a lot of time down there. And in Auckland, we were able to find most of our locations within a drive from the stage space studios at Kumu, which is to the west of the city of Auckland. AK: When you chose the locations, were the sets built on the locations, or was it kind of a little bit of both, like you do exteriors and then do interiors on a set? SD: We mixed it up to the extent that Grant Major, the designer, and his team built the Trask farmhouse and laid out the fields. the gardens of that on a farm a little bit north of Auckland. And the Trask Ranch and the old Mexican house where they end up not living, the thing he's trying to rebuild, those were built from scratch on those locations. And each one of them had at least some of the rooms on the ground floors at least finished. So the kitchens of both houses were fully finished. The living room... Certainly a couple of other parts of the Trask Ranch were stuff where we could go in and out and do the scenes where people literally go in and out of the house. And then in the studios in Auckland, the same sets were repeated, but then with more. So like now in Auckland in the studio, we had the entire ground floor and most of the second floor of the Trask House. Same with the ramp. And we built them as two-story sets. because there just didn't seem to be any way of not having people go up and down the stairs in most cases. The beauty of that was that we quite literally, like there's a scene where, I think it's when Adam first comes back from his travels and is reunited with his brother and they walk into the kitchen from the, you know. Yeah. Another one when they're young kids and they come back from hunting and you see them through the kitchen window while they're moms. cooking dinner and then they come so we're able to do scenes like that and then pretty good match for those same rooms on the set AK: Yeah I think it was it kind of fooled the eye I wouldn't have necessarily thought that parts of it were even a set because sometimes i know it's possible to just build the entire thing on location. SD: So I know that my director Garth would have loved to have done more of that but there's cost and scheduling and practical reasons. Obviously you can do within one day, you can do a day scene and a night scene on the set. You don't have to wait for it to get dark. Right. And you can do multiple locations on set, you know. Yes, yes. And you can, okay, we've done with that at lunchtime. Now we walk over to this other building instead of moving all the trucks. AK: Yeah, 100%. No, there's good practical reasons. SD: And I don't think we suffered particularly from, you know, we had good backings, like photo reel backings created and trees. all the bits and pieces that help sell it. AK: When you were reading the script, what was it in particular that really grabbed you about the show? Just the story and stuff? SD: I mean, the fact that it was really well written and so it was very readable. But, you know, because it's a multi-generational story, you know, that essentially repeats that Adam and Charlie... Trask as kids, the competition between them, their relationship to their father, who rather makes a scarcity of love his MO, to then Adam with the twins, Cal and Aaron, for different reasons, is also not as available as a father as he should have been. And luckily they have the wonderful character of Lee, played by Hoon Lee. Yeah. who effectively becomes their father or their parent, mother and father, and brings them up. It's a very interesting story. AK: So, you know, Ilya Kazan famously shot, you know, the first version, like the movie of East of Eden. SD: Right. AK: Did you look at that at all as a reference? SD: No. And for very, because basically, in my particular case, for two very important reasons, while I was doing episodes one through four, with Garth Davis. And the film that Elia Kazan made was essentially the end of the story once they'd moved downtown to Salinas and the boys are growing. Yeah, basically because it had a great part for James Dean as, I guess, Cal. It just didn't seem relevant to me. And it also didn't, I'm not sure it was even that relevant to Zoe. AK: No, I mean, as a fan, you know, and I read East of Eden as a student, you know, growing up in California in high school. I loved that book. It was great. It was probably one of my favorite Steinbeck books. I mean, The Grapes of Wrath is good, but I liked East of Eden more because of the complexity of the characters, you know, I think. And the character of Cathy, who is just so... I mean, I feel like what I like about the show that's different that the book didn't do is it sort of gives Cathy a little bit more of a background, a little bit more of, I don't know, ambiguity rather than being like pure evil. Like in the book, it's kind of more black and white. It's more like she's just evil. SD: I mean, I think to be fair, and part of that is because we have the wonderful Florence Pugh. Cathy, and I think it was also in Zoe as a woman writing the show, Cathy is much more central to the story than she is in the book. She's important in the book. She is, of course, crucial. But, yeah, and I think as a result she gets to have a little bit more colour, a little bit more ambiguity, yes. to use your word, I think. Yeah, it sort of is Cathy's story, the way we've told it. AK: It is. And so that was like one of my questions for you about that is, so how did you use, you know, the cameras and the lighting and to sort of position Cathy as sort of more of the main character