#292 - Chris Chalk

0:00 What a fun conversation that was with Chris Chalk. I learned a ton about the basically what it's like to be a lighting programmer on movies and and television and wildlife. This guy's had he's made some really good decisions, had some really good luck and there are some really good lessons along the way for sure as well. So I think anybody who has any interest in getting into television lighting or movie lighting, this would be a great podcast for you. So please enjoy episode #292. Episode 292 is also brought to you by Elation, a privately held corporation established in 1992 and headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.

0:49 All products are developed and engineered in the USA with sales and support office locations in the US, Mexico and Europe, plus distribution via a worldwide dealer network. Please join me in watching their latest Pulse Series video. Inspire your audience's imagination with Elation's Pulse Strobe series. Designed to bolster creativity and deliver breathtaking kinetic intensity, the Pulse Series empowers designers to create dynamic lighting experiences that captivate any audience. Pulse Series synthesizes mesmerizing lighting experiences with power and precision, allowing designers to create rhythmic, heart pounding lighting effects with effortless control elations.

1:40 Pulse Series. Hello and thanks for joining me on Gears of Gear episode #292. Today's podcast is brought to you by Main Light, your go to dry hire rental provider bringing you the latest in lighting and stage equipment. From moving lights and control consoles to Truss LE DS and rugged IP65 rated fixtures built for outdoor venues, they have everything you need to make your production shine.

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3:48 Episode 292 here we are. And so if you haven't already, please check out the first episode of our new Future Tech podcast. This one is really interesting and exciting. You may not have noticed while you were watching this episode, the first future tech episode, but it is fully AI generated. It's the first fully AI generated podcast that I'm aware of in our industry and it is entirely focused on new products and news, press releases, product releases, etcetera. So instead of sitting and reading a paper magazine or you know, scrolling on your phone and reading these press releases or product announcements, you can now actually listen to them. You can listen to them in your car. There's not really much to watch. You'll see a logo.

4:42 That's about it. So listening is probably the preferred method on this one, but it is, it's an awesome format. I'm really proud of it. We're really excited to get this growing quickly and I think it's going to become the preferred method of learning about new products going forward. So please listen, support it, share it, subscribe to it, etcetera. And, and I hope you like it. I hope you, you find it as fun as, as we do. And I'm still shocked about episode 286. You know, I, I listened back to some parts of it the other day. I'm a little bit embarrassed, but you know, I shouldn't be because I do the same thing to people every week on the podcast.

5:29 You know, I, I look for facts from their past and stuff. So, but in this one, they just got me. I wasn't prepared for it. Like I didn't have notes or thoughts or anything. It was just like, boom, you know, tell us about your life. And so they definitely got me. And now Sarah thinks she's being smart by posting all these old pictures of me on socials. And don't worry, Sarah, I have a very long memory, and I love to get back at people. So work is underway to put Sarah into the spotlight at some point in the future. We'll see when that happens. It'll be when you least expect it, I promise. And so, yeah, back to this, this AI podcast, one of the things I did want to point out is is as I said, it's it future tech is totally AI and we're not really promoting that on the podcast, but we're certainly not hiding it.

6:23 We're not trying to dupe people or trick people into listening an AI podcast and that they think is hosted. Like people have told me we should, you know, we should create Facebook pages for the hosts and create these fictitious characters and all this stuff sounds fun, but it felt deceptive to me, so I didn't really want to do it. But we used several tools. We used a proprietary tool to really create the podcast, but we used some widely available tools like Suno for the music. The music for the podcast is was created on Suno by me and it wasn't like a 30 second thing. I went through probably 200 iterations of that song and finally settled on the one that we've got.

7:06 Some might say 200 iterations and you pick that one. Don't ask me why. I just did and used a part of ChatGPT to create the future tech logo and I think we used Claude to script it. And so, you know, a lot of stuff is being used in the background to make it come out as clean and nice as it does. So I hope you'll take a listen to it, understanding that it is a completely AI generated podcast and it's still fun to listen to. I mean, that's the crazy part it, it doesn't sound like AI. You know, I'm certainly positive that I could have duped a lot of you into not knowing it. It was AI, but it's AI, so enjoy that one. And so today's guest is a gentleman who Sarah says I met but I don't recall meeting.

7:58 So I'm gonna be interested to find out if if that's the case or not. Chris Chalky Chalk Hailing from Perth, WA, Chris discovered his passion for production lighting during high school, sparking a career that began with an Advanced Diploma of of Performing Arts in Lighting at WAAPA, WAAPA in 2000 and an internship at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. After joining the festival as a lighting technician in 2003, he transitioned to film lighting in 2005. Lighting A Launching a successful career in the industry, Chris has worked on acclaimed productions for Wanda Vision, Perry Mason and Twin Peaks. With a foundation in theatrical lighting, Chris specializes in systems design and programming.

8:47 Known for his creative onset solutions. In 2024, he returned to Australia as Sales and Marketing Manager at a megatech, continuing his innovative work in the field. And I'm also looking forward to talking to him about his controls business. So please join me and welcome Chris Chucky. Chuck, how are how are you Chris? Should I call you Chris or Chalky? Chris is Chris is fine. All right, as we get older, those nicknames seem to drop off a little bit for some of. Us. No, mine hasn't. It's still. It's still. Pretty, pretty relevant. We always talk about these, these like touring nicknames and stuff.

9:30 And you know, some of them, I think the guys want them to go away. Like I don't know if you know James Poop. No, you don't know poop. His name is His last name is Popping James Popping. And so I don't know, his nickname ended up being pooped. That one you kind of want to drop off, you know? Yeah. That's a little unfortunate. Yeah, yeah. Or if you have a nickname like pedophile or something, you probably want that one to go away pretty quickly. Now you know that's not a good one. I was kind of born into mine because my last name's chalk, so it's just kind of stuck pretty easy. Since I was a kid, everyone called me chalky. Although when I was a kid it was I was a little chalky and my dad, my dad was big chalky.

10:12 I mean, even to this day I'm still a little chalky, even though I'm, you know, 6 inches taller than my dad. You know, that's funny, isn't it? That's funny. But you know mine, I never really got one because, you know, my last name is Fairbairn. And so often times in school it was fart brain or, you know, like just dumb shit that you could make up out of that name. But there was never one that really stuck to me, thankfully. I, I, I think the most unfortunate one I got was Duster. People would call me Duster. Yeah. What did that mean? You know, like the dusters on the you know, your teacher taken. I get it. I get it. Yeah, Duster, I get it. Yeah, that was the worst one I ever got. So yeah, you. Know so we were talking in the in the pre thing here about your trip up to Calgary last year to to go to a Mustang event yeah I wish I would have known about it because I would have actually I I my house is like an hour and 20 minutes or something from Calgary so it's pretty.

11:11 Cool. It's called the International Mustang Mate, and it travels each year between the US and Canada because it's either hosted by an American club or a Canadian club, and I've gone to several of them over the years. It's, I think, I think this year was the 45th one or something and it's been going for a long time. Wow. And I have a, I have a Mustang that's currently stored in Seattle and I have friends up there that have a resto shop. And so there's about six of us, you know, pulled out. What do you have? I have 84 SVO, which is a rare Fox body car in the fact that it's not a 5 litre V8, it's a 2.3 litre turbo.

11:52 So it's a fuel injected turbo. Yeah. And then they made, then they made it for like 3 years and they made less than 10,000 of them. And mine's especially red because it's got the removable glass roof, entrance roof, which it wasn't, they weren't, it's a bit of a Unicorn because they didn't actually build them officially that way from the factory. You couldn't order it that way. But there are about 30 of them that I think were built with it. And that's one of those 30. And I bought it in I think 2008 out of a someone's backyard in Fresno. And like, you know, the motor was in a shed and the gearbox was missing and all the front sheet metal was gone. And you know, I paid like 300 bucks for it. I spent God knows how much money on it. But now it's a yeah.

12:37 Now it's a trophy winning show car. So that's wild. Yeah. It took me a long time. Took me a long time, but something that I'm interested in doing, you know, like I like fixing broken things or making things so. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of money in it now too. If you can find the broken car, there's certainly a lot of money in these. And like, I like the resto mods where, you know, you get AA66 Corvette with a, you know, a new crate engine in it and, and air conditioning and a good stereo and comfortable seats and all that stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. I love that kind of stuff. I don't like when they, I don't like when they take like 2010 Corvette and turn it into a 60 something Corvette, you know?

13:24 Yeah, that's kind of stupid. Yeah. It's a bit goofy but when they update old cars I really love those. I I Camaros are another one that I love the rest of my Camaros. I mean, I love, I love old, you know, old Corvettes and old, old Aussie Falcons and all this sort of stuff. Yeah. And you get in you get in one of those these days. And it's just like the, the seating's terrible. The steering feels like this, you know, like you're driving a boat. Yeah. And there's no air conditioning. And, you know, I've, I've kind of reckon like a car is something that you're supposed to enjoy. So if you have to, yeah, you know, unless it's like a super rare car or something like that, it should be in the museum. You know, like modify it a bit and make it more comfortable, like, you know, put the brakes on it, put good steering on it, you know, that sort of stuff.

14:07 Yeah, that's changed a lot or and continues to change. It seems like, you know, in the past, like if you had a 60s Corvette that you you modified like that it was suddenly valueless and nobody wanted it. But now The thing is, people like me and you, we actually want to drive the car. We don't want to just have a show car sitting in the garage somewhere. I want to take it out on weekends and drive it. Around and have. Fun, you know, and. There's a certain, there's a certain segment of the market that wants it to be like totally original. And you know, of course, yeah, I've gotten into that. There are certain cars where I would like I kind of know that that bolt has to be that color in that bolt. And like you know, restoring my car was originally going to restore it to concourse condition. So I.

14:49 Go wow, I can tell you the part numbers every every bolt in the car and what color they're supposed to be and where they like. It's real shit. Yeah, I just, I just spent a weekend a friend of mine from who actually the guy who built my house up in Canada, I became very friendly with him and he's he's my best buddy up there most days, but he's a car guy. Like, I've never even known like this guy, if you told him about your car, he'd go, Oh yeah, there's only, there were only 10,000 of those and there was 30 who had that roof. You got one of those 30? Like he knows every stat, every respect, every. Every. Stock color, everything about every car in the 60s and, and most of the 70s as well.

15:34 And you know, I've never met anybody like this guy. It's, he's a walking encyclopedia for real. And so I just spent a weekend with him. Him and his his wife are in Naples, FL and, and my girlfriend and I went over and hung out with them for a few days. But you know, while the Meekum auctions on. So we're sitting watching these cars and he's telling me the history of every car and all this stuff. It's just wild. Like I've always, it's fun stuff. Been a fan, but not a not an enthusiast. I I guess I would say of old cars like that. It was interesting for me because you know, with the, with my Mustang, it was at the time, it was something that was affordable because, you know, I mean, I had one before that which I bought fairly cheap and then spent a lot of money on and then crashed. And that's a whole other story.

16:21 But, you know, they weren't really expensive. And that was, you know, maybe 15 years ago there was there was one same car as mine, not without the roof, but an SVO that sold at Macon last week for 37 grand, which was unheard of. Yeah. So they're all starting to go up. You know, it's that thing, you know, you reach a certain age in the car that you we're in love with as a teenager is the thing you want. And now you've got money, and so you can buy it, you know, so people are willing to spend. Cars, it's happened to cars. It, it'll happen to everything. Like toys, you know, there's people paying huge money for like original metal Tonka trucks, you know, because you can't get them.

17:01 They're all plastic made in freaking Malaysia or something now, right? Yeah, I mean, I've, I've got a I've got a 92 Gibson Explorer that I used to play semi professionally. Yeah, that's been sitting in the case for the last 10 years. And I'd hate to think, you know, I bought a brand new I. Hate to think that. He's worth these days, let alone, you know, 70s les poles or, you know, late, you know, late 60s les poles. It's it's, you know, all that stuff's just it. Seems to have I don't know, I'm not paying a huge amount of attention. I, I'm paying attention only because in 2007, I think 6 I bought, I don't know if you heard the story, but Guitar Center bought the Eric Clapton Blackie Strat. The, the Strat, the, the guitar that he played, they recorded like cocaine and all his huge hits were recorded on Blackie. And so they bought it for $1,000,000 at a, at an auction. And so instead of just putting it back up for sale or whatever, they made a deal with Fender and they put it into their custom shop and had them just completely reverse engineer every single part of that guitar. The wiring, the, the content of the wiring, the shape of the wiring, the condition of the wiring, the like every cigarette burn, every worn piece.

18:22 Like even the stickers on the case have the same scratches that the stickers on Eric Clapton's case had, right? Real NUD stuff. So they only made, I think they made 200 of them or 225 of them or something and they sold them for 20,000 bucks each. And I had a friend in a pretty high play set at Guitar Center because they were hard to get. Like there was only two. 150 of them. And or 225 I think it was and so I was able to get two of them. So I bought 2 and I sold the first one almost immediately after the auction, within a few months after the auction or after the the sale of the the units for like 30 grand.

19:04 And I decided to keep the other one. And I've never played it. It sits in the case. It hung on my wall at my my old house before I got divorced. And now it sits in the case literally under my bed. And I hope none of my neighbors are listening and break into my house and take it. But, and you know, I, I every once in a while I'll pop it up on Reverb for a couple of months and just see if anything happens, But it just seems to have stagnated. And I don't know if people are literally waiting for Eric Clapton to pass away or what it. Is, I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe. I mean, I would think, you know, when he does pass the value and that's going to go up, it's the same thing, you know, you would think, I mean, it's the same sort of thing.

