IFH 788: The Unscripted Journey of Steven Bernstein: From Cinematographer to Storyteller
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You are listening to the IFH Podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork.com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, episode number 788. Cinema should make you forget you're sitting in a theater. Roman Polanski.

Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood, it's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, how to turn your independent film into a profitable business.

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If you want to order it, just head over to www.FilmBizBook.com. That's FilmBizBook.com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Dave Bullis.

that I have my next guest. He has been the director of cinematography for such films as Monster, directed by Patty Jenkins, who just directed Wonder Woman, Kicking and Screaming, directed by Noah Baumbach, and Like Water for Chocolate. He's also been the director of cinematography for comedies like The Waterboy, Half-Baked, Scary Movie 2, White Chicks, and he's done action films like SWAT, and he also wrote a film textbook called Film Production.

And his latest films, Decoding Annie Parker and Dominion, have included actors like Aaron Paul, John Malkovich, Helen Hunt, just to name a few. And currently, he's actually teaching some really cool online and offline seminars, which, again, I'll link to in the show notes. We're going to talk about a lot of really cool stuff on this podcast episode with guest...

Steven Bernstein.

Just to sort of start this off, did you go to film school to be a cinematographer or did you have a completely different sort of entryway into this industry? A completely different entryway. I had...

wanted to be a writer and read or majored in philosophy at university. When I came out, there were various job opportunities of different types, one of which was at the BBC, a training program, which I enrolled in and studied there as a writer, director, researcher, and worked in long-form documentary.

Great because it allowed me to travel a great deal which was an interest of mine then and I got to go to China Hong Kong Philippines Vietnam South America South Africa during apartheid what was then Rhodesia later became Zimbabwe So a lot of adventures a lot of really interesting shoots and some great experiences but not really that Satisfying and not as it turned out my calling. I think

I came back to London and continued working at the BBC about the time that

music videos became of interest. The first few music videos would be produced and I got to shoot a few of those and soon I was in demand not as a director or as a writer but as a what was called then a lighting cameraman, a cinematographer.

and shot a lot of really interesting music videos for some really then very big bands in the 80s, Eurythmics and so on. And that led to interest from others and got into commercials, worked with the great Tony Kaye, did some really important commercials with him, some of which won the Khan Golden Lion, the DAAD Award. And then I was kind of on the map.

Still, my intention always had been to be a writer. So it's funny the way life works in that you tend to go with those things that are providing you income. Inevitably, you can have good intentions, but overheads, life expenses being what they are, you do what you have to do. So I was shooting, enjoying it, particularly the music videos and the commercials.

But I was still writing plays, films, short films, some of which appeared on Channel 4 in the UK, some got on the stage in London, but really nothing that provided me any sort of success.

Then along came Like Water for Chocolate. My friend Gabrielle Berestain had been offered the work completing that movie, which had run into a little bit of trouble, and he couldn't do it. So they asked me to go to Mexico and finish the film, which I did. It's a big hit in America, the highest grossing foreign language film of all time to date. And I then came to America to see if there was work to be had here.

And that led to all those studio films, those comedies with Adam Sandler, with the Weyands and so on. And that in turn led to my meeting the great Noah Baumbach and starting an independent films in America. And that in turn led to Monster. So I've tried to compress what is now seeming a very long career into a very short period of time. But

A happy series of accidents, doing what I never intended to do, ending up at a place I never intended to come to, and somehow working my way back towards my first intention.

Yeah. And it's funny how it all sort of comes full circle, right? You start off with one intention. You find yourself in all these new situations, but you took advantage of those situations and you turn them all into opportunities. And now you're going back to writing. And I think there's something poetic in that because I think when we as filmmakers and whether we're writers or directors, when we start our careers, we

you know, we have an idea of what it's going to be. And usually everyone has an idea that it's going to be, you know, you're going to make a movie at 22, you're going to win Sundance, you're going to make a million dollars, and then you're going to move to Hollywood. And, and, and, and, and, and, you know, Steve, it doesn't really work out that way. It's a lot of zigzags towards that sort of path. And, uh, you know, and it's just a, that's why I do this podcast because there's so many interesting stories like yours where,

where it's not just one way. In fact, with all these episodes, there's so many different ways of doing things. But the point I'm trying to make is, you know, that's the thing about the intention that we have and how life sort of throws out all these obstacles and how we respond to them and how we respond to them really dictates, you know, what course our life is going to go on.

I think you're absolutely right. And it goes to the great complexity that life offers us, which is do we earn a dollar? Do we do what makes us the maximum amount of profit all the time? Or do we hold on to an individual dream and simply wait it out? It's very interesting because I've done both. When I started, I...

make no apology to say that I was kind of an opportunist. I was taking what was offered to me and look, it was a fun ride. I got to again travel a lot, both first with the BBC and then doing music videos. I got to meet really interesting people, particularly in the 80s and the bands we were dealing with and the concerts we were doing and the videos we were doing, all very, very exciting. But really it was the work that was offered and I took advantage of that.