in this story and position her like against the other characters? SD: Garth and I set out to make a very naturalistic visuals. storytelling style, to let the period detail be there in the costumes and Grant's designs. Obviously, Zoe's written words and dialogue would be there in the actors. It's great casting. Cathy is centred in the writing. Okay. And so you can't help in a way but centre her... Like when she's first brought into the Trask house, broken and bloody, we sit very much with her. Yes. As much as Adam is responding to her and Charlie is worried about her showing up, nevertheless, the camera keeps coming back to Cathy because she is the central motivator once she comes into their lives. And she's the, you know, what breaks up their relationship, you know. It's true. It didn't require anything more clever than reading the script, to be fair. AK: Okay. So I did think it was interesting that in the show, when we're introduced to Cathy, it's dark. So we don't really know what she looks like. And she's... so we really don't know what she looks like and and um you know so you kind she's really obscured in a lot of ways about SD: Yes kind of unknowable in that sense you know AK: Yes so i i just thought that was something that was an interesting way to introduce what becomes a central character SD: I believe we go back to that night three times the very first shot of the movie is her who the heck is this woman we have no idea crawling across the fields bloodied and beaten, and then we see the boys react to her. Then we go straight back to their childhood in flashback. And it's not until the end of that episode when we once again see Cathy again beaten and bloodied. In episode two, we then go, you know, again, it starts with her at now beginning to release. She's not completely covered in blood anymore. But we go quite quickly into the flashbacks of her childhood and her story, and now we discover how she ended up there. Episode two is very much Cathy's story. In fact, I think it's even subtitled Cathy. The way Zoe has structured it, we keep coming back to Cathy, even though we spend a lot of the first episode. seeing the boys as preteens and then teenagers growing up and then as young men and not such young men as they reunite. And it's actually rather lovely the way, you know, because they had a difficult relationship as teens to the point of it being, you know, violent and competitive and the way that they're... as i say their father creates sort of the scarcity of love as a way of controlling the people around not not a particularly lovely character no although beautiful beautifully portrayed by Tracy Letts, but you know you really feel like well into the third act as it were of episode one you're starting to really feel these boys coming back together and then Cathy arrives yeah and instantly instantly there's a wedge so Garth directed all four episodes uh that AK: Yes did you guys have a previous working relationship at all or did SD: No we've not met um I knew his work on Lion which i liked very much and i hadn't realized that he had co-directed some of the Top of the Lake work with Jane Campion AK: oh of course I loved that show. AD: I did three films with Jane, so we have that background and that link. We were new friends. It was a very good working relationship from my point of view. Garth's very well prepared. He draws his own storyboards when he feels like he needs a storyboard, like he did all that sort of Indian cavalry stuff that's in the first episode when Adam goes off to the cavalry. He drew beautifully. So we just basically... Used it. Yeah, we spent a lot of time together planning the scenes, mostly whenever we could on the actual sets. Once the sets were built, we had some practical locations as well, like some parts of the brothel, of Fay's brothel, were actually shot in an old historic house in Auckland. Cathy's childhood home is another historic house in Auckland and, you know, a few other bits and pieces like the office where she meets her pimp. Yeah. That's what he is. He's a bit of a high-class pimp who then becomes her lover and whatever. AK: And stalker. SD: Yes, yes. And that was also like a historic house in Auckland that those of us who've grown up there have all been to before. But it's a great, great place. And we shot some exteriors in a city called Thames about three hours south of Auckland. We had to travel away a night to do that. Yeah, but wherever possible, we would go to those places and work out our shooting shotless effectively in that environment. And then, you know, that was great. It was terrific. AK: What did you guys talk about as far as what you wanted it to look like? Working with the production designer, was there specific colors and tones that you guys wanted to bring in? SD: We wanted to create, although we're doing a period film, we didn't want to apply a period look as such. We wanted to keep it real, let the production design and the costumes and the characters themselves give us the period. At the same time, we obviously didn't want to fight that with an obsessively modern look either. So it's essentially naturalistic. Yeah. A lot of natural light, a lot of natural sources, candles and oil lamps, as much as we possibly could. Supplemented with film lighting, but always working from the natural light of the place, which we then carried on into the way we lit the stage sets as well. That was fundamental and that was something that came out of our earliest conversations. So then it was a matter of just going around, finding