19:46 They, you know, Kirk Hammett from Metallica bought Peter Green's Les Paul. Yeah, for some ungodly known amount of money. I mean, you know, 59 Les Poles have always been, you know, the pretty much the top of the market anywhere. But yeah, he he bought it. And then, you know, within six months, Gibson released an exact replica of it from the custom shop. And I don't, you know, they were 2025 grand apiece, whatever they were. And I was just like, yeah, I mean, I'm not spending that kind of money, but, you know, it's cool. Yeah. You know, so there's definitely an interest in it. Well, here's the thing. Like I said, I never played it. I played it once and but I bought a guitar, a relic strap.

20:28 So it's basically it's it's like a 61 or 62 Strat made by a guy in Seattle called Nash Guitars and it's what he specializes in. The guy makes a strap. I know he makes a telly. And I know his work. It's good stuff. That Strat, so at the time I owned a part of a guitar store in Kelowna, BC, and so at dealer cost, that Strat cost me like 1200 bucks or something. I'm telling you, it's the nicest early 60s Strat that I've ever touched in my life. And for me, it smokes that blackie. It's just such a nicer neck, nicer guitar than the blackie.

21:09 So whenever I do feel like playing, I'm actually a bass player. I'm not even a guitar player, but whenever I feel like playing a guitar, I'll grab that that Nash guitar and I just love it. It's it's like butter. It's it's. Funny, I've got a nice guitar. I've always been a Gibson guy, you know, I've had my Explorer forever. I've had several Les Pauls, although I was always a fan of like the mid 70s Ibanez. You know the Ibanez lawsuit. Great guitars. Yeah, really good guitars. Really good guitars. And I've only ever I. Was an I've been a Steeler back then. Yeah, right. No, they were just a nice guitar. They sounded good. I mean, you put better pickups in them, but whatever. I've only ever owned 1 Fender and it was Dave Murray. Had Dave Murray from Iron Maiden had a black strap that was originally owned by Paul Kosov.

22:03 And it's and it's, it's, it's known in, you know, law as Dave Murray's Kosov strap. And there was a guy in Canada that used to make guitars that were played by Adrian Smith in the early 80s. I can't remember the guy's name, but I found a black Fender strap that was basically, it was made by that guy and it was an exact replica of Dave Murray's Kosov strap. And it was a really beautiful guitar. Yeah, it was a beautiful guitar, played amazingly and it sounded fantastic, but I could just never get around the Fender thing. I'm, I'm just, you know, like I'm, I'm. Here a Les Paul guy it just doesn't feel right and see I've never liked Les Pauls like the neck just feels chunky and gross to me I like smaller smoother I don't know I.

22:51 Was always AI was always a fan of the smaller custom necks. Yeah, the standard necks tend to be a bit thick, but the custom necks nice and thin. Yeah. But yeah, that that coastal Strat sounded amazing, but I just couldn't get my couldn't get around it. So huh. Weird. And I've always, you know, I've always liked to play like, you know, Fender precision bases and that style of a bass. Like I, I was obviously growing up in Canada being a singer and a bass player. I was a huge Geddy Lee fan. And so anytime he bought something, I had to have it. So I had a bunch of Rickenbackers. I tried the Steinberger when he went that direction and I just couldn't groove on a little tiny rectangular thing with no, no head on it. It it just beautiful instrument but didn't work for me. It's interesting.

23:38 Tell me if you get the parallel here. So you ever driven a Tesla? I have. Felt like driving an iPhone. I always. Yeah, yes, exactly. That's the same thing. I say like, if, you know, it's like everyone's like, you ever driven a Tesla? I'm like, yeah, it's like driving a toaster oven. Yeah. It's just got no spirit. It it's fastest shit. Yeah, yeah. But it's just. Got no clients? Yeah, it feels, Yeah. To me it just felt like an iPhone, Like it's perfect in every way, but it's boring. And that's probably what the Steinberg felt like as well. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, Pretty much didn't even go out of tune because it had that special tuning system and stuff, you know, like it.

24:19 It's like you could do anything to it and it would just be like, thank you, Sir. You know, it's like, I like that. I. Was going to say you're, you're originally from Canada, right? Yeah. You're a fan of the tea? Party the Tea Party. Yeah, Canadian trio. No, I don't. They they might have. They might have been after I left already. It's like Tragically Hip. Tragically Hip was after I left in 1991 and Tragically kept happened after that. And so I was, people always were like, Oh my God, how much do you love Tragically Hip? And I'm like, I've never even heard them. Yeah, I haven't heard a single song. And since then I have, of course. But yeah, yeah, I'm still not a fan. Yeah, the Tea Party is kind of like, I kind of like, call it like a Moroccan roll.

25:05 Oh. Really, it's kind of like a. Bit like Led Zeppelin meets the Doors. I would love it. Really, really good. Yeah. But the the league, the guitar player is one of those guys that like, everything's open tunings and modal tunings and all this sort of stuff. And it'll, it'll change guitars every song when they're playing live because it's really cool. Les Paul, which has got this thing called a trans performance system in it. And basically it's this whole series of electric motors and speciality stuff. And basically you can record a bunch of tunings into the guitar and you push a button and it will, it will instantly retune the guitar to that tuning. So you want to go from, say you want to go from open C to open G, you can just push a button and it'll do it. And I guess Jimmy Page had one as well.

25:46 But the idea is like, OK, the chorus is in open C, the verse is in open G, just like push the button and you're in that tuning. And then you just crazy tick. You don't have to do anything with your left hand. You just sit there and go like this, you know? Yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah. No, I, I'm probably, you know, quite a bit older than you. And so I for me, it was triumph. It was like in Canada, it was triumph. It was April Wine Gato, which actually remarkably is our intro song on on the podcast is a song by a Canadian trio called Gado from the 70s and 80s. And actually he's still out touring, doing shows right now.

26:27 He's a good friend of mine now and gave us the song for the intro. But but yeah, I mean that that was more like for me it was Rush, Triumph Saga. You can tell what direction I was going with some of my music there was very progressive and and that kind of stuff. And then eventually like Loverboy and some of the other newer bands that came out of Canada as well. But but yeah, I really was brought up on Rush and Led Zeppelin and that kind of stuff. So some of the newer Canadian bands I never got to hear cuz I just wasn't around so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I'm up in Canada for the summers now, I try to listen to some Canadian programming.

27:10 Like I'll force myself in the car, even if I've got satellite radio and stuff, I'll listen to local radio just to hear some new Canadian content. Over. Show yeah, yeah, very cool. So we we've already gone off the rails here and we've talked about cars, we've talked about guitars, we've talked about music. Not a word about lighting yet, so no. Don't get there. You've got an interesting history in that I'm, you know, I believe you were born in, in Australia. Yep. And grew up born in, Yeah, born and grew up in Perth, WA, which, you know, it's the most isolated capital city in the world.

27:51 Yeah. You know, a lot of people don't sort of understand the geography of Australia and they're like, oh, you're from Sydney. I'm like, now I'm from Perth on the West Coast. Where's that? I'm like, OK, well, if you imagine the US, Sydney's New York, Earth is LA and like, oh, is it, is it like the same distance? I'm like, you have to like Australia's really big. I'm like, yeah, you know. Yeah, it's wild, isn't it? Because you think of it as an island. It's got to be tiny, of course, right? But it's, it's really not. It's funny because a little less diplomatic. I had a friend from, well, not really a friend. He was in my circle in, in Western Canada when I was in the music business there and playing in bands and, and then ultimately I went to to work for and own music stores for a little for a while. And but he was a, he was a musician and a, and a drug dealer.

28:40 And I think the Government of Canada were pursuing him and he moved to Australia and he ended up in Perth for a number of years. And he says, Marcel, it's the fucking shit hole of the planet, this place. Really. Yeah, he hated Perth. He just couldn't interesting it and it had something to do with I, I believe the culture, like he just didn't fit in, you know, long, long hair, freaky dude, very Canadian. I don't know. I don't know what it was, but that was always my only vision of birth Was interesting because I've never been there so. But it's a great place. Yeah, I'm, you know, like I grow up here. It's pretty chill. It's laid back, you know, the the beaches are beautiful. You can.

29:20 It's good surfing, you know, I mean, yeah, it. When I was growing up here, it felt like this really sort of isolated little country town. Yeah. Which is probably one of the. I like that. Yeah. I mean, maybe they just didn't so much when I was 20. Yeah. Maybe they just didn't like runaway drug dealers from Canada. Maybe. Maybe that's what it was. I think maybe, maybe all the local drug dealers didn't make him feel welcome. Right. Exactly. He. He was a hard guy to get along with as it was. So I, I wasn't that shocked that that he had a hard time getting on with that place, but yeah. So anyways, yeah. So you grew up in Perth? Yeah, I grew up in Perth and, you know, it was one of those things I was when, you know, like in high school, I was like a lunchtime library nerd. I was, you know, like I didn't really into sports all that much.

30:11 And I was more interested in sort of, you know, art stuff and reading and, and then my school built a new theater and I was like, oh, this is cool. And then there was this big board with buttons on it that made lights turn on them, like, oh, this is different. What's this? How does this work? And so I started playing around with it. And, and that sort of became my lunchtime thing. Instead of going to the library, I started playing with, with the lights in the theatre. And my teacher was like, oh, you seems like you're kind of into this. I'm like, yeah, this is cool. You can do all this stuff. And, and she was, she said. I've got a friend that's doing a production at A at a theatre in the city and they're looking for someone to give them a hand. And OK, so we had a little minor post crash over here My my computer just kind of pulled one of these to me and time for an upgrade, yeah, said unfortunately, I can't even blame that I upgrade so often so.

31:03 How? There you go. But anyways, you were talking about, you know, basically being introduced to, to lighting when you were, I believe, in high school in Perth, Yeah. Yeah, So like I said, I started playing around in the theater at lunchtime. It was kind of like, oh, this is cool. And I can do these things. I can make it look different. And my drama teacher was like, I seem like you're into this. And she's like, I've got a friend that's doing a show in the city and they're looking for an extra person to help out. I was like, oh, cool. And like 16 at the time or something. And it was, it was like working as a stagehand. So like moving props and moving furniture. And I was like, oh, this, I haven't done this before. I'll have a go at this and I walk in the first day and it's a production of cabaret and there were 12 girls in corsets and fishnets.

31:51 And I went. This is the job for me. Yeah. No, it wasn't. It wasn't just that. I mean, I, I just love, you know, like I was very lucky in the fact that my, my mum was a teacher and she was always sort of dragging me to the ballet or taking me to a play or taking me to an art gallery and things like that. So I'd already sort of been immersed in the arts and then the opportunity to work in it was really cool. And so I had planned, I did that show and then I'd finished high school and I planned to go to the WA Academy of Performing Arts, which is here in Perth. And I applied to go there and do lighting design and they had a, they had a policy back then they didn't take kids straight out of school. So I went and got a day job and I said, I'll just take a gap year and then I'll apply again.

32:36 But then I went and got a job and I'm like, oh, I'm making money. I can afford that hot rod that I've always wanted. And that's that thing and that thing. And so it can be quite. Alluring when you're, you know, when you're a starving lighting, Yeah, theatrical lighting guy or musician. Yeah, and and so you know at. First, you're a lighting person first. I did of both. I started playing guitar in my teens and then started playing with lighting in my teens. Yeah. So I come to the time I'm 1718, I'm I'm still playing around playing music and playing with lighting. And then in my early 20s, I got more serious with it and was playing semi professionally. And, you know, I'd go to go to gigs and there'd be, you know, like a sound engineer and then this lighting console and no one there to do anything with it.

33:19 And I was like, can I do that? And they went yeah, So I just started playing around and people were like, oh, you're pretty good at this. And then people actually started paying me to do the lighting for their bands. And I was like, oh, this is fun. And so that kind of became the thing I did on the weekend when I didn't have gigs. I would go out and do live shows for people. And then after about six years of doing my day job, I was kind of like, what, what did I look at doing this lighting thing again? So at 26 or 27, I applied for for Whopper again and got in one of and it's, it's interesting. It's it's what was interesting because it's run like a professional theater company. So you know that it's a three-year well, when I did it was a three-year course.

34:00 I think it's for now, you know, they'll take 10 people in lighting, 10 people in sound, 10 people in costume design, 10 people in set design and you know, all the departments. But I do, but I find it, I find it interesting though, that you're in your mid 20s, you're already working as a lighting person, right? Yet it's important to you to go back and get this degree. And So what, what was the, what was the thought process there? Like, you know, was it because you didn't think you could get certain jobs without that degree? Or was it like, no, I'm just curious because most people who are already working in the in that field wouldn't go back and and get that degree after the fact. Well, it wasn't.

34:43 I wasn't working professionally like I wasn't working for a rental house or or. PC. I was, I mean, people were paying me to do lights for their vans, but it wasn't like, you know, I was working for a production company. I was just, you know, someone had seen me do a gig at a pub and be like, hey man, can you come and do a house? So I didn't really, I wasn't aware of the pathway of like, oh, hey, look all the time, you know. Awareness production, yeah, that's a that's a good point. Right there is is because nowadays, like for sure you could just walk into a rental company and say hey, I've done some gigs, can I clean your shop? Yeah, and there might be a shorter path, may be more painful, I don't know. Well, I mean, it's interesting you think about the pathways that you could have taken And, and in fact, me going to warfare has got, is part, huge part of got me to where where I am.

35:30 So, so yeah, I went, I went, went to warfare, studied lighting design because I always have a passion for learning things. And you know, like I said, the it's, it's a university, but they run it like a theater. So 6 * a year they do this two week production slot and it's two weeks of 14 hour days. Like week 1, you, you bump the show and you build the show, you do tech, you do rehearsals, you do all that sort of stuff. And the second week is performances and you do that 6 * a year. And it's like, you know, you might work on, you know, in one year you might work on, you know, 2 theater pieces of musical, musical theater, production and opera, a film and, and a, you know, like a musical, all these different, these varied things. In fact, my favorite, in fact one of my favorite ones to do the whole time was, was, was opera. Because those opera kids know how to party, man. Crazy.

