In the same way that ultra shallow depth of field screams 2010s cinematography, ultra soft lighting and diffusion filters scream 2020s.

What a treat to premiere our new film JACK & CHRISTINE at Beyond Fest last weekend. Such an incredible festival experience and can’t wait to do it again. Thanks for having us @beyondfest

Thrilled to premiere JACK & CHRISTINE tomorrow at one of my all time favorite festivals (Beyond Fest). Making this project was a truly incredible experience and probably my favorite collaboration with @LukeBarnett who was brilliant alongside John Hawkes and Nikki Lorenzo.

Such an honor to announce the world premiere of JACK & CHRISTINE will be held at Beyond Fest! Humbling to have it programmed alongside so many amazing filmmakers attending this year - M Night Shyamalan, Robert Eggers, Rza, Michael Mann, Al Pacino and many more.

LA needs to give out major incentives to films SET in Los Angeles, not just shot here. This city was the backdrop of so many of the best shows in the 90s and 2000s. Putting LA back in the spotlight is everything.

What LA needs to bring production back: - Uncapped tax credits at 40%+ - Bonus credits for films set in LA, not just shot in LA - Free permits for micro shoots with no road closures - No permit for shoots with no equipment footprint - Permit turnaround within 48h

This 90 second film: - Had no crew - Shot in 4 hours - Uses no dialogue - Was made up on the spot - Wasn't submitted to festivals But became one of my most viral films, racking up 100K views this week alone (10 years on). Sometimes the smallest ones yield the biggest results.

Film grain is one of the best ways to add texture and mood to your project. Just make sure you are also adding halation and blurring to get the full effect. This is especially important with smaller gauges like 8mm and 16mm. Digital grain will always look fake if overlayed directly on sharp digital footage without softening the underlying shot. You’ll also want to blur the footage and grain separately for more control over the aesthetic. I typically start with halation as that softens the image as a byproduct. Then I will add a simple blur to the footage, and as a final step some additional blur to the texture layer. These are from my upcoming short film JACK & CHRISTINE. I will likely go with a standard 35mm film grain to keep it simple and understated on this one.

Can’t think of a film with a more vivid look and complementary color palette than Suspiria (1977). It was truly so ahead of its time. Some of the shots look like they’re straight out of 2026 in terms of composition, but are unafraid of saturation unlike most contemporary films. This was also one of the last films ever printed using Technicolor’s old dye transfer process.

48 hours before these BTS shots were taken my wife and I were hit by a drunk driver in a hit and run in Topanga Canyon. We were lucky to be alive, but the car was totaled which meant I couldn’t pick up the Alexa 35 we were supposed to rent for our film shoot, and fell way behind on final prep. This would have been bad enough on any project, but was especially hard on this one. I’d been working toward this short for almost a year, and it was my first collaboration with John Hawkes, who I had been dying to work with since seeing Martha Marcy May Marlene. Not to mention the intensely gifted Nikki Lorenzo and @iamlukebarnett who worked so hard with me to shape the characters and make this a reality. Somehow though, piece by piece it all came together. A DP friend came through with his RED package, and I finished the shot plan and script notes at the 11th hour. I remember staying up the night before the shoot, still rattled from the accident, trying to imagine every scenario where something could go wrong on the shoot. I felt like the only way I’d fall asleep was if I had a fix for every possible catastrophe - which somehow felt inevitable. What if the location owner didn’t show up? What if the camera went down? What if the first scene fell apart? It was overkill but it put my mind at ease. The next morning my good friend and producer picked me up to drive us to set. It was still pitch black out. Maybe 5am. We saw a shooting star on the way to the location in Malibu and knew it was all gonna work out. Somehow it did. It was one of the most rewarding days I’ve had on set. And it yielded one of the projects I am most proud of (Jack & Christine). Was a good reminder there’s always a way though if you just keep pushing ahead.

Same shot, 3 wildly different lenses. Cool to see the difference glass can make in a side by side. These are from my upcoming short film CROW. It’s intended to be disorienting with lots of quick cuts and unconventional coverage. I decided to shoot almost the entire film on three different lenses so I could alternate between them at key moments in the edit and create a hypnotic effect. The Tokina 11-16 vignettes on the large Blackmagic PYXIS sensor and feels distorted in the best way. The Leica R 50mm is the most “normal” of the lenses but still has some vintage style charm and feels nostalgic in its own way. And the Helios 44M-4 is by far the most stylized of the three, creating unpredictable blurring and fringing that plays into the disorienting nature of the piece.

A lot of people have been throwing around the term “Technicolor” lately, often in reference to this shot in Dune: Part 3. And while this shot is awesome, it definitely doesn’t have a traditional 3-Strip / Technicolor look, and wasn’t intended to. Real Technicolor films (like The Wizard Oz) were captured on special camera systems that used a prism beam splitter to isolate red, green, and blue light. Each color was then exposed to a different black and white film stock, which were later dyed cyan, magenta, and yellow and then combined together to create a full color effect. Shots became highly saturated with deep reds and subtle contrast. I simulated this process digitally on this shot by splitting apart the red, green, and blue channels and then re-combining in DaVinci Resolve, with some other finishing touches. This yields a very different look than the official grade, which is just beautifully shot footage by DP Linus Sandgren.

Youtube filmmakers in 2026: “Always frame the subject on the shadow side... it’s more cinematic.” Leonardo DaVinci in 1512:

This is such a great film. Go see it if you’re at Fantasia!