those things, taking photographs, looking at, let's say, the natural light, working out what in terms of staging that each place offered. It was a very organic process. It wasn't, we kept developing right through our time shooting rather than there being like a sort of master plan that we're going to follow. And we definitely had a plan. We definitely knew the shot. We definitely knew every day the shots that we thought we wanted to do. But sometimes after Garth had blocked the scene with the actors, we might do something not entirely different, but maybe significantly different. AK: But you were ready kind of to be able to... roll with that SD: yeah well and also as i always like to say if you have Plan A and you don't come up with a better Plan B, you can always do Plan A. If you have a plan, worst case you just do the plan. AK: The show is very it looks very naturalistic were the sets built to allow more natural light in or with bigger windows? SD: Well actually not not with really bigger windows but definitely with a, you know Grant has a very good sense of what works uh cinematically as well as purely from a design point of view. So he does think about that. I don't think I ever had to ask him to add a window. AK: Okay. SD: We definitely worked very closely with him, though, on every set, on every design, and also on how the night scenes as well. Because a lot of the scenes are night or dusk with just the sort of glow of the last light of the day out the windows. The key lights actually being fire and candle and kerosene lights, which with the 65 camera running at 1600 ASA, which is what we ran, I think, pretty much the whole show, except occasionally we may even have pushed it a bit deeper. You know, you're able to capture, to allow those practical lights to be the keys and then to supplement with, you know. Chinese lanterns, stirrer tubes, little lighting gags that gaffers have hidden in the back of their trucks and bring out when required. We're able to keep it pretty much in that natural vernacular. AK: Right, that's what I was going to ask. I was going to say it probably affected your camera choice quite a bit, and that would be a good one for that. SD: Yeah, I mean, I think both Garth and I would have been quite interested in shooting this on film. And I think it could have been a good choice from the point of view of the feeling of period and the natural, the softness that film brings. But because we were shooting in New Zealand, the nearest film lab was in Los Angeles, really. AK: I think you shot Fallout on film, didn't you? We did. We did indeed. So we sent our dailies every day to Photo Chem from New York and then eventually Southwest Africa, Namibia as well. I mean, there was always a schlep to get the film to the lab and to get it processed and transferred to pics for dailies the next day. But we could do it next day. New Zealand, we would have been two or three days turnaround. And the other thing was that the Alexa 65, with its big sensor and its sensitivity and its ability to render dark scenes, allowed us... to push really deep into the twilight for our night scenes when we were playing dusk for night and for our actual twilight scenes, which we have quite a few of, both in my episodes and in Sam's in the Salinas Valley, you know, where we're shooting essentially after the sun's gone down just to get that glow of the end of the day. You know, really... turned out to be much a better choice. Both Garth and I were already big fans of the format. We'd both shot films on the Elixir 65, and our only regret was that the new model, the 265, was not quite available. AK: Yeah, the really large format. Well, the thing with the 265, it's the same sensor, but it's a much more compact camera. The camera itself is not much bigger than an Elixir 35. An A35. But it has all that big, you know, the big sensor from the 65 and just all the electronics as they figured out how to make it more compact. I mean, the first film I did with the Alexa 65, we'd been hoping to use it on Alice Through the Looking Glass, but it wasn't quite ready. And the reason it wasn't ready, they hadn't figured out how to do the analog to digital board. without it catching fire. There was so much data coming from the sensor to the CPU. But they did solve it. We took three of them to China with us for Great Wall, and they performed very well. And then, as I said, now they've made it even better. But as I said, we still had the older, heavier camera. Luckily, we have a very strong Steadicam operator who didn't mind throwing it around. You can put it on your shoulder and it's not unreasonable as a handheld camera. Right. When we needed to do that, we had the DNA lenses, which again, Garth and I both agreed without much discussion. were going to be our preferred shooting style, which are great, great vintage-y re-housed medium format stills lenses that work really well in the 65 format. And we were shooting for a two-to-one release, which is almost the entire sensor. AK: Wow, yeah, it is. Which scenes from episodes one through four do you think are you the most proud of? SD: I mean, I would have to say I love the dusk scene between Sam Hamilton, Ciarán Hinds’s character, and Lee, Hoon Lee as Lee. There's a lovely scene where they discuss their mutual friend, Adam, and his wife and what the heck is all that about after they've had dinner together. And they walk back from the house to the stables in the twilight. And we shot it, I think, over two nights. But it's quite a long scene. It is. There's