Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome back Neil Patel. In this interview, he reflects back on the impact that Covid has had on the industry, the increasing level of expectations from episodic productions, dressing and layering spaces, and his love of storytelling. Between all these and more, Neil dives deep into his work on the recently released “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”, the inspirations and connections to seminal horror films of the ’70s, building out the sets and finding a fresh take on the high school world.

Kirill: We spoke early last year, and with everything that’s being going on it feels like much longer, to be honest. How have these last 18 months treated you?

Neil: I’ve been fortunate enough to have been working all this time. In January 2021 when we last spoke none of us were vaccinated yet so the situation at work was precarious. In March I got vaccinated while I was working on Season 3 of “Dickinson”.

Things definitely changed once vaccines were made available. Many shows were delayed during 2020, lots of infections and chaos. We managed to produce the season and wrapped in June 2021, and I went straight to “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”. We had a brief moment of not wearing masks in the office last summer, and it felt like it was starting to get back to normal. Then the Delta variant happened, and the effects of the pandemic were always present throughout the shoot of the show. We had constant delays due to positive tests and added 5 weeks to our schedule.

I will say that things did get a little looser around capacities in sets. The show is about high school students, and we had big scenes with sometimes hundreds of people in the same space, and that would never be allowed 9 months earlier. We were doing a bar scene in Season 3 of “Dickinson”, and we were only allowed to have 20 people on the set, while it should have looked like it had 80. That one was tricky to shoot. So that aspect definitely changed towards the summer of 2021. I think that the looser rules led to some of the infections but fortunately no one got seriously ill and we were able to make the show the way we wanted to.

From there I went to my current project in South Africa, a Showtime series about Shaka Zulu. It’s pretty different from “Pretty Little Liars”, as it’s set in 18th century pre-colonial Africa. We’re still testing once a week. We’re not wearing masks. There are very few infections here, far fewer than in the United States. We still use hand sanitizer and occasionally wear a mask, but it’s definitely changed.

Concept rendering for the rave warehouse on “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”, courtesy of Neil Patel.

Kirill: Does it feel like it’s almost back to normal in terms of how the set operates, the pace and the intensity of it, the expectations from the production side of things?

Neil: Certainly. It’s busy here, but it’s not a place that I’m familiar with so I don’t know how it compares to pre covid times, but I know that in New York it’s very busy right now. It’s very hard to crew up productions because everybody’s working. It’s back to normal in terms of capacity but it doesn’t feel back to normal because nothing really feels “back to normal.” The world has changed.

One thing that I do enjoy on my current production is scouting in a foreign country. It’s nice to be back in a scouting van. The unstructured collaboration time is very important and fruitful time in my view. Being in a van with the director, the cinematographer and the producer allows you to have those spontaneous conversations that are sometimes more important than ones that happen in meetings. That was something that was very much missing during the height of Covid lockdowns. We were separated, and we didn’t have that unstructured time together. Creatively, it’s feeling to me more back to normal, because we had our hands tied for a long time. That’s a positive thing.

Kirill: Did you get any time to look around and see what productions other people have been working on?

Neil: I went straight from production to production, so I haven’t really seen other productions. We wrapped “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”, and then I worked remotely on King Shaka for a few weeks before hopping on a plane to come down here to scout.

Concept rendering for the “Swan Lake” practice on “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”, courtesy of Neil Patel.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Jonathan Benefiel, an actor turned executive producer with a passion for empathy-focused projects. In this interview he talks about the business of visual storytelling, what a producer is, building a reputation in the business, the challenges he sees for the movie exhibition business, and how the industry is evolving.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Jonathan: I’m 59 years old and am originally from Brooklyn, NY. My family moved to Staten Island in 1970 and I still live there to this day. I started in this industry at the age of 23, which was a bit late. I wasn’t a happy camper back then. I felt that I needed to find my path and my passion, to feel like I had a purpose other than simply existing just to survive and pay bills. I felt like I needed to find my purpose.

So I had a conversation with my mom at the time and she suggested that I take an acting class. Coming from her, that was very shocking [laughs]. She always talked to me about going to college, having a career and making a living that way, so the last thing I expected her to suggest was for me to take an acting class. But on her advice, I did it. I took a cold reading class with a woman named Sally Johnson in Manhattan, and that’s how it all started for me. Once I started taking classes, I fell in love with it, and I never looked back.

Moving forward in my career, I found that I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I had the agent, I had the headshots, all of the tools that they tell you you need in order to succeed as an actor, but still I was finding that things were not moving in the direction that I wanted it to go. So I moved to Los Angeles in 2006 at the ripe old age of 43 [laughs], but it turned out I was really just doing the same thing I was doing in New York. Nothing had really changed, though I did meet my future wife there, so that was something.

After a while, I started to wonder if there was a different approach that I could use to succeed in the business. So I decided that instead of counting on my agent to get me parts, I took things into my own hands. I asked myself what I could do to further my career where I wouldn’t have to depend on anybody else. A buddy of mine that I’ve known since 1989, Eric Seltzer, had always wanted to play Lennie in “Of Mice And Men”, and he always pictured me playing George opposite him. So I decided to do a short film that I could self-produce, something like “Of Mice And Men” but bring it into the 21st century.