Later, when I went to make my first film, Decoding Annie Parker, I had seen other people try to make that same transition to director and they tried to keep their day job, as it were, and none of them succeeded.

So I resolved that I would give up everything to do with cinematography. I would give up anything to do that didn't directly point me towards directing. And that's what I did. And sadly, decoding did not happen quickly. We were promised money. That money went away. We were promised other money. That money went away. And I spent nearly five years unemployed.

and went through all my savings and most of my possessions and was in abject poverty on the day we finally got funded and then went to shooting. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now, back to the show.

So both courses interesting. I think ultimately the latter one more painful. You sacrifice a great deal. But if you hold out for the dream, maybe you achieve it.

Yeah. And, you know, holding out for the dream. It's kind of like Sid Haig. You know, he people once asked him about his acting career and he had actually given up. He actually, you know, sort of went away for a long while because he said every every role that he was offered was basically he he came in as a man with a gun. He came in through the door holding a gun or he came in, you know, he was already in the room with the gun. And what happened was he came back because, you know, he actually liked it.

And and finally, he said, you know, I realize now he's in movies with Tarantino and Robert and Rob Zombie. And he said, you know, it's like Winston Churchill said, never quit, never quit, never quit.

I think that's absolutely right. And there's a great example of this that we know. I mean, Patty Jenkins, a dear friend of mine, Patty was the director of Monster, which I shot. The story is interesting, both how our relationship began and how Patty built her career. I was shooting the big second unit on SWAT.

21 cameras, tons of effects, we're spending millions of dollars blowing up the front of the library in Los Angeles, crashing planes, shooting rockets into cars. It was everything I thought I dreamt of when I was a young cinematographer. And then after four months of that, I got a call from Clark Peterson, the producer of Monster Unknown for years. The film was in some trouble.

in Florida and he asked if I would read the script, speak to the first time director and consider leaving SWAT and coming to Florida to shoot Monster. And I read the script, I thought it was great. I spoke to Patty on the phone and was struck by her intelligence, her sensitivity,

her command of the subject matter, um, and of herself. I just sensed that she would be a great leader and agreed and came down at, um, uh, one 20th of what I was getting paid on SWAT arrived in Florida to this tiny little film that was, uh, underfunded, uh, under equipped and in real trouble. And we began working together. And for me it was,

epiphany because I saw people of absolute and genuine integrity completely believing in the art they were undertaking to create and Charlize was self-sacrificing and the role was agonizing and difficult for her but she pushed through as did Patty and

And then, of course, Monster, when we finished it, no one would buy it, which a lot of people don't know. Blockbuster would be the only people that would put forward a not very good offer, which was taken. With the proviso, the film would get a very limited theatrical release. And amazing to them, and I guess to kind of everybody, the film got spectacular reviews in the papers.

Patty ended up, along with Charlize, on Charlie Rose. And then we went to Berlin, where Charlize won the Silver Lion, then Silver Bear, rather, then the Golden Globe, then the Oscar, of course, and the rest is kind of legend.

Right after that, Patty was offered pretty much everything from studios. And you or I, or I don't mean to speak for you, let's say someone like me, would have taken that opportunity, work on a studio, be paid a million or two million. I don't know what she's offered, but a lot. But Patty had a vision of what she wanted to do. And remarkably, and this goes to her character, she said no.

These aren't the films that I want to do. She wanted to do a film about Chuck Yeager. She had some other projects that were interesting to her. And she was going to hold out, as I did on my film, for what she was waiting for and what she believed she'd be adept at doing and achieving. And waited and waited. Did some television pilots, very successful ones. The Killing, which she did a great job on them.

And then along came Wonder Woman. And Patty said, yeah, here's a strong woman with a voice that I find interesting, a subject matter that I've always liked. I'm going to make this film. And what did it do this weekend? I mean, it was spectacular. And it's not just the box office revenue we generated. Look at the reviews it's getting. So that's Patty's remarkable and I think instructional journey.

You know, I once met Kane Hodder. And Kane actually said the best actress that he ever worked with was Charlize Theron. And he said she was... Not only was she very nice to everybody with no airs whatsoever, but he said when the time came, she was absolutely amazing every single take, every single day. He's like, she never did a bad take, not one time. And when you see something like Monster...

It's you know because Charlize is a beautiful woman and then you know she transformed herself with all the makeup and she really became that role you know I had on a couple different acting coaches and they said that was the secret of acting is that you don't act like like you're a person you are that person.