a lot of dialogue. We had gorgeous clear skies. The sun went down. There's just that last beautiful glow of the day, what we often associate with Terrence Malick's work on Days of Heaven, that moment. But the digital camera just keeps going. I was quite literally watching this beautiful scene happening in the DIT. DIT's tent as my steadicam operator was shooting it. And when we finished, okay, we're done for the day, we walked out of the tent, it was pretty much dark. It felt like nighttime. Yeah. And yet the camera was still capturing the light that was there. And I love that scene. It's really, really beautiful. And it's precious because I know how lucky we were to be able to capture it in that way. AK: Well, and then just from a story standpoint, I liked it because he talks about, you know, some of the themes that are in the show, which is, you know, what people appear to be versus, you know, what they are. SD: Yes, and how he basically convinces Lee to reveal his educated self. beyond the pretense of the step and fetch it Chinese servant it's very interesting i mean they're both i love both those characters too they're both really really interesting they're both lovely people too as actors so yes. AK: yeah i liked that i like too it was really well written too with with because you have them and in their roles and then we have Cathy and what which who she is and who she might actually be. SD: yes because at that stage we still don't we still don't really know well we know that Cathy has a pretty checkered history but we don't We haven't realized what she's about to unleash on poor Adam. AK: Yeah. So episode four is sort of like the really big midpoint in the show. So tell me a little bit about planning that out. And I mean, was that sort of the most challenging, do you think? SD: It is in many ways. I mean, because Cathy's journey from essentially from an opportunist to a murderer. Yeah. I mean, well, Although she was already a murderer, as it turns out. But, and again, I hope this isn't a spoiler for anyone, but if you haven't figured that out by now, you didn't watch episode two. AK: Well, I mean, how old is the book now? SD: Well, exactly. Yeah, that was, look, it was also a lot of the, we shot all the location work for that scene with the first. five or seven days of shooting. The big room where the girls meet the bar and the piano player and all of that, that's all on a location. That's a beautiful big old house in the inner city suburbs of Auckland. And then it was really only phase room that we built as a set and the corridor and there's connecting corridor that is in both places that allows us to make that connection pretty seamlessly. For me, the challenge was that I was still finding my way with still finding the shooting style, finding my way with working with a new director for the first time and a new cast. AK: Did you guys shoot that like pretty much right away? SD: First up, all the stage, all the location work. So all the scenes in the, yeah the main room of the brothel the stairwell all the little rooms where the girls lived they were all there it's only phase room that was on the stage and we got to that pretty quickly as well we had the lovely Martha Plimpton but she didn't want to stay around for three months to do four weeks work so right well yeah we got we did all her work pretty pretty early on in the piece even her room on the set was challenging at times you know we had to do it at day at dawn at dusk and night had a lot of different different vibes going on in that in that space yeah so no so episode four was probably the most challenging for me but part of that was just because we started there and it was like a lot. AK: Yeah, there's a lot going on for the actors to do. SD: Oh, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%. I think the very first scene we shot was in the entire movie was where Faye meets Cathy for the first time when she's like interviewing her in that big room during the day in the morning. I think that was the very first day on the show. Yeah, so there was a lot going on there for me. It's a challenging show. It wasn't always entirely obvious. And trying to work with these low lights and the natural lights caused me some headaches. AK: The scene where she actually kind of drops her mask and... you know, actually kind of shows Faye who she really is, you know, and she's wanting to seize control. And can you talk to me a little bit about like the lighting choices in that scene? I feel like a lot of the show is kind of a little bit more longer or middle as far as like where it sits rather than close-ups. SD: Yes. Yeah. So I think in those scenes in particular, we do get more, like, a little closer to what's happening. Are you talking about the scene where they have, like, the party? AK: Yes, the party, and then she actually drinks. SD: And everyone gets terribly drunk, and she forces Faye into a state of extreme drunkenness. I mean, yes, it's actually a really discomforting scene. I mean it really makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it it's very it's terrifying in a lot of ways yeah yeah the trick with that was that Faye has done it up like to be a celebration at a party so it's quite lit and then as the scene goes on we kind of let it get darker for obvious reasons yes and when they move over to the bed you know where they've moved away from the party area that's where we were able to like really squish it down a bit it was a very challenging couple of days work though AK: yes was there anything