I had an idea to do a story about two brothers that are sort of mafia type guys, not murderers or anything like that, but they work for a boss as the muscle. So I started toying with that idea and we put together a short film called “Protecting Tony” which got 32 awards and another 5 nominations on the festival circuit. And from that exposure we got a sales agent to come on board, and that sales agent ended up getting us on DirecTV’s short channel, as well as Amazon Prime and several other Internet platforms. That was my first short film, and I got a pretty big bang for my buck. The success of that project inspired me to keep going down that path.

When you find something that works, you want to stick with it, and so that’s what I did. Then the documentary “John Leguizamo’s Road to Broadway” came my way through an Indiegogo campaign, and for a certain level of investment they were offering an executive producer credit. Once I realized what the project was about, which was the Latin community’s contribution to our country, and the fact that that important history and contribution was never taught in any schools, at least none that I went to, I instantly felt it was a project I needed to help promote and invest in. So I jumped right in, and that was my first foray into something that had gained more wide spread commercial success than anything I had done previously. It aired on PBS’s “Great Performances” and ended up winning an Imagen award. So that was another opportunity that moved my career forward.

While all this was going on, I was cultivating my Facebook contacts. One day a producer by the name of Cary Anderson friend requested me. I checked him out on IMDB and I saw that we were doing similar kinds of projects, so we connected and would chat on occasion. One day he approached me and asked if I’d be interested in being a co-executive producer on “The Trial of the Chicago 7”. Once I realized what the storyline was about — that Aaron Sorkin wrote it and was attached to direct — as well as the A-list cast along with Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks Pictures behind it, it was a no-brainer.

A lot of what was taking place in the ’60s during that tumultuous period was playing out in our current politics, and I felt that this was a very urgent story to tell since it seemed our democracy was on the precipice of failing. In fact, I still feel that way. So I thought this was an important story to tell. The only thing that was left to do was basically beg my wife [laughs] to spend a ridiculous amount of money to support the film, and, after much pleading, she finally agreed and the rest is history.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Amy Bench who  recently finished working on three independent films Mama Bears, Shouting Down Midnight, and Lover, Beloved, all of which were featured in the 2022 SXSW Festival. In this interview she talks about the art and craft of cinematography, the transition of the industry from film to digital, the ways people connect to stories, and working on documentaries.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Amy: I always loved images as a child. I loved to make art and take photos when I was young, and after I graduated from school with my engineering degree, I got a job at the film company Eastman Kodak. I worked there for a few years and got a taste of what it was like to work on the technical side. After a while, I decided that I was more drawn to the creative side, so I left that job, but while I was there I learned a lot about imaging science, the technical side of making images on film and digital, and how images are captured on sensors. At that time Kodak was heavily interested in quickly transitioning into the digital space, which was something that they were reluctant to do for a long time – because film is such a money maker as an expendable medium.

So I ended up going to film school at the University of Texas in Austin for filmmaking, and even at that time, I didn’t realize I wanted to be a cinematographer. I always wanted to be behind the camera, and while I was at Kodak, I knew that this is the part that I liked. I like helping to shape the imagery as a tool for storytelling. While I was there, I worked on as many projects as I could, including directing my own films.

Then I moved to New York and worked for Maysles Cinema, a documentary production company started by Albert Maysles and his brother David. I worked for them for a few years, and that was the start of my career. It was a long journey, but once I started working in cinematography, that’s where I stayed.

Kirill: Is there such a thing for you still as the magic of moviegoing experience, or do struggle a bit to separate your enjoyment as a viewer from your knowledge of how it’s done?

Amy: There is a bit of magic, but it’s probably more difficult than your average viewer to get pulled into the story. I am always looking at the lighting and the cinematography to try to see what they might have done to do particular shots. I hate to say it, but it definitely is a different experience now that I work in the industry.

Kirill: Do you think that the debate on film vs digital has been settled? Is there still space to have this debate, or has it been settled by the financial side of it, and by forces outside of the artistic preferences?

Amy: Certainly the financial side was the biggest driver. Once you have your hands on the digital equipment, it’s quite cheap to produce and you’re freer to shoot more than you are with film. With film, you have physical limitations in terms of needing to order enough film stock and having the budget up front, whereas digital is so much more accessible.

I don’t think it’ll ever be settled. It’s the same with acrylic vs oil painting. Some people are still going to choose to use oil paints even though they’re much more expensive and take a lot more time. The medium is dependent on the story as well as the budget. For instance, I take still photos outside of my work as a cinematographer and I shoot on film, and maybe that’s where the magic comes in. I do love the magic of image-making, and there’s something about film that feels more magical to me.

The still camera that I’m using doesn’t have a digital back or anything, and so it’s the magic of getting your film processed and seeing what comes back. You might have a pretty good idea if you’re using a light meter, and you have experience with looking at exposure, but there’s still something about film that is a surprise. It makes the process fun and enjoyable.