36:22 You wouldn't think. Yeah, no, but it was, it was, it was fun. And so like, it was really like you really get immersed in, you know, when you're, when you're first year, you start off just as as an electrician and then you, you know, first year, second year, you start to board up third, you know, second year start to do some designing stuff. And then in the meantime, you're doing, you know, design classes, electronics classes, you know, history of history of theater, history of art, you know, all this sort of stuff. You know, there was, there was a, there was one class we did on like script analysis, which you wouldn't think, Oh yeah, script analysis, whatever. But as I got further in my career, I'm like, oh, this is actually really helpful. So and it's the same thing like the day job that I had, you know, I started out, you know, sweeping the warehouse and then got into inventory control and then into sales and then into into management.

37:14 And it was kind of like, oh, OK, 30 years later, I can look back and go hang on this skill that I'm using today. I learned in that in that first job. So it's interesting. But yeah, so I did my three years at Whopper and then, you know, and some great experiences, worked on some amazing stuff, really got to push the boundaries of what design is, how it works, learn the insurance and outs of it and, and have a safe training ground and be like, I really want to try this thing. And, and OK, that didn't work. Why didn't that work? OK, here's why it didn't work. Type that, move on. And then in the next design thing, go, oh, what about this? OK, now it works. You know, like it's joining all those links and you know, like I do have a lighting design degree, but I haven't actually done a huge amount of lighting design as a professional. I certainly used it, used that skill set when I've since I've been working in the film industry. But, you know, like it.

38:10 I I it's a discipline too, right? It's a discipline. It's like it's, you know, learning the right ways to do things doesn't mean every time you do it, you're going to do it that way. But, you know, right from wrong and you are disciplined and you have been through that process and and, you know, you've got the card to, to prove it. Yeah. But yeah, they were very specific to theater lighting, right? It it was very much a theater. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, you, you covered all the, all the, you know, theatre, musical theatre, dance, you know, you learned the difference between, you know, backlight, frontlight, side light, the different places you use different kinds of lighting and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, they did do a couple of, you know, every year they would do like a film project.

38:55 And I worked on on a couple of the film projects and I didn't really think it was something I was very interested in. I mean, I wanted, I originally wanted to be a verilite tech. That's what I wanted to realize into the nerdy stuff. Yeah. I wanted to be a verilite tech. Or until with Maiden or something like that. Yeah. And still could. Still could. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. I still. Don't need as many verilite. I could get into that. They don't need as many verilite techs as they used to. But no. But you still but certainly could Iron Maiden or still touring shockingly. Yeah, when I was at Whopper, I started working on, on local cruise, you know, a big, a big tour would come into town and they'd need, you know, guys to, to load in and guys to run follow spots.

39:37 Like that's How I Met Cosmo. You know, just all these interesting experiences working on these big shows and, and seeing all this stuff and, and it's like, oh, cool. And you know, like I said, I met, I met Cosmo on an ACDC tour and I go from the house to do something in, in Perth. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. I actually, I actually saw him at LDI this year, well, last year. And I was like, hey man, I don't know if we've actually, we met in person a very long time ago. I was spot #3 in Perth. And he's like, Oh yeah, cool. And you know so. And he's saying. He's going to be over here later this year. But, you know, like I went in front of house with him and I'd never seen, like, an icon console before.

40:18 This is going to die. Yeah, like, oh, what's this thing? He says, oh, it's an icon. And I was like, oh, why do you use that? And he says, oh, it's the only thing that will run icons. And I went, OK, fair enough. And that makes. Sense, you know, I had some cool experiences like that. And then part of the part of the third year you had to go and do an internship with a professional company. And you know, like I had a there was a few guys that sort of went to the Sydney Opera House and went to, you know, big production companies on the East Coast. And, but my mom had a friend who worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ashland in Southern Oregon, it's this tiny little town that may not 25,000 people, but they have the third biggest repertory theatre company in America there.

41:01 You know, it's a, it's a Shakespeare festival that runs for 10 months and does nearly 800 performances in a season in, in three theaters. It's, it's a big thing. And it was one of those things. This lady had come to visit mom in Australia and do some workshops on Shakespeare. And we were having dinner one night and I was telling you about this internship that I had to do. And she's like, well, you should, you should call up the master electrician, Come and do it at the festival. I'm like, yeah, that's going to happen. And sure enough, I called him. I was like, hey, man, I got told you call. He's like, yeah, when do you want to be here? July. Yeah, Sure enough, I went to Ashland for six weeks and did an internship there. And it was amazing just to. I mean, it's, yeah. I mean, it's just an amazing level of of professional theatre like the likes of.

41:47 Was that your first time over to the US? That was, yeah, that was in July 2000. It was my first. Wow. Yeah, Yeah, it was pretty cool. And like I said, I had a blast. A beautiful place, great people, good work, really good work. Yeah. And at the end of it, they were like, hey, man, if you ever end up back here, we've got a job for you. OK, So I, I went back to Perth and you know, there was, I met a girl while I was there. You know, this thing sometimes happen. So I went back to Perth and I was doing my thing and, you know, graduated actually was I was supposed to at the end of every season or the end of every year, they take the graduating performance class on the showcase tour.

42:31 And I'd actually, it was, it was a real fight to be the LD on showcase and I'd actually been chosen to do it that year. But but one of the previous productions I'd done in our production slots was the one of the film projects. And it turned out like, I hadn't really thought I'd be interested in working on film, but I worked on this film and it was really cool. And the director of photography was really cool. And he was in the motorcycles, I was in the motorcycles. We got, we talked about motorcycles a lot and, and he was really open and, and willing to talk to me about the process and what we were doing and how things were happening. And a lot of the production team that they would bring in for those film things were professionals from the industry in Perth.

43:15 And apparently I made an impression because it was about 3 months before my course was due to end and I got a phone call from one of the guys that had been working as a producer on our student film. And he's like, hey, there's, there's a big movie coming to town and they need another electrician. Would you be interested in working on it? And I went, well, I'm still at, I'm still at uni. I don't think I can. And he said, we'll go and ask your lectures and see if they'll let you do it. So I went and I said, hey, look, I've been offered this opportunity. I know I'm supposed to be doing showcase. And they were both like, listen man, it's a it's a $10 million movie. You, you go and do it. You have a blessing. Go. That's amazing. Yeah. So it was, it was cool because I got to go and work on this professional, you know, like multi $1,000,000 budget movie.

44:00 I hadn't even graduated college yet. And yeah, I found, wow, this is really, this is a very different discipline from what I'm doing, but it's also really cool. It's different, you know, and I sort of started to learn that there's a philosophy that I developed later on. One of the things I always liked about touring was you were different places and different challenges and new things every day. And films are like that, a lot like that. But generally you get to sleep in your own bed every night, which is really nice. That's a nice benefit, yeah. Yeah, and the catering is pretty good and the pay is not bad either. So, you know, I went and did this film before I'd even graduated. And then I graduated and I went and worked at local production companies.

44:44 You know, I would take, you know, I would take shows out and do small regional tours. And I worked as a bench tech and a repair tech and programmer. And that's I really got at a few people sort of take me under their wing and teach me a lot about programming, which is really cool because obviously programming for live events is very, very different from, you know, doing theater. Yeah. I mean, I remember I was working on a show. I kind of remember what it was, but I remember the the program. I don't remember his name, but the thing I remember about him was he always had Vegemite sandwiches and he always carried like a gallon jug of milk. That was the only stuff I ever saw. He. Made. Yeah. Vegemite, this is this is a thing that you guys.

45:26 Very Australian thing. I just don't start it. I've tried it and went yeah it's not for me. It's isn't a quiet taste. Yeah, but he was running this big show and he's running on a whole hog too. And I was looking at his at his group layout, and I'm like, what's that all about? This is all all over the place. He says, oh, that's my map. I went, what? He said, well, I lay my groups out in a way that it looks like the plot. So instead of looking at the plot, I just look at my groups and go, I want those ones. And I went, wow, that's really cool. Seems pretty logical. Yeah. And that's a philosophy that I then started using and started using until, you know, the adventation of, you know, 2D plots or layout views or magic sheets or whatever you want to call them. Yeah, yeah.

46:09 Lay your groups out like the plot. And then you just go, oh, yeah, moving on. You know, it was just like, and there was a lot of instances like that where people gave me tidbits of information that really formed, you know, how I how I process stuff now and think about it. And yeah, you know, it's a good. Point though, that that because I think a lot of people think you should get out of school and immediately go and design lighting for The Beatles reunion or something, right. But The thing is, you have to work for some great designers to to build your entire toolbox. Like school isn't going to teach you exactly what it's like in some sense.

46:52 So, but no, honestly, like again, I want to go back to this, this idea of school. Yeah. You know, I, I was one that jumped out of school because I just thought I was smart enough and didn't need it and I wanted to do things my way. And I'm not saying that's the right way for for young people to do it these days. Maybe, maybe not. But you were very committed to completing school. Like you got this, this opportunity in Oregon, you did the internship, they offered you a gig and you said, OK, maybe once I'm done school. It was always school 1st and and everything else 2nd. And it blows me away how committed you were to it.

47:33 Like was that, did that have something to do with your parents? Did your parents push you? Really, you better finish your degree first. No, no, not really. I mean, I mean, mom was a teacher and and you know, she, she also, you know, she did a master's degree. She had a doctorate in in philosophy. My dad. My dad was actually a master sheet metal worker. Yeah. Like you give him a piece of steel and a drawing, he can make anything. Yeah. And you? Know two of them really shaped who you've become, though, You know, when you think about it, yeah. Well, and it's ironic, you know, because my mom was always like, oh, you'd make a really good teacher. And now that's a big part of what I do. Yeah. Yeah. You know, And no, I, I just think I, I very much like to start things and finish them and just take on board that you, you start on a pass and you're never quite going to learn exactly where it takes you until you finish it.

48:24 You know what? I mean and. So I, I think it's just something that I was really enjoying doing. I was enjoying the experience. I was working with cool people. I mean, you know, my head lecturer at the time was one of the best LDS in the country. Yeah. And so, you know, it was like it was, it was astounding to me, like the first six months I was there, he'd come up to me and be like, we're not going too slow for you. I'm like, Nah, man, you just, you just do you. I'm just sitting here soaking it all in, you know? That's great, yeah. And it no, it's just. Again, I'm not, I'm not bagging on school at all because yeah, again, I chose a different path and and it served me well. But and, you know, in a lot of situations, I think that young people become professional students because it, you know, it seems to be the easier path in some, in some cases. I look at a lot of students who are rotting away and could do very well if they just jumped in head 1st and went and did that thing instead of learning about that thing. And so, but I think there's two sides to it. And I'm Joe, I'm not putting down your commitment to school. I'm actually very appreciative and in awe of your commitment to finish it because you got offered some cool things. But it was always back to, like you said, this movie. Yeah, you had to go and ask your professors first if you could do it.

49:46 Yeah, I mean, yeah. And, and, you know, luckily they were very supportive of it. Yeah. I think they recognized a little bit of talent there and, and just a commitment to to the craft. Yeah. And, you know, they, they just sort of opened doors for me. I think they sort of like, well, there's not much else we can teach you here. Go and learn this other thing from yeah, from these other people. And, you know, I met some people on there that I'm still in contact with, which is amazing. Yeah. But yeah, no, it was it. I always sort of looked at school as a as a pathway and an opportunity to learn stuff and grow and realizing that I, I think, you know, I already had a bit of natural talent, you know, not to sound. Yeah, you know, yeah, just my ability to do you. Like it, it sounds like it.

50:31 I mean, and, and you know, those who get offered the best opportunities are usually the ones who are recognized with that talent, whether you're, you know, whether you're a lighting person or a racing driver or a movie star or whatever it is like. Yeah, if someone says. They're going to find you. Yeah, someone says something in you and they want to, they either want to foster that or they want to get into their advantage, which is fine because you can do that and I'm still going to learn something from it. But yeah, no, I mean, school was cool and I opened some doors, like it got me to America, for God's sake, so I don't regret that at all. But yeah, so I sort of finished school and then I did a couple of years in Perth and then, you know, things with the girl in America got to be more serious. So I ended up going back there for a bit and then she moved to Australia and then we got married and it was like, she was like, I really want to be back home. And I went, OK, well, I know I've got a job there for what? Because she lived in Ashland.

51:19 So I we, we moved back to Ashland and I worked at the Shakespeare Festival for three years and it was really good. And like I said, amazing work. But Rep theater is one of those things where you go in and you do it and you do it and you do it and you do it every day and you do it. And I was just. Like I just got a little. I wanted to be like pushing the envelope and learning new things and, and, and changing. And as seems to have happened in a lot of my career, one day I was in my apartment and I went out the back and I see a line of trucks parked across the street. And I went, that looks like a film crew.

52:01 So I walked across the street and they were shooting at a restaurant there. And I've sort of stood there on the curb and I went, OK, that's the best boy. That's the group, that's the DP, that's the gaffer who's everyone else. And, and I waited. I looked around all the trucks. I went, OK, this is the lighting truck. So I just stood there at the gate and I waited for this guy to walk, walk out of the gate or walk out of the set and walk up onto the truck. And I just walked up on the tailgate and I went get a, I'm chalky. How you going, mate? And he's like, oh, you're Australian. I went, yeah, sometimes being Australian will work to your advantage. So yeah, get their attention. Yeah, exactly. So I got talking to us like, hey man, you know, like I work at the Shakespeare Festival in the lighting tech. I'm a programmer and, you know, I did a bit of film work in Australia.