in particular that you're sort of thinking about to kind of look a certain way was there uh were you thinking about it being more like a horror sort of theme situation? SD: Not really and again because we didn't want to step out of our naturalistic style right so it was more about balancing levels and letting the shadows get dark you know deeper and i wouldn't say that we were trying to make a horror movie look but definitely paying attention to the to what was going on, you know, in terms of the darkness of the theme at that point. It's a show that as much as I think it's a good-looking show, it's not about the camera. Right. Do you know what I mean? The camera is there to observe it, not to particularly draw your attention. I would like to think that you don't particularly notice the photography in this show. I mean, I know we have some pretty scenes, but generally we're trying to be not that present. AK: Well, I think that's what I was saying. I feel like, you know, you're drawn into the performances and the camera tends to stay back a little. You know what I mean? SD: Yes. Yeah. And you're right. And there are some quite a lot of close-ups, but they're sort of rationed out. And, you know, we... We tended to, you know, certainly it's my way of doing, I love to do moving masters where we can do, and maybe interlocking masters where you sort of do one shot that's from one character's point of view and one from the other, and the camera follows that character. And it makes for very dynamic coverage. And the editor, you know, literally can do two shots in a...-page scene and the editor will have close-ups and medium shots and wide shots to to work from because the the characters move the camera moves and we did quite a lot you know we did a fair bit of that particularly in that room AK: Yeah, I'm not saying it draws attention to itself and making it seem like horror, but I just was curious if there was anything. SD: There definitely weren't any, I felt like, camera tricks going on or anything. Really just responding to the moments as they occurred, you know. That was sort of what was going on. And, you know, I certainly took the opportunity in the... intermediate stage of you know emphasizing that a little bit letting the faces glow out a little bit more and the shadows get a little darker well that's i was going to say it feels not as much maybe of a camera moment but as a lighting moment because what's happening is AK: yeah it starts with the i think it's the light out even when they're starting the party and then SD: no no it's it's late at night but she's got but she she's done all the lanterns and AK: Mentally yeah, see, I thought it was light. SD: And also I had to think about, because I actually believe there was a version of the script that may even have taken it, because they start late at night after the brothel is closed, that may have gone all the way through to dawn. It sort of does end at very pre -dawn when she goes, and it's tricky, but there was a version of the script where that dawn happened even sooner. AK: We talked a little bit about your background when you were on before, when you talked about Fallout, but you have an architecture background too, right? SD: Well, I have a degree in architecture. I studied architecture at Auckland University. I never practiced as such. The world of architecture are very pleased about that. AK: Well, did you know that there's actually a lot of cinematographers that do have that as a background? SD: Yeah, I do. And directors, too, funnily enough. AK: So I was curious how that kind of influenced you. Like, do you feel like it influenced you as a cinematographer? SD: I mean, it's a great visual arts education. We did a lot in my particular school. We did a lot of photography as essentially as research. But, you know, darkroom and black and white film and all of that. I had a sort of grounding in photography from that. But what really happened to me was that when I was graduating, well, actually before, I think it was my second to last year, the New Zealand film industry started to kick off. Roger Donaldson made Sleeping Dogs, which was the first proper film that had ever been made in our country, of that scale, anyway, in a long time. And we were looking at the Australians. seeing what they were doing and going, well, you know, and you may not know this, but Australia and New Zealand were quite competitive, particularly if there's sports involved. AK: Yeah. And we've had several Aussies on the show too. SD; Yeah. Okay. AK: And I know a lot about the Aussie, the Australian film industry. SD: Yeah. So, you know, that was all sort of kicking off Gillian Armstrong and Phil Noyce and, you know, and we're looking across the Tasman and going, well, if they can do it, we can do it. Anyway, so that was happening, and various friends of mine worked on Sleeping Dogs and other local films, and I got interested, and I made a 16mm film as my final year project, which completely mystified the architectural board, and I think the general term was, let's just get him out of here, and then he won't bother us anymore. And I literally ran away and joined the circus. You know, and that was it. You know, that was architecture for me, sadly. You know, it's been useful. I've done a few home renovation projects. I've had some knowledge in my back pocket I can use, but not, yeah, other than that, yeah. AK: You've done, you know, The Piano, which you were nominated for an Academy Award. The Piano was a period piece. Did that influence a lot of