I think that's spot on. And, you know, look, I have the remarkable distinction of being the one cinematographer that managed to make Charlize Theron look bad. So it's very, very special. And I'm very proud of myself. And Charlize was very proud of me. But she and I worked very hard on making her look bad. One, that goes to her great courage, because look, I'm

An actress's beauty is in part her commodity in Hollywood. And the fact that Charlize, like Patty before her, had such an integrity of vision that she was willing to sacrifice her commodity value in the pursuit of art goes to the person that she is. And secondly, you're absolutely right about Hollywood.

the quality of Charlize's performance. And she does this strange hybrid of method acting and more classical approaches. She knows the material, she's always off page, she gets it completely, she intellectually understands and engages with the topic and knows her character and the character's art.

But in the moment, she is a method actor. She is completely engaged. And as your acting coach, a person that you interviewed, said she became that character. We believe she was that person completely. You know, there's a remarkable thing that happened on Monster one day where it was a key moment when Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron, the two characters, were saying goodbye to each other.

at a train station and they both had worked their way into this emotional

high. There was a sense of intensity. And if you know film sets, I'm sure you do, the crews just carry on eating their sandwiches and lying down their track and doing what crews do. But something remarkable happened this day, and the crew just sensed that they wanted to support Christina and Charlize and what they were pursuing. So the crew decided unilaterally not to speak that day.

And the crew was communicating with each other with hand signals and with pointing and occasionally a whispered word. But it was dead quiet on that set for the entire sequence.

And it was one of the most magical moments I remember in any film I've ever worked on. This sense of synergy of all of us working together to support what we felt was the achievement of great art. And I think it facilitated those two performances in that remarkable film. I mean, and see stories like that are just so interesting to hear, you know.

She's working with different actors over the years and seeing all the different methods and different approaches. And it's very interesting to see the crew, you know, responding in that method of a crew responding and being very receptive and helping Charlize and Christina Ricci and doing something like that. It's just very interesting to me when because because, I mean, you've been you've seen a lot of sets, Steve, where you've

The crew ends up in the crew and the cast end up becoming like a family because you're spending days into weeks and months making this film. And it almost becomes like a child for everybody, you know, and and everyone's a team player and they all want to see what's best for for this project that they've worked for so long on.

I think you're exactly right. And this is the thing I think that's most attractive about film is you do acquire a family for a few months or a few weeks or one of the films I did in India for a year where you're all under great pressure, but you're all mutually dependent on each other and you're isolated from the rest of the world and you feel somehow isolated.

Not special as in entitled, but that somehow

The way you are mediating the world is different from the way you mediate the world in the civilian or non-film world. So the camaraderie and friendships that are built on film sets to me are still singular. And my closest friends all come from film. And the most intense experiences in my life generally have occurred on film sets. And I must tell you, there's never been a film that I've worked on.

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However bad the film may have been, where it wasn't followed, at least for me, by a profound depression that would last days or weeks. And I think I speak for virtually all film crews and actors. When you walk away from your family and just say, OK, this film's done, I'm going back home now. Home doesn't seem like home. The set was home. And there's a peculiar transition stage which some people never get over.

You know, you're absolutely right, Steve. I've been on a lot of sets like that where it's almost, you know, it's, I don't want to use this expression, but I will. It's almost like a high. It's almost like this feeling, this energy. Actually, energy is a better word than high. It's this energy that you feel and, you know, you just sort of, especially when everybody is gelling together and everyone's there and they're professional and they're all working together, it's that, you know, you get that feeling and you want to, you

And when you leave and the project's over, you sort of go home and you're like, what am I going to do now? I guess I better watch Netflix and order a pizza, right? But you want that feeling again so much.

No, absolutely right. To the point where it's like maybe high is better because you're like an addict. You'll be walking down the street and you'll see another film shooting and sort of wander over thinking that you might be able to pick up on some of that energy. Maybe they'll invite you to lunch, but it's something that you absolutely miss when you're not doing it. And listen, that's one of the problems I have when I moved from

cinematographer to writer, director and producer is that when I was a cinematographer I would be doing sometimes two features sometimes even three a year I'd be working all the time and I'd be on those film sets with my friends with my film family

When you're a director, when you're a writer in particular, you're locked in a room with a computer or with a fountain pen and no friends at all, just writing and writing and writing. And it's not as much fun. I'm down with Dorothy Parker, who said, I love having written. I hate writing.

Well, that's kind of my view. I'm very proud of my last script in particular, Dominion, the one with John Malkovich, and I'm very proud of Decoding Annie Parker and the next one coming up. But still, the process of creating those stories, those scripts, very, very hard and very lonely.

It is a very lonely process. And, you know, I wanted to ask Steve, you know, when you've worked all these years as an accomplished cinematographer and you and you go back to your first love, which was writing, what's

As odd as this question sounds, was there any skills that translated? Because I think there was. And here's the one skill I think that really translated well was you will... Obviously, lensing all these wonderful films like Monster, you know...