I don’t get to do it so much anymore in movie-making. I did shoot film in graduate school because we had access to 35mm and 16mm cameras, and honestly, some of those are still some of my favorite things, especially the 35mm that I shot. There’s just something so intangibly gorgeous about it. Digital has come a long way in the last 10-15 years, and you can do a lot in color grading. Working with film required choosing a film stock that has a certain characteristic, and that gave you a lot of the look right away. With digital, you’re typically shooting flat and you don’t have to commit right away with the approach.

From a financial standpoint, shooting on film may not always make sense, but from an artistic standpoint, it could be the best solution.

Cinematography of “Shouting Down Midnight” by Amy Bench.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Tamara Deverell. In this interview she talks about the art and craft of production design, the transition of the industry from film to digital, production shifts as more stories are told on streaming platforms, doing research in the digital age, and the impact of the ongoing pandemic on her industry. Around these topics and more, Tamara dives deep into her work on the recently released “Nightmare Alley”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Tamara: I was an art student, studying just about everything I could manage to put my hands on in art school: printmaking to painting to sculpture to photography to filmmaking to art history. I had incredibly wide-spread interests and talents, I was lost looking for some kind of career wherein I could explore and use all my creativity. My father, a writer, thought that somebody with my all-encompassing skills and interests could do well in the film industry – and he was right.

I started working in film in the costume department on a small Canadian production, and through that experience I was exposed to the art department that I never really thought about. Some crew member saw that I was artistically inclined and talented, and I was introduced to the production designer François Séguin, a Canadian designer. I got my start working with François in Montreal and then, after a move to Toronto, with another Canadian designer, Carol Spier (of David Cronenberg fame). I worked my way up from set and graphic designer to Art Director as part of Carol’s team working on the David Cronenberg films: “eXistenZ” and “Crash”, as well as Guillermo del Toro’s “Mimic”. That was my beginning.

Kirill: If I can bring you back to late ’80s or early ’90s when you were starting in the industry, and then jump all the way to the present day, are there any big differences between how feature films were made back then and now?

Tamara: The sentiments of the storytelling process are the same, but the process and the logistics of creating films now are very different from when I’ve started. I feel that my generation has witnessed a tremendous transformation of the way everything is done, and movies in particular.

I’ve seen the rise of the digital age in my work in the art department. As an example: back then we were doing Letraset, cut and pasting and photo processing to create a prop newspaper. Everything was hand drafted, and I’m still one of the few people in my industry that does still can do hand drafting. However, I don’t do a lot of drafting these days, as I have a team of excellent set designers who I work with to create final models and plans. When I first started, I was hand drafting and hand illustrating from start to finish. I still do the hand drafting, but these days I tend to do it on a digital platform, like drawing on an iPad on an emulated “gridded” paper.

It’s been an exciting time to have a career in film as our worlds have expanded so much. There’s AR (Augmented Reality) walls and all sorts of digital technology. When you’re designing a film, you have to know just as much about VFX as your VFX team partners and leaders do. It’s a new world of digital information and technology.

Still though, we’re still trying to tell stories that are epic, or human, or fantastical, and those parameters of good storytelling will always remain the same.

Production design sketches and notes for “Nightmare Alley”, courtesy of Tamara Deverell.

Kirill: Speaking of the new worlds, you’ve done a few episodic productions in the last several years. Did it catch you by surprise how quickly the industry has expanded into the premium streaming / episodic space, perhaps at the expense of mid-budget feature films?

Tamara: I’m not really surprised about that. The platforms are changing radically. I hope people will always want to see movies in theatres, but TV screens keep on getting bigger and better, and this pandemic certainly changed a lot of things. People want access to entertainment in their own homes, and now it’s become even more prevalent because people have been stuck at home.

It’s shifting, and the best thing for filmmakers is to shift with it, and not to fight it. Cinema and television have become so closely entwined, both can provide high quality visual experiences. When I work in television, I try to imbue it with the same level of detail as I would on a feature film where you see it in that large-scale format, because a lot of people are watching that largescale television. I worked on “Star Trek Discovery”, an episodic television production, and it was the same level of detail, and desire to create new worlds and present audience with fantastic sets as I would in a feature film. It’s not a huge difference for me anymore.

When I first started in the industry, there was this clear line between the two. You do TV, and you can get away with things. You do a movie, and you pay attention to every minute detail. Not anymore.

Kirill: Would you say that a movie like “Nightmare Alley” needs to be seen on a big screen?

Tamara: I would. It was such a particularly intense experience, such a heavily art directed movie, and the visuals are so important. That goes for all of Guillermo’s films, they have this intrinsic visual value that is worthy of a large screen. There is so much detail in aging, textures and tones, and I want people to be able to look at that on a big screen.

Kirill: And then on the other end of the screens spectrum, you have some people that watch these stories on their phones, perhaps not even in one go.

Tamara: If I see somebody watching “Nightmare Alley” on that tiny, badly calibrated airplane screen, I know that they didn’t really see it. I would be disappointed for them, as it’s such a fundamental difference. When I’m doing a project, I’m still paying the same amount of mind and attention to it, there is no difference between TV and big screen films in the level of strong visuals that I wish to create.

Production design sketches and notes for “Nightmare Alley”, courtesy of Tamara Deverell.

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