your... For this project? For this project at all, or...? SD: Well, only to the extent that actually, although, Piano is a period piece and probably stylistically a little bit more mannered than East of Eden. Jane Campion and I, when we talked about making that film, we were definitely not wanting to do what was, at that time, late 80s, early 90s, the period look. She wanted to keep the story of Ada, Holly Hunter's character, as... very recognizable to a modern woman. It didn't want to be buried in its period. So, you know, there was an element of that too, which is naturalistic, although we exaggerated it, you know, so that the world of the forest where Harvey Keitel's character was sort of bluey greens, the bottom of the fish tank, as Jane called it. And then Sam Neill's house was burnt oranges and browns and reds. And then the beach was this sort of grey, purple mystery world. So, yeah, it was, as I say, a little bit more mannered stylistically. But nevertheless, each of those places, even with the overlay of colour that we were using, were lit pretty naturalistically. we were revolting against the conventions of the day, which was the sort of Merchant Ivory. Yes. Beautiful films, don't get me wrong. AK: Like Dangerous Liaisons, I was thinking of too. SD: Yeah, I mean, well, yeah. AK: I think they used a little more richer colour in that though. SD: Yeah, could be, in Dangerous Liaisons, yes. And then Portrait of a Lady was mid-90s, so the last film I did with Jane, but again, not a film that where we kind of tried to not use conventional period. So I guess that's sort of become ingrained into me from all those early works, trying to keep away from the conventions of period and letting it just be what it is. AK: Well, I think it definitely works. SD: It was a treat to go back to New Zealand and to work on such an amazing project in a country I've grown up in. As I said, with a lot of Some of my old contemporaries were now running the camera rental house, but all the young kids who were my crew, I think of them as young kids, all of them in their 40s probably, but just seeing that whole generational change was just very special. AK: Yeah, that's great. Do you think you'll try to see if you can get more projects there? SD: I mean, the sad fact is they don't get many of this quality, and that was essentially what drives my... choice of projects. AK: Where can people find you? SD: IMDB is obviously the first stop. I actually have a website, stuartdryburgh.com, which has bits of my work. I have a lovely agent here and in the UK, Anne Mertha here and Zoe Boris in the UK. They both have visual stuff on their websites. AK: Do you do Instagram or anything like that? SD: I do have Instagram. I don't put much on it. I have sporadic postings. AK: All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on the Cinematography Podcast. SD: Thanks, Alana. AK: Yeah, you're welcome. ILLYA FRIEDMAN: All right. So that was Stuart Dryburgh. Hey, Stuart, thank you for coming back on the show again. You know, East of Eden is definitely, definitely a hit right now. I hear a lot of people talking about it. Congratulations and can't wait to see what you do next. AK: Great. Yeah, it was wonderful talking to him about the show. I really enjoyed it. IF: All right, Alana, it is our short end time of the show. It's the time we talk about our pet obsessions. What is your pet obsession this week? AK: Well, Illya, happy National Sasquatch Awareness Day. IF: Really? Sasquatch Awareness Day? AK: Yes. IF: That's today? AK: October 20th is National Sasquatch Awareness Day. IF: What sort of celebrations happen on National Sasquatch Day? AK: Well, it happens to be the anniversary of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot that people, it was very famous of the, what looks like could be a person in a costume walking by, but has been argued to have been Sasquatch or Bigfoot all this time. So there's a documentary that's coming out, which I've not yet seen. I am excited to see it. It is going to be on Amazon. It's called Capturing Bigfoot. And it is revealing new footage from the same guy, Patterson, who made the film that has been uncovered. IF: So so is it like an expose, like a debunking or what is it? AK: It is. I don't know if I should give it away. I mean, I don't I haven't seen it yet, but I do know a little bit about, you know, what happens in the documentary. And we are going to have the people coming up are going to probably come on our show. IF: So. All right. Well, then we can then we can be coy. We can we can leave out the important details. So what when is it going to when is it available? AK: It's out now. It is on Amazon Prime. So the filmmakers, it premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. And after it premiered, there was so much outcry in the Bigfoot community on Reddit and other places that they had to pull it from other film festivals that they were going to take it to. So it's been then now back under wraps until they decided it was, you know, they premiered it on National Sasquatch Awareness Day. So check it out, Capturing Bigfoot. And I will also be checking it out. I've seen the trailer and I've heard interviews with the filmmakers and we will probably interview them soon. IF: Okay, exciting. AK: Okay, Illya, what's your short end? A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dallas and I happened to meet a gentleman named Mark Manson. Mark is the author of a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. It's a counterintuitive approach to living