You have that image in your mind. You have that sort of mind's eye where you're saying, okay, I can imagine we're opening up on this mountain range or I imagine we're opening up on this sort of dark night and we can barely see. I imagine that helps a lot with your exposition when you're writing scripts because when you're writing these action lines, I imagine they're very, very...

uh, well told because obviously, you know exactly what it's going to look like. Cause Hey, you're a cinematographer, you know, and you can bring all those years of imagery and seeing all these different things to your script. Am I right? Or am I, uh, or am I completely off base? No, you're, you're, you're, you're spot on and, and, and go to the very essence of my philosophy and understanding of film. What I discovered, uh,

both from first my reading when I was a student of philosophy and then later as a writer and then as a cinematographer.

is that everything to do with film is a language. And we have to understand what a language is. A language is inevitably made up of two parts. That which we intend to mean and that which we present to create that meaning. Or what I think the philosophers called the signifier, that which the audience sees, and the signified, that which we mean, the idea that we're trying to present.

As a cinematographer, you realize that when you compose a shot in a particular way, you can create a certain feeling in an audience. You can even suggest an idea when you push a camera forward on a dolly, for example, into a face. You're saying to an audience, hey, what this character is about to say or do is important. That's not in a script, but the camera movement is the signifier of

The idea of importance is the signified. And then I began analyzing everything I did as a cinematographer as a language. If I light with a backlight, that's the signifier, it's backlight. Signified, mystery or uncertainty. An asymmetrical composition, that is the signifier. The signified, possibly a character who's alienated or a film like Wait Until Dark, a character who's at risk.

To edit a shot where you do an extreme close-up and go to a very wide shot, like David Lean might have done, you're saying, oh, here's a person in a small landscape. That's the signifier. The signifier is the insignificance of the human condition, perhaps, or the weakness of that individual at that moment.

So when I realize all those things, I realize that everything I put in a written script is, again, a matter of what I signify and what it means, how it is indicated, and ultimately what I'm trying to convey to an audience. But I also realize that not everything can be done with the spoken word, that sometimes the most powerful, although the most enigmatic elements, are not written but implied with the photographic image.

So as I write, I'm always thinking, is it better for the character to say this or is it better to have the character say very little and imply something simply with a composition or a camera movement or perhaps with the music or with the rhythm of the editing. If I begin to look at film, as I suggest everybody does, as a series of integrated languages, each with their own set of signifiers and each signifying different things,

then I don't feel an obligation to put everything into a dialogue and the dialogue can become more economical and more real and the medium as a whole integrating all these different processes becomes more effective. Does that make sense? Oh, it makes perfect sense. You know, as you were describing, you know, your process, I was reminded of the will be blood and the will be blood the first 20 minutes, you know, there's no, there's no dialogue whatsoever. Um,

It's a lot of imagery. It's a lot of, you know, we see Daniel Plainview as he's coming down into that pit looking for gold. He doesn't find gold, however. He finds oil. And that becomes that oil baron, oil tycoon, sociopathic businessman. But that first 20 minutes, there's absolutely no dialogue. And when I first saw that movie...

I was like, wow, this is a really bold choice. Because, I mean, I imagine the pitch meeting for that. If you say, if you're at a pitch meeting, the first 20 minutes, there's no dialogue whatsoever. You know, it's just kind of, you know... But, you know, once you start getting into the movie, I mean, I thought it was absolutely phenomenal. And, I mean, the only reason it lost Best Picture was because it was up against No Country for Old Men. And, you know, which is another movie...

very heavy in imagery. Have you seen either of those movies, Stephen? I've seen them both and loved them both. And I would throw into that mix Terry Malick's films, Days of Heaven, which was the film I think that inspired me more than any other to be a cinematographer. You know, Malick's character's relationship to nature and nature being indifferent and, again, the visceral effect that nature's power, sublime majesty and indifference to us as living, breathing souls is

is important. So in a Terry Malick film, all the time he's cutting away to shots of nature. Again, as you say, if a pitch meeting or a description to some investor, you're saying, well, a lot of these shots won't have any obvious meaning or won't advance the story to the next plot point.

but it'll be laden with meaning. It will make us understand how indifferent nature and a god or an absent god is to us and how that should make us potentially feel. And he does that almost exclusively in Days of Heaven with images, not with dialogue.

He is combining languages. My feeling is that as a writer and as a director, you don't write your film in spoken language exclusively. You write your film in five different languages like a very skilled linguist and you combine those together to create meanings and choosing which language to use based on which is most effective and which goes to your audience's sensibilities.

That's very true because my first love is writing as well. And when I'm writing a screenplay, there's so many different pairs of eyes to sort of look at it through. There's an editor's eyes. There's the director's eyes. Sometimes you're thinking even in terms of being a producer, you know what I mean? And you're thinking of all these different ways. But when you're adding all these layers into your actual writing, you're really...

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Because you're trying to sort of hook the reader, as they say, you know, hook the reader in the first couple of pages, but you have to hook them throughout the whole story. You're trying to always, you know, keep that tension in there. You're trying to figure, you know, you're sort of, you know, wearing a lot of different hats. You're doing a lot of different things at the micro and the macro levels.