52:45 If you guys ever need a hand, give me a call. So I gave him my number and thought, oh, he's probably not going to call, but OK, couple of months later I got a phone call. It's like, hey man, we're doing this little movie in town and we need another guy. Yeah, cool. Well, it's just happens to fall right into the offseason of the of the Shakespeare Festival. Yeah. So, you know, perfect. I would say I've had like a 10 week, 10 week hiatus. This was an 8 week movie that happened slot right in the middle. Yeah, wow. Sometimes you get lucky. So I'm like, OK, cool. So I rock up and I haven't ever worked on a movie in America. All of the power stuffs different. All of the connection types are different. I'm just like, OK, I'm like trying to learn it all in the first week. Yeah. And at the end of the first week, the gaffer gets into a fight with the production manager. He gets fired.

53:29 The best boy quits. And the third electrician says, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to go and be a group. So I'm the last guy standing. And I'm like, this is my first, first time. Holy shit. So they're bringing this crew of. So they're bringing this crew of guys from Portland. None of them I'd ever met. And they're like, who are you? And I'm like the new guy, I don't really know. And they, I thought, oh, I'm going to get fired. I'm going to get fired. And I thought I was still on thin ice. And then, you know, second or third day I get AI get it to the truck. I put my radio on and I'm getting and it's pandemonium. There's like pandemonium happening. And I'm like, hey, what's going on, fellas? They're like. Oh, where does Santa?

54:10 There's a 2. Board and I'm like right here we go, where is it? And they're like, it's up there. Panic stations. I woke up. It's like an old ATC express or something. I'm like, what do you want to see, fellas? And they're like, and I'm like, OK, how's that? I'm suddenly the IT guy. Wow, wow. And. That's amazing. And within three months I was living in Portland, OR working on a Morgan Freeman movie. Jesus. That's incredible. It was it was one of those things I worked with those guys for, for actually it was more than three months I worked with those guys for that the rest of that show and it went really well. They were good guys. They taught me a lot and then.

54:51 Was it Hollywood lights or something? Who was it? No, it was a bunch of freelance film guys out of Portland. OK, but Hollywood Lights does come into the story later. So yeah, I I did that show with them. And then they called me up for this other little thing that happened in Southern Oregon. And then they called me for something in Poland. And I was like, I was like 4 weeks. I'm like, Then they called me another one that was like 6 weeks. I'm like, because, you know, I was running two shows at OSF, so which is a fairly good deal. And then they called me a third time and they said, hey, look, we've got this movie, it's coming to Portland. It's 12 weeks, Morgan Freeman's in it. It's a big budget. We need a guy. And so at that point of the season, I was actually working for the stage operations crew, working backstage running shows.

55:37 And I called, I got the phone call on a Thursday afternoon. They wanted me to start the following Monday, so I called the head of stage OPS. This guy called Tommy, who was formerly the master welder at OSF. He was also Local 1. Serious guy called him up. He was at a conference in Chicago. Called him up. I said, hey man, I just got a call to go and join IRC in Portland and work on a film for 12 weeks. He says you're running two shows. I said Yep. He says if you've got shadows in both shows. I said Yep. Are they trained up? Yep. When do you need to leave? I said they want me there Monday. He says, when's your last show? I said Sunday. He said, OK, I'll do both the shows this weekend, make sure everyone's up to speed and fuck off.

56:22 I'm like, you sure you're cool with this? He's like, Yep. So I literally did my I did my two shows. I did the shows actually. I had a show Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, I finished my show. Sunday night. I had my stuff already packed in my car, finished my show, got in my car, drove to Portland. I went to Portland about 3:30 in the morning, drove straight to crew parking, slept in my car for 2 1/2 hours and then went and then went and did my first day on a movie called The Feast of Love. Wow. Which was my sort of introduction into being professional film lighting technician. Jeez. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

57:02 And then four, that was in 2006. And then I worked in sort of Pacific Northwest, mostly Portland, Seattle until sort of 20/20/15 when I started working in LA. And, you know, it was, it was cool because when I first started in port, working in Portland, it was really sort of a, you know, they did a few big features there. I mean, not, you know, not Marvel big, but you know, drama stuff. We did a couple of movies there. I got to work with some big out of town gaffers, which is really cool. You know, like a program for Bill O'Leary who, who's Roger Deakins Kaffir worked with with him. I worked with another big guy called Geoff Morrell, who's most famous for doing a lot of Marvel stuff over the last 10-15 years. Cool.

57:50 And yeah, it was a really, it was a really cool place to sort of cut my teeth and, and learn the chops and, and you know, because you know, programming for film and TV is very different for doing live event stuff. People ask me what's it like programming for film and TV? I'm like, you know, tech, yeah, that's the job. Five days a week for however long you're on the show. There's no, there's no process of where, you know, unless you're doing like a concert sequence or something like that. It's literally every shot is a different lighting setup, which is reprogrammed. And then you flip the world 180° and it's totally different. Look, so you know, unless you're doing a sequence where you have specific things that have to happen over a certain time frame, it's go, go, go, man.

58:35 Like there's no arrest. Yeah, you know, So what is it? Someone once described it to me as as of she sheer boredom interspersed with minutes of sheer panic. That's a film set. Hilarious. That's quite often how it feels. So you by now, have you left the Shakespeare? Yeah. Yeah, basically, yeah. Basically in 2006 when I got the offer to go up to Portland and join IRT and work in the film business, I basically designed from the festival and then just got into film full time. And yeah, as I was working on on movies and TV shows and commercials out there. And for the first couple of years it was a bit thin on the ground, so I would sort of die play it, you know, Hollywood lights as one of their texts. And there's a repair tech there as well. And and then more and more, it became, you know, the film work became more and more consistent for a period of time. Yeah.

59:30 There are a couple of big TV shows that shot up there for a number of years, so the work was pretty consistent. But LA is the way. Like is the, you know, it's the. Well, I mean, it's you want to be right. Yeah. I mean the thing that I found, you know, I came from, you know, when I was back in Perth, I was doing a lot of corporate gigs and we do moving light stuff and it was really fun. And then you know, up until sort of LEDs really started to come in, you know, mid twenty 10s, it was, you know, if you in most theater. Most sort of, sorry, most film sets, you know, sort of in Portland at least, you know, looking two or three universes of tungsten stuff at the most, you know, some keynote stuff.

1:00:13 But it wasn't, there wasn't really any LED at that stage. And I would find, you know, I'm doing these cool shows in Portland and I'm making good money and it's fun and I'm working with good people. Because there was quite a few guys in Portland and Seattle that have moved out from LA. They were, they were all 728 guys that I was working with. So I learned a lot while I was there, but I got to a point where I'm like this. I think I've learned as much as I can here. And I would go and watch a big movie and it was always, you would always see the same names. It was always, you know, Scott Barnes, Benoit, Richard Elton James, Josh Thatcher. Like you could, you could, I could pretty much watch a movie and go, I think Scotty did this. And sure enough, that was the way I would see on the screen and I would see the stuff and be like, hey, man, those guys are doing what I wanted to, but they're all working out of LA.

1:01:04 So again, being in the right place at the right time. Like I said, I have a few friends that were living in Portland at the time. That was 728. And one day I'm between sort of shows and I got a phone call from a friend of mine who's an Oregon resident, but he'd moved to LA 20 years ago, got into 728, was doing stuff there and then moved back to Portland to be with his family. And he calls me was like, oh man, he doing anything. Can you come and give us a hand? I'm, I'm working with this young guy from, from LA and it's this non union show and it's me and him and an intern and like, we're just getting buried. I'm like, yeah, cool man, I'll come give you a hand. So I'd go and give him a hand and get on there for a couple of weeks helping him out. And then, you know, this gaffer from LA was really, really cool and we got along quite well.

1:01:47 And then, you know, over the course of the next couple of years, he'd call me up. He'd be like, hey man, can you come to LA for a couple of weeks? You know, like, oh, listen, man, I'm on a, I'm on a snowboarding vacation in Canada. Can I, can you call me on the next one? Sorry, man. Yeah, yeah. Because the big thing is, you know, to get into 7 to, or to get into any of the Hollywood unions, you've got to do a number of qualifying days to, to be able to apply for membership. And like, trying to get those days is, is a big thing. So to, to knock it back, I was like, yeah, yeah, OK. You know, So he actually asked me a couple of times. And then in 2015, they were doing a new Twin Peaks and a friend of mine was the best boy on that. And so he asked me, invited me to come up to Washington, I have to Seattle for six or eight weeks and work on that. And again, the gaffer was from LA and I got along with him really, really well.

1:02:41 And he's like, listen, man, I'd love to, I'd love to bring you to LA, but you're not 728. And I'm like, so I finished that. And I was actually, at the time I was playing Australian football for the Portland Steelheads, which is an Australian rules football club based in Portland. And we were, I was sitting at the airport we were flying to. You were playing for them? Yeah, I was playing Australian rules. Yeah, playing Australian rules football. Oh my God. Yeah, at 36 or something Anyway, wow. I was sitting at, I was sitting at the airport waiting to fly to Austin to go to the national, national titles because there's 43, there's 43 American, Aussie roof clubs in the US There's 43 of them, I think, and just a national tournament every year. And so it's a lot of fun.

1:03:26 I mean, it's, you know, it's fun to hang. It's. Brutal. You know, I'm a hockey fan and even I call it brutal. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I was still doing that in my late 30s, so it was fun. But I'm flying, you know, I'm sitting at the airport waiting to fly to Austin to play footy. And I get a phone call from that young guy from from LA and he's like, hey, man, what are you doing right now? Well, I'm, I'm like, well, I'm sitting at the airport. He's like, hey, I need a programmer for a show in LA. There's not a lot of money, but it's a union show and there's 35 days. I can get you 30 days in one hit. I said when you name me there, it's like Tuesday, I'm like I'll be there. So literally I he's lighter. I fly to Austin for the weekend to play my footy tournament. I fly back. I chucked my console in the back of the Mustang and a pack of bags and I go.

1:04:09 And so I went down to LA and I got my 35 days, which got me into 728. And it was funny and it was, it was, it was the show for it was like a YouTube original piece or something. And I hadn't really asked a lot of information when I just said, yeah, 35 days. Cool. I'm there. And so I walk in and on the first day they're like, So what kind of lights do you want to use? And I'm like, what? Well, like we need to, we need to order lights for the show. What do you want to use? I'm like, well, what are we, What are we doing? And it ended up it was a show basically they were taking the piss out of shows like American Idol. They were, they were satire and singing competition shows. And I'm like, oh, you want me to design the rig? And they went, yeah. And they went, OK, so I just got out of my vector works and I just sort of started drawing a plot and I said, what do you guys think of this?

1:04:56 And like, yeah, that's cool. And I think the first rig that I designed was going to cost them 70 grand a week or something. And they're like, well, we've we've only got 50. So it went from being, you know, like the latest LED moving lights to, you know, VL 25 hundreds in MAC2 case, which was fine. You know, it ended up working out really, really well, but it was one of those shows where, you know, every day we would shoot for 12 hours a day with the company and then made the DP and the, and the gaffer would sit there from six until midnight programming the looks for the next day. And then we would come in and we would do that. And we did that for three weeks. And it was like, get your chops down kid.

1:05:36 And it got to the point where I was like, OK, here's 4 basic looks. Pick a color, pick a gobo, right? Moving on next, next. And we just we just had to go through because we were programming. We were programming 3 songs a night. Yeah. So it was pretty, it was pretty full on, but it was a really fun experience and it got me into 728. And so I got my qualifying days for 7/28 and literally I was still living in Portland at the time. And the day I got my, the day I actually flew down to get sworn into, into the union, I get a phone call and it was the gaffer from Twin Peaks. He's like, hey, man, he just got sworn into 728. And I'm like, yeah.

1:06:18 He's like, we've got eight weeks of stage work in LA. Do you want to do it? I'm like, yeah, that's wild. Yeah. It just, it just cascaded. Yeah. And, and so, you know, originally my plan had been to move to the back and forth, back and forth between Portland, LA, you know, pick up shows in both places so I could be at home more. But over a period of time it just got busier and busier and busier in LA to the point, you know, like I, I did two seasons of Hell's Kitchen in Vegas. That was in Vegas for like 3 or 4 months. I did Lady and the Tramp in Savannah, GA. I was there for four months. It was actually interesting. We'll probably talk a bit more about than a while later, but there was a period I'm gonna.

1:07:04 Ask because you mentioned that somewhere in the notes that I got that that meeting, meeting Ben Richard was, yeah, it was a big deal. Oh, yeah. Well, that was a huge deal for me because I remember, you know, back in the day, like I'd like I said, I've always, you know, when once I got into film, but I've always had a love of concert lighting. Like one of the things that first got me into lighting, I remember this is really, you know, for this is before I got into it, you know, the nerd high school here. I remember saying, I remember going to a concert and as a kid I was crazy about like fast cars and jet planes and steam trains and, you know, like mechanical shit, things that did things. Yeah. And I went to a concert and I look up and I see all these lights and they look like jet engines.

1:07:45 And I'm like, oh, jet lights. I want to work on jet lights. Yeah. That was, you know, that's why I wanted to be at VL Tech. I wanted to work on jet lights. Yeah. And I remember watching a bunch of concert videos and then I remember watching, you know, like it was Metallica or S&M or something. And I was like, wow, that looks amazing. Who was the guy that did that? Ben Richards. OK, who's that guy? I got to find out who he is. And then I remember going and seeing Metallica on some tour and versus they were playing at the entertainment center and, you know, I'm like standing there and, you know, like you're waiting for the house lights to go down and, and you know, and suddenly the dudes, some dudes start walking out on stage and start playing. And I'm like, what the what? Some must be wrong. Why are the half lights still on like Metallica's playing in the half lights?