a good life. And I was familiar with it. It's been out in the world for, God, probably 10 years now. Yeah, I've heard of it. I never read it. I was not one of those people who followed it. And I had not read his stuff at all when I met him. I did see a little bit of his substack, actually. And I thought some of the quips and things that he wrote on substack was pretty good. It inspired me to give it a read, to give it a listen. So I've now been listening to it now on Spotify for the last couple of weeks. And I got to say. It's really quite good. It is counterintuitive. It's not written like I would say any sort of personal development or self-help thing. First of all, there's a million F-bombs in it. The book is written... AK: Well, it has fucking in the title. IF: It does. It's the subtle art of not giving a... And it's bleeped, but it... AK: Oh, it's bleeped. Okay. IF: It's bleeped on the book. But what it is is actually the subtle art of not giving a fuck. It encourages the readers to stop trying to please everyone and focus on what's truly important. Readers have described the book as excellent and enjoyable and that it offers validations to beliefs and values and it helps many examine their sense of self-worth. It's a... It's an unexpected book because it really goes into a lot of stuff about toxic positivity and goes into how other people can damage your psyche and your well-being. But it does it in such a way, it's almost like it's a sneak attack. You don't see it coming because of the way that it's written. And if you listen to the audiobook version of it, it's very much sort of like a rapid fire, profane machine gun of information. that you're kind of like, wait, what am I listening to? What just happened? And I have to say, I do not agree with all of the points and all of the information that's been presented, but it's really entertaining. And so I can't help but feel like... Even if this is supposed to be a self-help book, it's probably the most entertaining self-help book that anyone's ever read. So if you have ever been curious about the subtle art of not giving a fuck, this is going to be something quite entertaining for someone who's got a few hours to spend on a plane or on a long car trip or anywhere. Try Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. AK: I mean, is it working? Do you have some takeaways from it? Are you learning stuff? IF: So I got to say that there's some stuff that I immediately go, yes, this is logical. This makes sense. I just have never heard anyone put it this way. And then other times I'm like, yeah, I can't co-sign on that. And I wish I could give you a really good example, but there is an awful lot written about the toxic positivity, the people who it's more important for them to be positive than it is for them to express themselves. And that is definitely he it's really well researched and he pulls out a lot of studies and details about how living in inauthentic life or giving too many fucks about other people will make will make you miserable. And he does a really excellent job about telling a personal story when he was like 14 years old and got called into the principal's office for suspicion of having marijuana at school. And the whole way that this story is written is written is like, oh my God, I'm so scared. I can't believe this is happening. And why is this happening to me? And then there's a reverse that happens in the story, which then makes you go, of course, of course, this is exactly like what you might have thought it was going to be. And there's several moments in the book that are like this. I think it's probably better that someone just experiences it for themselves rather than hearing me, you know, chop it up and try to do a book report here on the podcast. AK: Okay. I guess that'll do it then for our episode. IF: It will. So where can people find you if they want to get in touch? AK: They can find me at growwithgreentree.com. It's my website and it's for marketing and it's for people who might want to start podcasts. And you can drop me a line over there and maybe I can help you with some of those things. And how about you, Illya? IF: You can find me at Illya Friedman dot com. It's got all of my social links and various sort of like bloggy essay type things that I've put up there. So email is hello@illyafriedman.com. Alana, who do we have to thank? Who made this show possible? AK: I mean, Ben had me thank myself the last time we did wraps. IF: I think that you better thank yourself. AK: I'm going to pat myself on the back because I produced and conducted the interview so that we are... that you have just listened to. IF: And probably going to edit this right after we're done. AK: And I'm already editing it. And then, you know, of course, we can thank Kays Alatrakchi, who does all the music for the show. And you can go to Kays Labs on YouTube to watch Kays fix synthesizers. And you can pay Kays money to fix your synthesizer. And also go to Music by Kays to hire Kays to do music for you if you like. IF: All right. Fantastic. So I think that does it for this episode. Alana, do you want to take us out? AK: Thanks for tuning in. This has been CinePod, the cinematography podcast presented by Hot Rod Cameras. Find your next camera, lens, or accessory at hotrodcameras.com. Watch and subscribe to our show on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow and interact with us on Instagram threads, Facebook, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn. But not X. Don't do that. Thanks for tuning in.