You're right. And it's very, very hard, particularly when you start talking about producing, because, you know, the person or persons who may determine whether your film gets made may have never made a film.

and may have no understanding of cinematic language, of what composition does camera movement, may not have seen a Terry Malick film, may not have seen Paul Thomas Anderson film, may not have seen a Coen Brothers film. They may have read McKee's book on story and take that template and apply it to your script.

And if your script does not use that template, they may feel that your script is a failed one. And this is difficult for all writers and all artists to determine. Do you do what the orthodoxy in our film community suggests, ergo giving you a better chance of getting your film made? Or do you protect your singular vision

be it part of that orthodoxy or not, in the belief that you know better how best to express the ideas you hope to express. It's interesting because unlike other art forms, ours is so very expensive.

that there is a inhibiting element, and that's the one of finance. People backing a film want to know their investment is safe and therefore are looking for absolute metrics to determine what will make your film a good investment for them. They're not interested in your ideas about

how to engage an audience viscerally with a composition. They want to know that if the rules of which they may be aware are applied, does that mean your film will succeed? And if it will, will they make more money? And that's a very difficult way to approach filmmaking. Yeah, absolutely. A friend of mine, he and I were just discussing this as well because he was a part of a film

The film was all ready. Everything was casted. They were about to shoot. And then suddenly it just all went away. And he said, Dave, it's happened too many times in my career to count.

And he says it just happens sometimes where the money goes away and then there's been other times where he's been pitching a project for years and years and years and finally you get a financier and you're able to finally find that money. I had Kazian Ovis on this podcast and he was discussing how he found the money for Dallas Buyers Club. And it was just one of those things where he had a connection from years ago who was willing to help him out out of a bind.

And it was one of those cases where your network really is your net worth. No question. I mean, you've got to build relationships and contacts. And then you've got to convince people to give you their money to make your film. And again, there's a natural conservative factor in all that and that they don't want you to take a lot of risks because –

They don't know that that will generate money for them necessarily I mean we all want the investor says just go ahead and make what you believe But those are rare most investors want to get involved and say okay. We're giving you this money What's our best way of guaranteeing this? Are you definitely gonna have three acts and are your plot points gonna come on the right pages and all the rest of it and again that may or may not be the best way to write a script, but that's what they want because that's what they've been told is the way to success and

And that, as I say, could be very inhibiting for a writer, for creative artists. I'm sure that Terry Malick doesn't work to that template. You know, I'm sure Charlie Kaufman doesn't work to that template. I'm pretty sure the Coen brothers don't. And they're some of the most successful, important filmmakers we have working. So these are some of the tough decisions that filmmakers have to make, particularly when you go to finance your film, because you want that money, but you also want to make a great movie.

Yeah, absolutely. Writing is my first love as well. And when we're writing these scripts, sometimes there's a tendency to write with that producer's hat because you're wondering, oh, will this be able to be, will this be too much money? Will I be able to even obtain this? And that's sort of,

as I find writing the first draft, we have to kind of sort of brush that aside and just sort of focus on just telling the best single story possible that we can tell. And then later on when you're maybe doing rewrites or you're in different meetings and you can sort of take things out and maybe add things in,

And then sort of, you know, the story sort of evolves and it kind of ties in with what we were talking about before, where, you know, we set off in the beginning with these expectations that's going to go into a straight line. And then suddenly it's zigzagging all over the map. And we're, you know, we're, you know, finding these obstacles and we're trying to turn these obstacles into either they can either set us back or we can move forward with them.

You make a great point and I always try to write my first draft in seven days or less and there's a reason for that. I call it a slop draft not a first draft because what I want to do is write so quickly that I don't have time to think. So first there's the idea of just an intuitive understanding of character but also I find that I write to know what I think and

That if I try to outline before I begin writing, the ideas are only are only notional. I really don't know my characters. I don't know my story that well. I think I do. And I can try to plot it out and I can draw all sorts of diagrams and put all sorts of index cards up. But it's not really fully realized.

Then if I take a different approach and simply start writing and say I'm going to write 120 pages in seven days, what I discover is that by the time I get to that last page, I have developed an understanding of character. I have developed an understanding of what the narrative should be and I might even understand some of the subtext. Then I go back and I begin the real process of writing, which is rewriting.

But I couldn't have done that if I tried to make that first draft perfect. And you talked about wearing your producer's hat. I think it's essential, and I think you've made a very good point, that when you're writing, you're thinking of nothing except those characters.

I don't care how long a dialogue scene goes on for or how outrageous what the characters say are or if they begin in a Proustian fashion talking about things that have nothing to do with the story at all. Because in fact, that's what people do in real life is talk about things that don't necessarily have to do with the advancement of their individual plot.

And then when you write that version, that slop version and look at it, to me, it is the door to all things. You come to an understanding of everything that's important about your film, and then you can put those things in when you go back to rewrite. It's a crazy way of writing, but it works very well for me.