1:08:26 I remember that tour. Yeah, I remember that. Tour and and then, you know, like they play the first song and then it's like, you know, they, they cut into fuel and then the everything blacks out and then the flame pots go off and I'm like, that's the most incredible thing I've ever. Seen. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hooked, Yeah. And I think one of the first time that I sat down with with Benoit, we were talking about stuff and I said, OK, I have to ask a question. And I and I explained that scenario and he was like, yeah, that was me. I'm like, man, that was awesome. Yeah, but I, I'd been working on, I've been working on Perry Mason season 1 in LA and, and Ben had posted that he was looking for a rigging programmer to go and do Ghostbusters up in Calgary. Yeah, yeah, I remember when he did that, Yeah.

1:09:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, he's, he's a, you know, renowned hog guy. And I'd been an Onyx guy from that since about 2010. I mean, like, I cut my teeth back on, you know, hog hog twos and and hog one case back in the day. But I'd started really diving into Onyx in about 2010, and that'd become my console of choice. It's weird that Onyx has even been around that long. Like I it's when did Onyx start? It couldn't. Have been Onyx before that. Well, I mean, Onyx was originally M series by Martin. Yeah, yeah, of course. And you know, that was a carry on from the Maxis series. Yeah. And I'd use, you know, like I'd use the Maxis a bit like Hollywood. So let me give you a weird, let me give you a weird bit of history.

1:09:50 So I worked, I worked at Martin in the 90s and was part of, you know, really getting that company from being a tiny obscure disco lighting manufacturer to being a professional. I got them on their first tours and, and that kind of stuff. And so I was at a trade show in Europe and I ran into these weird Belgian dudes at a booth called Case. And what caught my eye was they had this. And we had been in talks with Compulite. We were in talks with multiple other companies because it was becoming apparent that we were getting screwed by lighting console manufacturers at Martin.

1:10:30 They were, it felt like they were making our fixtures look bad. In hindsight, we were making our fixtures look bad, not them. But we thought that we needed to be partnered with a lighting console manufacturer and the Compulite were difficult. You know, a lot of the other ones were already sort of captured by other manufacturers. And so I see these two Belgian guys and the thing that caught my eye was they had these these moving faders and, and I'm looking at this console and the faders are all moving and I'm like, whoa, that's cool. And so I just started talking to the one guy and I can't even remember his name. And Eric Loader is gonna be texting me as soon as he listens to this podcast and he's gonna tell me all of their names again cuz his memory is incredible. But so anyways, I started talking to these guys and Long story short, we ended up not only partnering with them, but then eventually acquired their company as well. And that's what became eventually Max's. The case.

1:11:32 So yeah, it was my fault. No, I'm start. I've never, I've never actually operated case. I've seen one, never actually operated it, but I mean you know, like and the equivalent of the time back then was like scan commander or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or the navigator. The navigator. Yeah, yeah. The what was what was there was the little high end panel that they manned in the wall and you. Yeah, yeah, yellow belts, LCD controllers. Those ones, yeah. Wall was a master of those Hamilton grievous that at high end there was a few of them. There was a few of them back in Perth back in the day and I used to few of them in this pack. Yeah, yeah. No, I'd, I'd originally, like I said, I cut my teeth in Oz on, you know, hog one case hog, hog twos, you know, the echelons, Jans event series, a whole bunch of stuff.

1:12:15 Yeah. And I was on the rigging crew on a movie in Hawaii and up until that point, like working in Portland before I moved to LA, it's 2010 ish in in LA. Someone would be like, oh, you know, here's a, here's a naval roller queue. Use that for your show. Or hey, the the rigging gaffer owns a whole, you know, like a hog hog. Use that. OK. So I just used whatever console was throwing them away, which was good because you had to stay on top of things and you had to learn different things. Yeah. That's wild. You know, I kind of missed the Grand MI train. No one ever brought one of those in, so I never really got to fight with one of those. Yeah. You know, like the rental company that I worked for in Perth when I left in 2003, a week before I left, I got a Grand MI one full size. And I'm just like, really?

1:12:56 It happens now. Thanks, fellas. Yeah. Yeah. So I was doing this movie in Hawaii in 2010, and Jeff comes up and he's like, hey, man, what kind of console are you on? I went, why? And he's like, oh, we're doing a whole bunch of stage stuff on this thing in North Carolina. When we finish in Hawaii, I want you to come and program. Can can you know if you've got a console, you can bring a win? Yep, I can make that happen. So basically, I called 1/4. I did a bunch of research and I called a friend of mine, Joe McGinley, who I'd worked with at Hollywood Lights in Portland, and said, dude, I've got to buy a console. I'm thinking about this. He's like, dude, you got to call Matthias at at Martin. He's got this new thing called the M1 coming out. You're going to have to check it out, OK? So I called Matthias.

1:13:38 I'm like, hey, man, Joe told me to call you and talk to you about this thing. I need something that'll do this, this, this and this. He's like, Oh yeah, this will do that. I said, OK, I'm in Hawaii. Can you get me a demo? We've got one in Seattle. Can you give it to me in Hawaii? No. OK. I need it the first week. I need it the week before Christmas. We can air fright you on from Denmark. Cool. Here's a check. Thanks. Never seen it. Never touched it. I'd. I'd seen some photos of it and I read the specs went, yeah, that's cool. So I bought it and we took it to we took it to North Carolina. My first show on it was on a $200 million Hollywood feature. And it was so new, there wasn't a manual. I'd be like I'd be standing at the desk on. Yep. Cool. You need this to happen. Matthias, tell me how to make this happen.

1:14:18 Now. Now. I need to know now. OK, Thanks. And so, you know, that started my relationship with Matthias and. Why Martin? Yeah. And so anyway, that's how I sort of got into Onyx. It was friends. Yeah, it was. I was, like I said, I was living in Portland. Martin. Portland was a Martin town. Yeah. There's one guy that had an MI and another guy that had a Hog and another guy that, you know, the theaters had ATC consoles. But for live and stuff, it was all Martin. Yeah. It just, it felt, I felt comfortable and instantly. I I actually have a funny story about Martin in Portland too. So when I first started at Martin in 2000 or in 1991, I'm Canadian, I don't know shit about the United States. And suddenly I'm the West Coast regional sales manager for Martin.

1:15:04 And so I've been to California to the NAMM show a whole bunch of times because I used to own a music store and I always went to NAMM, but outside and I've been to Vegas, but outside of that, I haven't been anywhere in the West Coast really at Seattle when I was a musician and stuff. But so I'm, I'm just ringing up all of these different dealers that were on our books. And so I called Rich Fuller, who at the time of the Hollywood lights and, and I said, hi, I'm Martin, I'm Marcel with Martin and I'm coming to Portland and I'd like to come in and see you. And he goes, fuck off, click. And I, I call him back and I'm like, Rich. And he's like, yeah, didn't I tell you to fuck off? And I said, yeah, but what's going on here? Like, I'm coming up there.

1:15:50 I just want to come in and meet you. And he says, have you not like, do you guys not keep notes on accounts or anything? And I said, why? What happened? And he said, well, you, you sold me fog machines that caught fire and nobody ever solved the problem. And I don't ever want to see another piece of Martin equipment. And so please don't ever call me again. So I fly up to Portland like the next week or whatever and, you know, go knock on Rich Fuller's door and he goes, what the hell are you doing here? And and I said, well, I told you I was going to come in and see you. And he said I told you not to. And I said it doesn't matter. You know, you seem like a nice enough guy. And, and you know, I want to fix the problem.

1:16:33 Tell me what the problem is. How can I fix it? So I worked my ass off and next thing you know, I sold them, you know, 24 of at the time our biggest lights and and tons of other stuff. And they became a huge customer for Martin over the years. But just because I refused to to go down in literal flames, you know? Yeah, because of a burning fog machine. Absolutely. But anyways, my stories aside, gone no. No, of course. Yeah. So that's kind of how I end up on on M series, which eventually became Onyx. And like I said, I've, I've known Matthias for yeah, to be going on 15 years. Yeah, he's a good guy, super fun. I was, I always like catching up with him. Yeah.

1:17:13 And yeah. So I was in, I was in Lai was doing season 1 of Perry Mason. And there's a, there's a Facebook forum, which is all, you know, Hollywood programmers. And Bennett posted saying he was going up to Calgary to do Ghostbusters and he did a rigging program. And I was like, oh, that'd be cool because I kind of wanted to dip my toes back into the hog world again because it's very, very widely used in Hollywood. And I set off, you know, if you get a little hog from anyone, Ben's the guy to learn it from. And so him and I were. Interesting. I think Ben was on the podcast. No, no, he was on the podcast, but he was telling me. I just seemed to recall him, him doing this thing, this Ghostbusters when and he was on the podcast and it was secret, but we didn't start the podcast until 2019. So.

1:18:07 Yeah, yeah, it was way before that. Yeah. I don't remember something about him going to Calgary because he said I got to go to Calgary something and I can't talk about it. Maybe there was. There was another Ghostbusters filmed in Calgary. Or something. It's just the one. It was just the one. I mean, it was a few years ago. My old sounds about rock on me right now. We were, we were in discussions 19. It was 2019 because we were in discussions, you know, we were talking about me going and doing it that with him. And then I got a phone call about going to do Marvel's one division. And, you know, like, if you work, if you're, if you're a film lighting programmer, like Marvel's, like the peak of the mountain, that's really bad, No. Kidding.

1:18:48 Yeah. And so, yeah, I was asked to come and do you know, because that's when they were starting to really get into streaming television and I got a phone call. Hey, man, can you come to Atlanta and do one division? I was like, Yep. Wow. So off I went and it was one of those things, it was a really cool experience. Go to go to Atlanta for 5-5 months, work at Trellis, work on this big Marvel production. And you know, it was, it was a really, really cool thing. And it was one of those moments where you know, like you're like, oh, my career is doing this. I'm finally getting to this point that I want to be at and then COVID happens. Yeah. And you know, it was interesting. We finished, we finished filming in Atlanta in end of, I think it was the last week of February and we were supposed to take three weeks off and then we were going to go back to LA and film a few more weeks in LA.

1:19:43 You were taken 3 weeks off to to slow the curve. But no, no, well, there was, there wasn't a curve at that, so I didn't even start that stage. Yeah. So I fly by. That we just didn't know, right? Right. Yeah. I fly back to Portland, fly back to, yeah, fly back to LA, get my car. I just got in a new apartment because I knew I was going to be in LA for a couple of months, Went back to my house in Portland and then sat there for the next 3 1/2 months waiting for things to come back up again. And then you know what it was supposed to have been, you know, three weeks of shooting at the end of one division ended up being, I think, 6 or 8 weeks. Because they decided to rewrite a whole bunch of the story and recast one of the kids. There was a whole bunch of stuff. So it turned into this big, you know, we were one of the first shows to come back out of the gate post COVID. And you know, it was, it was this sort of a bit of a lifeline after that big, you know, after that big break, because my gear, it's been shipping back from Atlanta and landed at the rental house in Los Angeles.

1:20:49 And basically the the week it landed, everything got shut down. So all of my gear was locked up in the rental house. I hadn't touched the lighting console in, you know, four months. And then I'm like, I'm back on the movie. So I'm like, what is this? How does this go again? OK. And then you're back into it. Yeah. So yeah, did that and then. So you were only off for a few months because of COVID? There's about four months, yeah, four, 4 1/2 months. Yeah, I know television and and movies and stuff were a lot quicker to come back. And then obviously live events. Yeah, totally. But yeah, three or four months, that's like a nice break. That's not, not necessarily you know, life changing like it was for so many people in our industry or companies in our industry.

1:21:34 I, I remember talking with Ben a bunch of times during that as well and what he was going through and, and those kinds of things. So. Well, and one of the, one of the things that happened during a lot of that period is a lot of people got together and they were doing podcasts and talking to each other and, and, and doing things. And this is kind of what ties into the Ben thing again, in a minute, You know, I'd been doing some stuff for Obsidian and I did some, some training stuff for them during COVID and worked on a few shows. And then I was still really heavily into the into the sort of M series Onyx stuff because I was, you know, Hell's Kitchen is all done on Onyx. Love is Blind is down on Onyx.

1:22:18 There's a whole bunch of that sort of reality TV stuff that that if you know, Ed Molson, if you guys do, it's all on its base. So it's kind of I float in with those guys every now and again. And I was sort of trying to get into the like I said, dipping my toes in the hog thing. And I was sort of had some questions about some networking stuff. So I called my friend Elton James is a big 728 Hulk program which to like both Suicide Squad movies. He's working on a new Superman movie like he's he's he's in the top five somewhere. I don't know which one, but he's in the top five. And I called him up and we, you know, I had to ask him this question about something and it turned into this three hour discussion about, you know, our programming philosophy and how we work and how we like to work and the things, you know, And I was just talking about things and I said, you know, I felt like, you know, one division had done some really good stuff in my career because he's like, I really like what you did on one division. That was really cool.

1:23:13 And like to hear that from him was like, like, this guy's one of the guys and he's complimenting me. And I said, I think, I think, I think it did pretty well for my stock. He's like, dude, if you're a hug guy, you'd be in the top 10 already. Yeah, Really. Wow. OK, time to think. Time to think. So literally the next day I called a mate of mine. I'm like, have you heard a spare Rd. Hog? And he went, yeah, I said can I borrow it? He went, Yep. So I went over and I picked it up and you know, I was key programming on a, on a fairly big TV show working 70 hours a week. I would go to work for my 10/12/14 now day, whatever it was. I would come home and basically I sat down at the road hog for a couple of hours a night and started pressing buttons, going through and making notes, making Cheat Sheets to all this sort of stuff. And I was like, OK, so this is basically the same. I kind of remember most of this, but the carryovers are very similar.

1:24:05 You know, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, you know, it's like all consoles basically do the same thing. It's just the keystrokes and. You know my. Shit and text. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I just have to remember when I'm on a hog, I have to speak Yoda as opposed to like, you know, Onyx base regular English. Yeah, as soon as I speak, Yoda, I'm fine. That's funny. So I was doing all that, and Elton calls me up one day and he's like, hey, you go, man. I'm like, yeah, good. He's like, how you going with the hog thing? I said, oh dude, it's going really good. Like the work that had to do this and this and this and this. He said, do you reckon you could do a show with her? I said, but give it a go. And he's like, oh, I've got a friend that's looking for a program where I said, Oh yeah, what's the what's the gig?