Well, you know, I actually think that's a very good way of writing because even when I have, you know, started writing stuff in the past and even now sometimes when I sit down to start writing, one of two things happens. Number one is...

you get distracted very easily. I think this happens to everybody where your phone chimes or somebody at your door, your friend calls you and says, "Hey Steve, can you help me move? "Can you take me to the airport?" And the second thing is you have paralysis through analysis, where you're sitting at your desk or wherever you're writing and suddenly you're just kind of like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if..." And you start brainstorming and you're just basically, you're just spinning your wheel, so to speak.

No, exactly right. And I think this is, to me, it was a breakthrough. You know, I was so concerned with failing that I was preventing myself from succeeding. So when I was convinced, ultimately, that I should write badly, I sat down and wrote the worst script I possibly could. And when it was finished, it was truly terrible. But it pointed the way forward.

to a much better script, a script that was so good. This is what I did with dominion that when I sent it to John Malkovich, uh, he signed up, uh, immediately and it was a low budget film, but John loved the writing of that script because the dialogue seems so natural and so imaginative to him. If I had written dominion, uh,

to an outline. My characters would have been speaking to deliver the next plot point, to get to the next subject, to keep the story moving along as it had been outlined. But the way I wrote Dominion was I simply had my characters talk about things that were important to them and then went back on the next draft and then imposed a form on that. And it was much more natural. The writing was much better. And it's a system that simply works.

I say to all writers, and I have a lot of assistants that work with me, don't try to be perfect on the first draft or don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Simply write as quickly as you possibly can and then discover what you always meant to say and never realized it.

You know, I like that approach, Steve, where, you know, you gave yourself permission to fail and you basically said, I'm going to write the worst possible thing. You know, I was talking to another friend, a colleague of mine, Jason Brubaker. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

And he had a theory about guys who always talk about making a film. And you've met guys like this too, Steve, where they're always saying things like, oh, I have this great idea for a film, me and my buddies, blah, blah, blah. But they never actually make it. And his theory, Jason's theory, was that the reason they don't make it is because if it does...

Do you know what I mean, Steve?

I know exactly what you mean and I take this the majority of people not just in film but in life most people would rather talk about something than do it most people rather criticize others than do it those who criticize and don't do are always safe because they can't possibly fail and can always make clear how superior they are because they can criticize that which you did

Look, when I made Dominion, a lot of people said, oh, well, Stephen, you had trouble finishing it. There were some money issues, et cetera, all of which were true and those were resolved. But the thing is, I did it. Had I simply not done it and watched others, I don't know if I would have the sense of

Self that I have I'm proud of what I've done. I've done it because I've taken risks But you go to a very important point if you want to make films You have to make films and if you're going to do that, it means you're going to take risks. It means people are going to criticize And ridicule you and you may even fail but I'd much rather do and fail then observe and criticize others

Yeah, and that is beautiful, Steve, because honestly, that is so true. You know, and I think we all have somebody in our lives or we've known somebody like that in our lives where they don't want to actually do anything. They may talk a big game or they constantly criticize what other people are doing and kind of like downplay it in that sort of condescending sort of very –

almost like jaded type of attitude where they're like, "Oh yeah, you're gonna make a movie this weekend? "That's cool." You know what I mean? And people like that, they never do anything. They're always just sort of criticizing others from the comfort of their couch. You know what I mean? - I completely know what you mean. And look, I pay tribute to anyone who takes a risk in their life of any kind. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't sometimes be safe.

But you only, I think, have one life. You only have a few opportunities. And when they're presented to you, seize them. I know when we started decoding Annie Parker, we had spent a long time raising the money. And I got a little bit of money from India, some from Canada. I was very lucky and got the tax credit in California. And we were very, very close, within like $100,000 of what we needed.

And the producers all got on the phone with each other and we had to decide what to do. And at that point, Helen Hunt read the script and loved it and had signed up for a very reasonable sum of money. We had Samantha Morton. Helen, of course, won an Oscar. Samantha had been nominated for two. I had met Aaron Paul and we had become fast friends. And Aaron Paul, who was at the height of his fame with Breaking Bad, was

had agreed to do it. Corey Stahl and I had gotten close as he had read the script and we talked about the evolution of the characters, Rashida Jones, Bradley Whitford, just this incredible cast we'd put together. And we were on the phone considering whether we should pull the plug because we didn't have quite enough money. And I ultimately decided that we would go ahead

And I realized it was a huge risk and we nearly had to shut down. I think we did shut down for a day at the end of a week and then we went and raised more money and we managed to finish the film. Went on to win the Sloan Award at the Hamptons, won Best Actress for Samantha Morton at Seattle, won the Milan Film Festival, two or three awards there, raised a couple of million dollars for charities, etc. We pulled it off. But there was a moment in that process where we had to decide whether to play it safe or

or to take a considerable risk. And I think those moments come often in film because I think it was Hitchcock that once said that drama is life with the boring bits taken out. I would suggest that filmmaking is life with the calm bits taken out. So it's a constant state of risk and near hysteria and certain failure. And from that, you extract hopefully a film and a bit of a life.

And as we talk about your projects, I wanted to ask, when you started to actually go from that cinematographer's sort of chair, so to speak, to being a director, what were some of the things that you've picked up? Because you've had a lot of really cool directors, like Patty being the first example I can think of. Yeah.

what were some of the things that you saw that these directors were doing when they were talking to actors or maybe even talking to you as a cinematographer, you know, when, and talking about, you know, a shot list and here, and Hey Steven, here's my storyboard. You know, what are some of the, the, the great things that they have done over the years that you sort of took into your projects? Well, it wasn't just Pat. It was a John Favreau. I worked with a couple of times, John and I are friends. Noah Bombeck, of course, I did three,

films with Noah Baumbach, which was fantastic. So I had an opportunity to work with lots of, Taylor Hackford of course, I mean lots of other great directors. And I took something of value from each of them. Certainly always grateful to my training at the BBC and always grateful to all my stage actors and what I learned there.

But I learned, as I observed, about different management systems, different leadership methodologies and different ways of working with actors and with crews. Noah and I, before we did both Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy and Highball, spent a lot of time prepping. We were in Noah's place in Greenwich Village and we would practice.

go through the entire script, scene by scene, shot by shot, determining not only what we plan to shoot, but why we're shooting it, what the camera would mean, going back to what I was saying before about signifier and signified. I was going to use a wide shot or a close shot. Noah would show me clips from movies that he liked and said,

This is very important to me. Could we infuse this sequence with the same feeling from this film? I remember on Mr. Jealousy, he'd been much influenced by the French Nouveau Vogue. So we were using those kind of circular fade outs. And even the music that he chose is very much in that style, but also compositionally, the way the camera moved and the way I lit it.

all had to be in the style of the new Volvog. So that was exciting. That's what's so great about a collaborator like Noah is that he had a very clearly determined vision of not only what his characters were, but stylistically what he wanted to do. And that would be a great starting place for me to then run with some of my own ideas. I'd bring him books from painters or...

from designers or from other filmmakers, photographers of that period. So what about this? What if we did this like this and so on? And we would integrate some of my ideas into his vision.

Patty, I think I told you about her focus very much on actors, how Patty, at the end of every performance, rather than speaking to any of the crew, would drop the headphones and make a beeline directly for the actor. It doesn't matter what anyone else had to say to her. Her first point of contact after a take was those actors to make

tell them that they had been observed, that they're being protected, that someone is listening, because that's what actors want most of all, is to know the actor, be an experienced director or an inexperienced director, those actors want to know that there's someone watching, protecting them, creating a rarefied, safe environment where someone's making sure that their performance is okay and will tell them honestly if it isn't. And

Patty really did that to a great degree. Jon Favreau, it was the atmosphere on set. It's kind of like he felt strongly that what happens on set somehow appears on screen. So his sets were fun and light, full of energy, full of comedy, and a very, very gentle hand that everyone felt protected and facilitated. And again, that

lent itself to what appeared on screen. Taylor Hackford, very, very well prepared and would cover things from every possible angle, knowing that whatever he planned, he knew that he might alter it in the cutting room and wanted to make sure that he had plenty of material to cut that with. So for me, 30 years of observing some of the best directors in the world was a wonderful education for me and

It informs everything I do now. But what was even better educationally was watching some truly terrible directors get it wrong. And I got to watch that as well. And I'm not going to mention their names, but it helped me to know what not to do. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

So to accumulate all that knowledge and to be able to walk onto the first feature that I directed, knowing what these great directors had done and what the bad directors had done and what I should or shouldn't do was a huge help to me. It still is.

And you mentioned this too, Stephen, you have 30 years of experience. You know, you have started out as a writer. You became this accomplished cinematographer. You've won this just plethora of awards. You got to see all these great sort of, you know, all these great directors and all the things that they did right and sort of put this all together for your own projects. But I know now you're also doing some seminars, which, you know, you're...

going to impart all this knowledge, which I think is phenomenal. Could you just talk a little bit about some of the seminars you have coming up? Absolutely. For years, really starting back to right about the time I was at the BBC, I began teaching. If somebody was a writer and wanted to know something about cinematography, because I had done both those things, I was uniquely able to explain in plain language for

for a writer or director what a cinematographer does. And then later, when I began directing, I could go into great detail to people about what each below the line crew member did. And when I was producing, I could explain to the investors why we needed money for different things, what the post-production crew would be doing, what the

on set crew would be doing, why we needed as many makeup people as we needed and so on. So I was always teaching, sometimes formally. I taught at the International Film School in London. I had a film school of my own in the UK and London. I set a film school up in New Brunswick in Canada. I

I've taught at universities, including USC here and others all around the country. And I wrote a book about film production that covers all these things. And then finally, I just thought, you know, I should formalize this and make it available to audiences.

lot more people than I've made it available to in the past. So we're taking right now six of my most popular lectures, one on making the independent film, how you actually put together an independent film, how you find the money, how you use that money to shoot the film, how you take it through posts and get into sales and distribution. Another one about

for stills photographers because so many stills photographers have come to me and saying, hey, I want to be a cinematographer. I've bought this camera. I've done stills work, but how is cinematography different from photography and particularly with lighting?