1:24:46 He said oh, it's second unit on Black Panther 2. Damn. I would know. I said, oh, who's who's the guy who's like, he's like, oh, it's the guy that did Avatar, right? So who's that? His name's Dan Riffle. OK. Yeah, he did, He did. He did the second Avatar movie. And I think he just that that thing that just came out about Saturday Night Live, he did that as well. He's done some big stuff, big stuff. And I said, what you did, you think this is a little, a little much for me at this stage? He said, he said, do you reckon you can do it? I said, I said, I reckon I can give it a go. And I said don't find me in the first week, I should be fine. He said, all right, cool, I'll give you a number then. So he he gave Dan my number.

1:25:32 Dan called me up. We had a conversation. I said, I said, listen, man, you know, I know how to do the job. And I always have this conversation when a gaffer calls me up. I'm like, OK, this is who I am. This is kind of how I work. I'm going to bring this, this and this. I would hope that you would bring this, this and this. And if they if they say yes, I usually take the job. Yeah. You know, and so, yeah, we had a really cool conversation. And then, then the thing that sealed the deal was he said, oh, Scott Barnes is the lead programmer and Scotty's the guy. Yeah. Scotty is the guy in Hollywood. So I was like, so I'm going to be on stage 1 and Scotty's going to be working over on stage 2. He went, Yep, if I've got any problems, I'm just Nick walked next door and asked Scotty.

1:26:17 So it seemed like the perfect, the perfect thing. So I go and I do that. And my philosophy was if I don't get fired in the first week, I can do this. Yeah. Because, you know, I've done shows similar to that level. It wasn't. It wasn't anything totally different from what you're. On a big console. Yeah, but like I said, I'd literally spent, you know, it was like cramming for an exam. Yeah. And literally had a notebook where I'd written down and haven't. Been on a movie set and you know, Yeah. Under fire, as it were. Yeah, I'm used. I'm used to your, your idol next to you, you know, Right. Yeah, it was. It was tough. But it was all again, you know, like.

1:26:58 I've I've had. Been very lucky, I think, in my career that I made the right people at the right time. Yeah. And, and Dan was great. And he really knows, really knows what he wants. He knows how to ask for it. He knows how to communicate with a programmer, which not a lot of gaffers necessarily do. The really, really good ones too. Dan's probably one of the best. And it was funny because, you know, we did the first couple days and I was kind of like, Yep, cool, come and Yep, here it is. Got it. OK, next, next. We get through everything. And I got him at the end of the second day and I was like, hey, man, I just want to check in and, and see how you're feeling about everything. I think the communication is good. How you feeling about the workflow? He's like, yeah, no, I said I think it's really good.

1:27:40 I'm like, oh, that's cool, man, because I haven't really programmed on a hog in like a decade. And his fights just dropped. And he went, really? I said, yeah, I thought I told you that. And he's like, oh, well, you're doing really good, just keep it up. I went cool, That's awesome. So I went and did that. And at the time I'd been doing ATV show called The Offer, and I had to leave The Offer to go and do Black Panther. But it was one of those things, you know, I was never really wanted. Like if I start a show, I want to finish the show, but when you get a phone call to do something like Black Panther, you go and do it. So I did that and then I came back and I finished the offer. And during the course of that, well, like I said, while I was studying the hog thing, a lot of the guys had done a series of videos during COVID.

1:28:35 And one of the videos, it was, again, it was Scott Barnes, Elton James Benoit, Dave Slot Key, Josh Satch, they're all sitting there talking about hog and how they use it and their process and all this sort of stuff. And I watched it and there was a there was a thing that Benoit said, I'm like, I think he means this, but I'm not 100%. Oh, OK, so I just got onto Facebook and I was like, hi, Ben, it's jokey. I was watching this video and you said this. I just wanted to clarify what you meant. So he messaged me back and it started this dialogue and he's like, oh, what are you doing right now? I said, oh, I'm doing. I'm doing Black Panther 2 in Atlanta. I'm doing doing. This little movie. Yeah, well, we did. We did one, we did one section of second unit and then I went back to the offer and then that finished and then we did we, they called me back for the second part, which was like, wow, I did a good job.

1:29:20 I guess I won. Yeah. And so I was, I was on that and I was talking to Ben. I'm like, well, I'm doing this thing in Atlanta. He's like, oh, what are you doing after that? I said, never really have any lined up after that. And he's like I said, I've got this little movie I need a programmer for, can you come and do you want to come and help? And I was like, oh, yeah, cool was was this little movie called 80 for Brady. And it was like, you know, Sally Field and Jane Fonda. It was it was it was a fun little thing to work. And it wasn't big, but it was a chance to work with Benoit. And, you know, if you're going to learn hog, you learn from a master. So I thought, oh, this would be really good. And, you know, I knew who he was and I'd always been interested to meet him and work with him. And so I walked in on the first day and he was super cool. We get along.

1:30:02 You know, he's he's Canadian, so I don't have to explain the jokes. Yeah, it's just helpful. And so we sat down the first day and I said, OK, I said, you know, I'm going to be setting up your console for you. What do you want? He's like, oh, well, this, this and this. I went OK, So I went through and I did all that. And I was like, well, you know, in my experience, you've got this, but I would also want these things. So I built in that as well. He walks in the next day. I'm like, OK, so I did that. And then I did this and that. Could have gone either way, right? Like that could have been bad or that could have been good, yeah. But he's like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And so we just kind of, we just kind of hit the ground running and, and we found, you know, we just a very similar philosophy in the way we work and post relaxed and, and just cool. And so I worked with him on that for about 3 weeks. Oh, sorry, I think the show went for six or eight weeks, but about 3 weeks into that, he's like, what are you doing after this?

1:31:04 I said, I don't know, I'm not sure I'm going to see what's what's going on. He said, well, I haven't locked it in yet, but I may, I may have a job. You might be interested. I said, Oh yeah, what's that? He says, well, happens in a Galaxy far, far away. Oh, wow. Do tell. And he asked me to be his rigging programmer on Skeleton Crew, which has just come out on Disney Plus recently. Yeah. And it was one of those things I, I I am denied about it because at the time, I was living up in Valencia, you know, Valencia, Santa Clarita, and Star Wars was shooting down in Manhattan Beach. And that would have meant, you know, two, 2 1/2 hours of driving every day. Yeah, and again, it was one of those things like I, you know, I wasn't concerned about having the chops to do the job or anything, but I was a bit and I called Elton and I was like, hey, man, I just got to run this by you. You know, Ben Wyers just asked me to do Star Wars with him. And he's like, why are you calling me? I'm like, what?

1:32:05 What do you mean? He's like, dude, it's Ben Wire and it's and it's Star Wars. Just say yes. Yeah, OK, He's got a. Point. Yeah, he's got a point. He absolutely did. And what was cool about it, what was cool about it is I've worked, you know, like I said, I've worked in the film industry since 2006 and films very different to, you know, theater or rock'n'roll or whatever. You know, you have, you have the first unit crew that's on set making the movie and you have the ringing crew that, that prepares everything. You know, like in, in, in concert lighting, the, the, the touring crew comes in, they set everything up and then they run it. Whereas in film, you, you have a rig crew and you have a shooting crew. And yeah, you know, how those two departments interact is critical to the way things work and how efficient, how efficiently they work. Yeah.

1:32:55 Now, you know, like I said, until the advent of LEDs, you know, in mid twenty 10s, it was all tungsten lights and, you know, SUDI 80 dimmer packs or sensor acts and it was just lots of cable and lots of power and all this sort of stuff. The technology's really changed. Yeah. You know, it used to be if you had two universes on a show, that was a lot. You know, one of our one of our seven stages on skeleton crew at 128 universes. Jesus, wow. So. Lights are more reliable now too, like there's not as much repair being done because the heat is. The heat isn't as extensive as it used to be with all the discharge lamps and tungsten lamps and stuff.

1:33:36 But now you've got all these multi parameter fixtures like, you know, like Skype channels, 20 channels, the vortex is 20 channels. You know you can you can get a like a Skype panel S 360 to 196 channels per fixture. Yeah. So how we now go about data infrastructure and and networking is hugely different. And so, you know, I hadn't, I hadn't actually really used any artnet until 20/15/2016. It wasn't something that I did. You didn't need it? Yeah. DMX was then it. Became a thing and and then that was the thing that I became super interested in. So you know, Ben calls me and he's like, hey, do you want to come and do skeleton crew? I said, OK, here's here's how I'd like to approach this. Instead of us working for the rigging crew as DMX techs, why don't we do lighting control as our own department? And he's like, what do you mean?

1:34:29 I said, look, you draw the plots that in conjunction with the gaffe and the DP, we work out the numbering, we work out where all the data cablings are on. Basically we deliver lights to the crew that are set up ready to rig. They rig them, plug in the power. We give them access to the data stuff. We do the networking, we do the DMX work, we do all that stuff. They just have to worry about making sure that there's power there and the lights are we're going to make sure that they work. You know, that was, that was the basic overview, like let the data nerds do data nerds shit, Let the rigging crew do electrical stuff. And they went, you know, there's only one it was. Carved up like that though. Anyways, is it? Is it due to different unions or?

1:35:12 No, I mean, we're all, we're all in the same union. But the reality is laying at four and setting up managed networks, which is the two very, very different skill sets, and some guys just aren't interested in learning that. Yeah, It just seems like in the live event space, it's all done by the same cruise, you know, whereas it's very specialized and very departmentalized in, in, it is compartmentalized in, in. What TV and movie? That's just the nature of the way a film set works. Yeah, Yeah. It was the most confusing thing to me when I got onto a film set. And, you know, Hayes machines were done by special effects.

1:35:56 I'm like, isn't that a lighting job because there's a lighting guy and concert filled lighting. I always did smoke machines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, that's the way it's partitioned up, you know, like, you know, hair departments, one thing, makeup departments, another thing, costume departments another thing. Why does it not makes, you know, and that's all stuff that's on an actor. Yeah. Why does it not make sense that, you know, lighting control would be one thing, Man's power would be another thing. Yeah. It's, I think it's just got to the point where some of this stuff is so specialized. Yeah. Well, the the other thing I'm kind of curious about is that relationship between the because I don't, I really don't know Jack shit about television or or movie, film lighting. I've supplied a lot of it over the years, but I don't know anything about it.

1:36:42 But when, when we're looking for that relationship between between you and who's the person that you answer to as the programmer? Is that the as the as the key programming you answer to the the chief lighting technician or the gaffer? Yeah, the gaffer. You know he he is the. Gaffer is the gaffer lighting programmer relationship similar to the LD lighting programmer relationship in a, in a concert tour or a concert. Yeah, yeah. So basically LD would stand there and say what I'm thinking is maybe a red look around the the the blah blah blah, and focus on, you know, her dress it, it's or whatever. It's, it's more it's sort of broken down again, because effectively in on a film set, the director of photography is a lighting designer.

1:37:28 He's the guy that says, OK, we're going to put the camera here. There's going to be a backlight on chalky that that back wall's too bright, dim that down the light and the alcove there take that down 20%. And depending on the relationship between the the director of photography, the gaffer and the programmer, either either the the DP is going to filter everything through the gaffer, who then gives the commands to me or how I like to do it. I like to be because the DP will have a big car with big screens, so we can see what all the cameras are doing. I actually really like to park myself right next to the DP. So it's literally me, the gaffer and the DP. And I'm understanding that I'm just listening to their conversation. I'm just doing things. Yeah. And then they look at me and they're like, oh, you did it all. I went, Yep, yeah.

1:38:09 And then, and if you have a really good relationship with your gaffer, while your gaffer's out on set, moving something around, the DP will turn you and say, hey, man, can you do this? And I'm like, hey, boss, the boss just asked me to do this. Go ahead, you know? Yeah. And then it then then it becomes. Dynamic. So the the LD or the the DP is kind of split or, or that role, that LD role is split between the DP and the gaffer basically, yeah, the DP is the is sort of the director of it all and the gaffer is the doer. He makes it happen. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, again, there are some gaffers that have very technically, very clever technically. And now they can just sit there and say, you know, like, like Dan Riffle will say, oh, can you take that some, take that high beam and pan it less 15° and then narrow the beam by by 10% and just spot on every time.

1:39:04 Whereas you'll have other guys to be like, yeah, yeah, just pan it, pan it, pan it, pan it. Now it's too, it's too big. Make it smaller and you know, sometimes they really know the language, sometimes they don't, and it just depends on the person. And I think. Part of an important part of my job because you know, I'm like I'm the interface between the lights and the creatives, which is the DP and the gap. So it's my job to like, I actually think as good as I am at punching the buttons, I actually think that my communication skills is the most important part. And are you ever asked to offer feedback? Like does he ever say, what do you think of this? Look, would you change this or that or whatever? Sometimes, yeah, depends on it, depends on the gaffer. They're like, oh, wouldn't you know, Or they'll be like, oh, just give us a color and you're like, OK, what do you think of that?

1:39:49 Yeah, it's close. Have a little bit more red look. Yeah, that's good. OK, cool. Lock it in. Yeah. Yeah. Or you have someone like, you know, Jess Hall, who was the the DP on one division, sends you a spreadsheet. It's like here's my 24 custom colors. And punch them into the console and we also need to sit down. These were created on this light. We then need to Spectra analyze these and create matching colors for these other four lights. Fun. You know, and, but but brilliance in the fact that you've got five different types of light and you can just pull them out and they're going to look exactly the same. It's funny because I remember when Benoit was was making that shift, the transition from rock'n'roll to to television and, and movies and stuff, and he was, it was scary, you know, at the time it was like, hey, you know, I, I really think this could work.

1:40:38 I'm trying to get closer to home. I think it was when his first kid was born or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he just really wanted to spend more time at home. And so it was for the best, most organic reasons. And it's obviously worked out, you know well. Yeah, I mean, he practiced some amazing stuff like, you know, Captain Marvel bullet train. Yeah. Just tons of stuff. Like he's done some big things. Didn't he do the he did the previous Star Wars one? What was that one called? The Obi Wan Mandalorian or something didn't he do? That you know, Obi Wan Kenobi. Oh, Obi Wan, right? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. That was I. Don't watch any of those. I was AI, was a Star Wars fan, but then it just got too complicated for me and I gave up.

1:41:22 I gave up. I go for simpler movies. So much. A lot. But yeah, you know, like, and it was funny when he asked me to do it, I was like, OK. And we sort of worked out a plan and. And luckily everyone was pretty on board with trying it this way. Yeah. You know, we, we had a, you know, a younger rigging gaffer that was interested in trying a different. And I think maybe not, you know, like this will take some of this pressure off me. These guys know what they're doing. Yeah. Because you know, we ended up, we ended up running seven or I think at most we had eight stages running at one. No, it's 7 stages running at one stage. We had a, we had a server on each stage. They were all networked. We were jumping between buildings using VLAN's.

1:42:05 You know, you've kind of. Become an expert in that world, right? And, and the data and, and like, I mean you, you certainly, I've checked out your socials and stuff. And by the way, Congrats. I mean your, your content, your content creation and delivery, like even just the, the, you know, the unbox stuff that you're doing. I love that kind of stuff. And you're doing a really, really good job on content creation. And, and I don't know what I didn't look at what your views are or anything. And I don't really care, honestly. It's either good or it's bad. I don't care how many people look at it, and it's one of those things, numbers are always going to be small anyways. They're always going to be small. I mean, it's just the nerds that TuneIn and I love you guys. Thanks for joining.

1:42:50 Look where I can subscribe. I'm nerds. Kidding. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's that's where I started at. It's like when I was a young guy getting into lighting. I could tell you everything about every light and what was in it. Yeah. How many Cobos it had and how many channels even. Like these days, I just don't. Does it look pretty cool? That works for me. Does it do the job I name? Does it do cry? Because it's a whole other job staying on top of that stuff, you know, and I used to pride myself. But like, you know, I used to sell. I still do. I own a company that sells a lot of sound systems. But I can't like I have no, I used to know how to walk up to like an old sound craft 24 channel on soul and be able to control sound for somebody, right? Or a band, you know, there could be a four or five piece band on stage and I could make it sound decent.

1:43:34 Yeah. These digital consoles with Dante and all this stuff and plug insurance and everything together. I have to get no clue. I couldn't even turn the thing on. No. Idea he's a he's he's a let me let me give you a story that ties in the DP, the DP gaffer programmer relationship yeah yeah. Star Wars and, and how relationships can affect things so yeah, we were doing skeleton crew and like I said part of my job as the rigging so basically my job is the rigging program is to set everything up so that Ben I can walk in on the day and just do his shit right. Like my job is to make sure that you know, like the the systems up the network works all the lights work he can get the vision that he needs.

1:44:16 Basically it's my job to make sure everything works the minute he walks in the door that's the job. Yeah, part of that job is, is sometimes selecting what kind of lights are going to get used because like, you know, like he'll be like, hey, man, the gaffer wants to do this kind of gag. Can you find a lot that'll do it? Because like, he's on the, he's under the pump all the time. You know, when they're filming, it's go, go, go, go, go. Especially on a show where you've got, I don't know, you know, 700 LEDs on a set and you've got to make certain ones flash and do magic and this pixel mapping happen and, you know, yeah. So sometimes it's like, hey, man, we're doing this gag and we need a lot that'll do the thing. And, you know, one instance of that was I got a phone call. Hey, man, can you go and see the DP and he wants to ask you a question.

1:44:57 I said, OK, he said, he said, oh, we're doing this thing and and you know, we went, someone was saying we should move A use a moving light, but I want to use a projector. And I'm like, OK, what do you want to do? And he says, well, there's a scene and the kids are going through the forest on speeder bikers and we need to do kind of the dappling thing. And I went, you got a can you open up your laptop? Go to YouTube, look up Journey to mysterious Island flying base and it brings up this video from a movie called Journey to the Mysterious Island where the characters are flying through a forest on these giant base. And that was that was again that was the show I did with Jeff in 2010. And again you've got you know, you're on a green screen stage and you've got these people and this green thing which in CG they're going to turn into base.

1:45:44 How do you get the dapplege of the the forest? You know, give me 8 Vipers and let me put in the animation wheel if you get that breakup. And so I show him that video in 2024 three or whatever it was 2022. It's like, yeah, that's cool that that's what we want to do. OK, I call the rigging gaffer. Can you get me to Maximus? Thanks. And I said, so how do you, how do you want to do this? He said, well, we're going to put a projector on a camera crane and then we can lift it up and down and, and move it around and make it do all that stuff. I said, well, you know that thing I just showed you? We just did that with moving lights. He said tomorrow, let's just try the moving lighter then. OK, so you know, day of the test, we come in, they've got this big projector, they've got a point at a wall.

1:46:26 I'm like, OK, what are you going to play on that? He's like, I'm going to play. He plays me something and I said, how bright is that? He says, oh, it's as bright as it gets. OK, so I grab one of the Maximus as I crank it up and I put in an animation well wheel with with I think put a prism in it or something as well, just to give it some movement, right? And then I start dialing it up on the intensity and I'm like, OK. And I'm like, is that as, is that as bright as that projector gets? And he went, yeah, yeah, that's at 100%. He's like, what's the light at? And I went 12. Yeah, that's hilarious. He went, really 12? And I went, yeah, and then I just cranked it up to full. I said, how many of these do you want me to get? And he said, yeah, give me 10 of them. That's hilarious.

1:47:07 And again, you know, like, again, like this, this comes down to part of my job, which is to, to, to take. I think this is what I like about film is it's not, you know, I mean, I do. There are days I miss you just get to do that cool eye candy through the smoke shit that you do. Yeah, yeah. Rock'n'roll. You know, like that's there are days that I missed that. But but, you know, at the pinnacle of film, you're having to sort of interpret creative visions from multiple different angles and then create something that reflects that. And sometimes it's like, get me this light or use this color or get this angle or let's see that gobo and that let me jump into. A controversial topic though.

1:47:49 So isn't AI going to get rid of most of that stuff at some point like it? Like won't AI be able to look at that forest thing and make it look exactly like you want it, flying bees and all? And aren't we pretty damn close to that right now? Here's here's. Maybe I don't know. I do know. I know that the first time, you know, cuz I'm, I'd watched the Mandalorian. I'd watched some of the Star Wars stuff. Yeah. And the first time that I walked onto the volume stage, there wasn't anything on it. There wasn't a set. It was just this black box. And I went, Oh yeah, cool, whatever. What's cool That. Yeah. And then a couple of days later, I walked on and there was a set built on it and there was background content and there's people walking around on the on, you know, and I went, holy shit, this is a Star Wars show.

1:48:39 This is oh, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I do know that if you watch it enough and if you know what you're looking for, you go, oh, that's the volume. Oh, that's the volume. Oh, that's the volume. It's like, you know, the early days of CGI, you could really tell it was CGI, you know, like you, like I recently, I recently had that throwback thing. Like I went and watched, I think it was like The Last Starfight, which was one of the 1st movies that ever used digital animation as a thing. And, and like, it's still really cool. Be like, man, that I don't know if that's aged well. Like it it, it looks great because it looks really cheesy. Yeah, doesn't look great because it looks great. Well, go back and watch the original Star Wars. I mean, it's ridiculous, you know?

1:49:22 But here's the here's the difference. Like the the very first, you know, like Episode 4, the first Star Wars movie that first. And I remember seeing it at the drive in in 77. I was 3. But I remember this that first thing where like the big Starship comes on. Yeah, you're like, holy shit. Yeah, it looks real. And the reason that it looks real is it was a model that someone shined a light on. Yeah, it was actually a real object in space and in. And even particularly something like Blade Runner, right. Blade Runner, to me, one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. Yeah, all of the miniatures of that in that, you know, real models, real lighting, real smoke, like you can't CG, I don't know.

1:50:11 CGI and AI are so different though, like AICG. I I agree with you. I don't like a lot of the Netflix big budget movies bore the hell out of me. You know, like I just watched the Jamie Foxx and and Cameron Diaz one. It was pretty good. But I mean, usually they're so boring, the big effects and the big, you know, it just looks so stupid. Correct. But you know, if you have you checked out Sora at all the, the AI app, check out Sora or even just search YouTube for some Sora videos. I mean, it is amazing what they're pulling off already with AI. And so I don't know, I don't know how long. I don't know when I know that I, I believe that also, obviously Hollywood is, is losing their minds over it right now because you know who owns the content?

1:51:04 How does that all work? What's it all? You know, I it's such a scary. And I think, I think that's a big part of the restructuring that's happening now. It is. You know, you know, Ben and I did did skeleton crew together and then we went and did after that we went straight into another show called the Residence, which is which for Netflix and Shondaland. There's some really funny concept. You know, the idea is there's a there's a, there's a state dinner at the White House and someone kills the head usher of the of the White House staff and they're bringing this kooky kind of like investigator the workout who did it. The ironic thing for me is the fact that the state dinner was being held for the for that the Prime Minister of Australia, and the entertainment for the evening was Kylie Minogue.

1:51:50 So I got to meet Kylie, which was hilarious. Yeah, it was really cool. But but, you know, another, again, another big show. You know, we got one stage. It's got like, you know, 700 vortexes on it or something. Like it is big, big. And, you know, like, again, that kind of peak of the career thing. And then we have the writers strike and the actors strike and then come out of that. And now there's just been this sort of implosion in Hollywood. It's part of the reason that I moved. I moved back to Australia for a while, but yeah. But a lot of those strikes seem to be around like protect me from AI. But you can't. At the end of the day, you can't. Like you can't protect everyone from AI. It just isn't going to.

1:52:36 Work. Yeah. And it's the same thing. Like, you know, welding, you know, robots replaced welders in car factories. Robots replaced spray painters in car factories. Yeah. You know, robots replaces surgeons, putting surgeons in some. Yeah. Well, and there's this. Robotic surgery, that's that's cutting edge cancer surgery and a very good friend of mine had I think it was prostate cancer surgery done by a robot that he was one of the really early recipients of this new technology and it cured him of cancer. It's gone. Yeah. So I. Mean, I think I've always been one for embracing technology.

1:53:20 AI is a tough one, though. It's scary because it probably the most impactful, this is the most impactful new technology. I think even everything that this planet and and our human race has gone through, I think this is probably the most impactful change that we're about to to be hit with is. Well, and here's my take on it, whether it's whether it's robotics or automation or any form of technology, at the end of the day, it's just a tool and how we how we implement it, what we learn about it, how we use it effects how it affects us. You know, like, you know, like the guys that were like, you know, and you remember the the giant old 96 channel lighting consoles that were all famous. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure when the 1st when the first whole hog came out, the guys that had spent their lives using those were like, oh, that means a little catchy. Yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:54:15 I ain't using that little thing, yeah. Now I can literally run, you know, now I can literally run 250 universes from my laptop. I mean, it's, yeah, it's mind blowing. Yeah. But again, you know, and it comes back to the, you know, console, just a computer with a lot of buttons on it. How you use it determines, you know, how you are about it. And and, you know, I think AI is the same thing. I think there are some, there are some creative forms or creative art forms that AI is never going to replace. There are some that will. How's that going to affect film in the long run? I think that. Yeah. To me, like the future, basically, if Netflix can produce content for 110th of the cost by doing it through AI versus, you know, on location, multiple locations, you know, multiple thousands of people, whatever it is paying actors $10 million and all that stuff, instead they can just create actors and etcetera.

1:55:16 So, yeah, I mean, we could go down a rabbit hole on it and neither one of us can spend all day on that topic. But AI is something I follow very closely and I, you know, certainly the arts in general and, and creative in general is one of the areas that most concerns me. You know, music, I've just created a podcast and and that was entirely AI and within it, the theme music I did on AI, the logo I did on AI. The entire podcast is AI. And in creating the music, I'm a musician And you know the the app is called Suno, Suno dot AI. Check it out.

1:55:58 Someday when you've got time to waste, it's going to blow your mind. You can literally grab your iPhone and hum into it and go and say create a song around that. That's about lighting consoles. Within about 3 minutes, you're gonna have an unbelievable song using that melody. Yeah, in whatever genre, you say. You could say now make it reggae, now make it death metal, now make it jazz, you know, make it a British woman singer instead of, you know, whatever. It's just, it's so insane and. And what I what I do know at the moment is that part of the part of the debate around the writer strike was the fact that, you know, they didn't want AI taking the work of, of scriptwriters, right?

1:56:42 Yeah. And, and one of the questions that no one's quite answered yet is if something's created by AI, who owns it? You know, and that's that's one of the great debates as far as. It is. Yeah, of course. Rewriting and whatever. Yeah, sorry, hate it when that happens. The other one still works. Yeah, it does yeah, let me just so that was that was a big part of that debate. So yeah, I I don't know, like I said, I'm I'm not I'm not full bottle on AI and I probably should get around head into the game, but so I I want to get into. Some other stuff you created, you created a business around, specifically around Onyx control systems, I believe, Yeah, or I think at least that's the primary component of that business anyways. Yeah, like I said, I, I started out in 2010, I bought an M1. And so one of the things that's unique about the film industry is if it, it, you know, and, and this might well eventually change if you're a lighting programmer and you own a console, you get to rent it to production. So I ended up with a lighting console and then I found that I needed another one.