So I've done that. So many directors and producers want to know about cinematography, how it works. So I I've running a course on cinematography for non cinematographers and so many actors I've worked with both on stage and on screen feel uncomfortable acting.

when they first step onto a film set and I wanted to run a seminar so that actors would know what it's like to come onto a film set and what the assistant directors and

do, what the first assistant directors do, what the director wants, what the cinematographer wants. So all those things very useful for them. And then going back to something you and I have talked about a lot in this discussion is I wanted very much to run a course for writers.

So they would understand the technical aspects of filmmaking and they could employ that in their writing to make them better screenwriters. So, yeah, we set that up. We've got a website called somebody studios dot com. You can see all the seminars there. People can sign up. I think that they from the time they sign up, they've got a month to watch one.

the individual seminar they've selected or they can sign up for multiple ones. And the course has been very successful in the past. Not only do I teach the course, but then afterwards I have a Q&A and we keep the lines open and we make sure people have access to me in the future for advice.

I want to help others as I've been helped over all these many years. And I'm really very much looking forward to it. July the 15th, we go live with everything. So we're getting very close to that date. So I hope people go to the website, pick something out for themselves and see what they might be able to learn. And I will also link to your seminars in the show notes, as well as any other site you have, Stephen. And it's just great too because...

it's something that I've learned over the years. Whenever I'm going to take a seminar or a webinar or, or read a book, uh, or like a filmmaking book. One thing I always, my, my, my one sort of barrier to entry to reading it or buying it is the person has had to have some kind of experience. I think you've also seen it, Steven, where you, you sort of,

See a book maybe in a Barnes & Nobles or an Amazon, and you see that the person that wrote it has never written a screenplay or never actually made a film. And you say to yourself, well, what would they possibly know about something that they've never done? It's a lot like me teaching you how to build a car and then saying, well, I'm not a mechanic, nor have I ever –

design one. I see you, you've actually, you've been there, you know, you've done that. You've done it many, many times over 30 years. And, you know, and again, that's why I was blown away by having you on this podcast because, you know, you've, you've done, I mean, I'm going to be honest with you, Steven half-baked, uh,

I remember watching that movie on repeat over and over again growing up because it was just absolutely hilarious. I mean, you've been able to sort of go in and out of comedy with Half-Baked and Scary Movie 2 into Monster, which is more of a

not only is it drama, but it's also a personal introspective of these two women who are, you know, literal and figurative monsters. And then, you know, now you're doing your own projects. So it's always good to learn from somebody who actually has gone out there and done it. Yeah, well, thank you. And I have done a lot of

things. A producer, now a director, a writer, a cinematographer. It's not always been easy, but it's interesting when you get to farther down the road, you realize how each of these things informs the other. I'm a better producer because I was a cinematographer. I'm a better director because I'm a writer and a cinematographer. It's not just the films that are being made. I guess in the last 18 months, I've been commissioned to write five other films

Major feature films. It's been a very, very busy period for us. We have a TV series that's in advanced stage development. And the reason I am now writing so quickly and so efficiently is that I'm borrowing from my other experiences as a producer, as a cinematographer, as a director. And I realize what I need to write and what I don't. I understand what will work best and what works most efficiently. And it's a help. So look...

If I can help others understand all these things based on my experience, I'm more than happy to impart it to them. And, you know, Steve, I know we're just about out of time. I want to, again, say thank you so much for coming on and imparting your wisdom here for the past hour. And just in closing, where can people find you at online? Do you have any other social media links? And also, just to give that seminar link again?

Well, it's the key one to go to, and this links to pretty much everything to do with me, is somebodystudios.com. You can also find me, Stephen Bernstein, writer-director online, and there's usually links to our courses or what's going on in my life there. Steve Bernstein, director-writer on Instagram as well. And of course, I say somebodystudios.com is pretty much available on all platforms.

social media platform. So we really hope that people might join us. Thanks. And everyone, I will link to that in our show notes on the Dave Bulls podcast. It's at DaveBulls.com. Twitter, you can find me at Dave underscore Bullis. Stephen Bernstein, I want to say thank you so much for coming on, sir. My very great pleasure. It was a great talk. Thank you so much.

I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com forward slash 788. And if you haven't already, please head over to filmmakingpodcast.com, subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at IndieFilmHustle.com. That's I-N-D-I-E-F-I-L-M-H-U-S-T-L-E.com.