1:57:54 So I needed a backup. So I bought another one and then, oh, hang on, I need these things called nodes. So I bought a couple of nodes and my, my business partner and I created this company chokes any control. And we, we, we had some stuff and we would rent it to production. And then, you know, I found out I'm on another show. So I need another console and I need a couple more nodes. And so one day again, my time with Matthias, he's like, hey, we've got this new thing coming out. I want you to check it out. And he sent me one of the first neutron en fours. You know, the little 4 port node. Have a look at this. Tell me, tell me if it's any good. And you know, I'd I'd used Swiss on, I'd used DMX king, I'd used a few of the other ones that I'd seen around on sets and I'm like, yeah, this thing's pretty cool. It looks solid and you know, like what it does and it's got some cool features in it.

1:58:46 And, you know, so he sent me one and and then I bought another six. So I had 6 nodes and then I'm like, oh, I need an obvious better to go with those. And so I started buying bits and pieces and then I was like, wow, this stuff's really cool. And then like I said, my relationship with Matthias, I was like, do you mind if I'd like make some videos with these things? Because like people keep asking me how to use them. So my partners say to Deborah and I, we started making little, little content things about, oh, this is this is how you work this thing and this is what this does. And yeah, we just watched some. Of those videos, like I, I learned, you know, one of the, I don't remember what the item was even called, but I think it was one of the nodes and you could switch the input and output panels from the back to the front and the sides and all that stuff.

1:59:36 Like very, very good videos. Again, I, you know, I, I definitely compliment you on your content created and, and again, it's not that common. Like, I don't know, do you know a guy named Christian Jackson? Fiona Christian. I know, I know often. I don't know him personally. So Christian's one of the probably the most prolific YouTube in our in the lighting industry. He does a lot of how to videos, a lot of just different types of videos. And he's got, you know, 10s of thousands of followers that more than what I think anyone else has in our industry because it's such a small. Industry, he he, he does a lot. There's a guy called David Henry that does a lot. He does a lot of content as well. Yeah.

2:00:18 But yeah, just kind of started out as like, I would find things that I found interesting. And again, you know, like going back to that guy showing me that thing on that whole hog too. People would call me and ask me questions, like, how do you do this? And I'm like, I'll just make you a video. And and so it started that and then, you know, it turned into this other thing. People would call me up and be like, hey, man, what are you getting your notes from them? Like I just, you know, call these guys. They'll they'll get them for you. You can do a good price. Yeah. And then, you know, Saturday and I were talking about it. I was like, oh, yeah, such and such has called me. I told him to go and see, you know, it's such and such a bag. And it's just like, I know what. Yeah, why? Don't we? Why? Aren't we making a couple bucks on that? Yeah. So we, we, we got together and we called the guys that are sitting and we're like, hey, you know, like, you know, we're referring a lot of people. Could we, could we become a dealer? Yeah.

2:01:09 And they're like, well, you know, you've got to have a storefront and you've got to carry this much stock and, you know, all these, all these things. And I was like, hang on, you guys. You guys don't really understand the film industry. The guys that I work with, they work 70 hours a week. They don't want to go to a storefront. They don't want to do this. But what they want to do is they want me to bring them and show them something or send them a video. And they're going to be like, I want 10. Yeah. Or I want 20, Yeah. And so they were like, OK, well, why don't we give this a go? And we're like, right. And, you know, the next thing you know, we're selling Netron and, you know, Obsidian Netron equipment, you know, to people in LA and people in Atlanta and people in New Mexico and people in for you, man. You know, we're selling all over America. Yeah.

2:01:51 Well, and meanwhile you've probably been single handedly responsible for introducing that product into television and film lighting, you know, and and making it maybe the number 2 to hog in in that market. Absolutely. Console wise, not so much. I mean, you know, the big players in Hollywood, Hog, Grand MAETC. So MA has cracked that market as well. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's definitely been, you know, the, there was a, there was a lot of ETC back in the day because your multicam sitcoms were all, you know, very theatrical style. They would come in, they would rehearse, you know, 3 Cam sitcoms are done like a theatre show. So that was all ETC.

2:02:36 Yeah, You know, Scotty really revolutionized the game when he started using, you know, hogs on big features. And then, you know, so a lot of guys picked that up, you know, the young guys that are coming up now, like I'm going to have a grand to make because it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Yeah, cool. It does. It does everything in the world I can. You know, I mean, the reason that I stuck with Onyx is because I'm just felt super comfortable and it was the console that I was the best on. I mean, I honestly think, you know, with Die Lost, they've got the best pixel mapping engine in the business. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, I mean, isn't there a cost factor? Like I know movies have these massive budgets and stuff, but still like when you can get a console and I don't know the price of a of an Obsidian console these days, but when you can get a console for, call it 1520 grand versus 80, you know? Yeah, Like it.

2:03:26 Yeah. Yeah. Seems to make a lot of sense, you know? Yeah, I mean, that was, that was always the thing. I mean, I, like I said, I, I only bought, I only like I own 5 Onyx consoles in a road hub. There's a reason for that, you know, I've never bought a grand in my because I would, you know, I would rather have be paying a mortgage than paying a console. Payment that makes sense, you know. Most, most of what we do in most of what we do in Hollywood is change intensity and color temperature. Yeah, that's, that's 80% of the work. You know, you've got some, some whizbang stuff to do in there, but you know, if you've got a good pixel mapping engine or a media server, you could do with just about any console. Yeah, yeah, you know, and. Your relationship obvious, obviously, you know, between Max's and and now Obsidian and with Matthias and and the gang over there at at elation slash Obsidian. Obviously this is still a relationship industry. So you, you do business with the companies that you feel comfortable and you feel like, you know, if you're on a, a, a Marvel film set and, and you have a problem, you know that there's somebody that you can reach out to that. You know, it, it's, you know, for me, like if I was doing, if I'm doing, you know, a small, not a small TVI mean you like something like Hell's Kitchen isn't exactly a small TV show. But there are things that I would only use Onyx for. And there are certain things where I'd be like, well, I probably need, you know, the networking capabilities that Hulk has that other show, because, you know, Onyx doesn't do that as well.

2:04:57 And you know, a lot of it is about, you know, how I need, I'm going to need someone to cover me who's available. And if there's, you know, if there's 12 Onyx guys and 30 Hog guys, you know, like it just depends. Yeah, it double s your availability of people. Sure, sure. I mean for me, it's for me. I'm I've always been about what's the best tool for the job yeah, but also what's what fits within my budget and has the best ROI. Yeah, yeah, You know, that was the same thing with me with, you know, like me getting into Netron wasn't just about you know, it's a product that that a guy that I know and respects makes it's it's more for less. Why would I buy a Swiss on that's only got 8 ports when I can buy a Neutron in 12? It's got 12 ports and it's about 400 bucks less. Plus it's got a whole bunch of other feature, you know, like this is whole.

2:05:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. And you know, like that's kind of what, what Sydney control became, started out with a console and a couple of nodes and now it's, you know, like, I don't know, we got six or seven consoles and we had at one stage we had something like 48 data, data racks. Well, I saw, I saw in the video that I watched, I saw some stuff from your warehouse and I was like, holy shit, He's got a lot of inventory in there. He's got lots of stuff going on, you know, You know. Yeah. And and, you know, like it was all about, it was all about the demands of the productions that were happening. And, you know, like I said, on something like Star Wars, you've got, you know, our backbone data network for each of our stages. Just up in the poems, we would have, you know, two big data racks, which is like an EN12 and two RDM 10s. You've got 32 ports of data stuff coming out. Yeah.

2:06:34 That's why. This is before we were even into fully managed networks. Like if I was going to do that show now, it would all be, it would all be fully managed networks with multiple Vlans just to get around all the information that we need. While yeah. And it and it just kind of built up into this thing. And so, yeah, so you know that net. Yeah, just to jump topics again, sorry. Yeah. So last year you moved back to to Australia and but still most of your work is in California or how does that? Work. No, no, no. So I mean, the longest short of it is my, my mom passed away in 20 terrible 2023 In September 2023, my mom passed away. So, you know, mom and dad had always lived in Perth, although they lived in in Brooklyn for about 5 years, which is a really fun time because, yeah, strange.

2:07:27 And I could. Yeah, I know. My mom was, like I said, my mom was a university professor. She was a literacy specialist, and she got hired by the New York Board of Education to be a literacy consultant. To teach New Yorkers how to speak English. Yeah, pretty much, Pretty much. Just kidding. Yeah, it's true though. But she lived, she lived in Brooklyn for five years. So we were all in America for five years at the same time, which is cool. But so, yeah, Mum passed away and you know, my dad wasn't in growth, great health and a bit of dementia going on. So I came back to Australia for about 5 1/2 months and I was here and it was pretty tumultuous year because it was just after the strike and, and a few other things and brutal marriage. Yeah, my marriage broke down and Jesus, you know, I got back to, I got back to LA after, you know, 5 1/2 months in Australia and I was kind of like, you know what, I don't think I like it here anymore.

2:08:22 No, it was just like I said, you might might not have liked Australia, but or might not have liked Perth, but it is seriously one of the prettiest cities in the world. Yeah. You know, and you, I mean, not that you could eat off the sidewalks here, but you just about could. Yeah. And I get back to LA and I'm just like, well. You know it's. Interesting cuz. That's me going from my town in Canada that I'm absolutely in love with. And the people are amazing and the it's clean and it's wonderful and people are kind and you can trust people and you don't even have to lock your car doors and stuff or your house. And then I come back to Florida and, you know, it's a little different than that. And Florida's pretty nice. And it, you know, politically it's pretty easy to deal with in Florida versus, you know, the crazy politics of California. And but I get the same feeling like every time I come back, I go, why am I back here again?

2:09:14 You know, and then, and then it's, you know, 85° while it's -20 in Canada. And I remember. Oh yeah, it was 100 and it was 106 here today, I think. Holy shit, Yeah. It's not that warm here. Not that warm here, Yeah? It'll be like this for, you know, a couple of weeks back to normal. So you just didn't want to live in LA anymore, which I can this. Is a combination of things. I knew I, I'm an only child, so I knew I had to be here to look after my dad, make sure my dad's OK and he's in full Care now, but I still have to be here to sort of manage things. I'm doing that from, from, from California was not a long term prospect and I do.

2:09:57 I knew I had to do that and I'd kind of, I'd had a couple of opportunities to come back to Australia before, like I was invited to come back to Perth in 2008 and program on a movie here. And there was a few people be like, oh man, you should, you should stay in Perth. You could do really well here. And I'm just kind of like, yeah, I've still got, still got things I need to do in America, still got things I need to achieve there. Yeah. And you know, I came back after this last trip and everything that was going on with my parents. I've kind of like, well, I've done, I've done 2 Marvel shows. I've done a Star Wars show. I've kind of feel like I've hit that, done those. Things downhill from here, yeah. Well, no, there's not downhill as much. I mean, I could keep doing that, but it would just be more of that and and anything other than that would be kind of a disappointment.

2:10:41 And I like that. Yeah, I like that. That makes sense. Part of it is at a certain point you just, you're just fulfilling your own ego, right? You know, like everyone in Hollywood wants, every programmer in Hollywood wants to be as good as Scott Barnes. Yeah. There's only ever going to be 1 Scott Barnes. And. And until he dies, no one else is going to be him. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know what? I've. I've, I've worked with him, he said. Awesome guy. I love him to death. I don't, I don't need to be him. I can just. Do that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Becoming him. And then what? You get to the top of a mountain and you go. You know what? And like you now, I got to walk back down. Don't get me wrong, Like if Ben Wire called me tomorrow and said, hey, man, we're doing another episode, another doing another series of skeleton Crew, like I would be on a plane tomorrow.

2:11:26 Yeah, I'm going, I'm going for that one. Yeah. Living in Los Angeles full time and, and doing the grind that is Hollywood because when you're working 70 hours a week and then you've got an out of two hours of commute on either end of that, like, but come on weekend, man, you're just knackered. It's like, I want to, I'm going to sleep all this Saturday, Sunday I'm going to do the laundry, and then Monday I'm going to go and do it again. Yeah. And it's not like you go on a 2 / 3 months and then you get a month off. It's like you work on a show like Skeleton Crew. It's seven months of that. Yeah, yeah. And then you have a week or two and then you do that again for another 5. Or 6. I get it. It's just constant. Well, and on a personal note, I'm real real sorry about your your dad and the dementia too, because I have the same thing.

2:12:07 So one of the reasons I, I built a house in Canada is because my mom is still in Calgary and my sisters are still in Calgary and my mom's been in a home for, I mean, fortunately it's moved really slow with her. She's still alive, still healthy. She's 90. She's turning 93 next week. And you know, she's, I, I shouldn't say healthy. I mean, she's in a wheelchair now and she has no idea what planet she's on. You know, one day I'll visit her and I'm her husband, then I'm her brother, then I'm some asshole who's trying to steal her wheelchair. And. And occasionally she she at least believes that I'm her son, you know? Yeah, Yeah.

2:12:49 But I mean, we're happy to still have her alive, but it's it's so hard when you're dealing. This is it's my brutal thing. Yeah, I mean, my dad's not at that stage yet. He still, he still recognizes who I am. And that's good. But you know what? He'll he'll call me up. I'll be like, hey man, how you doing? He's like, yeah man, I just got back from Melbourne and I went and saw a bunch of family and friends. I'm like, uh huh, yeah, it's cool. That sounds. Like fun? Really. Yeah. Like is it is in is in the log ward in Como. Like he hasn't been anywhere. But last summer my mom told me she she rode her bike to get there to visit me that day. And, you know, my mom rode a bike when she was a little girl and she fell off of it and she's been scared to death of bikes ever since. She don't ride little bikes, you know. But she told me, oh, yeah, I ride it all the time.

2:13:30 I ride it, you know, to to your sister's houses. And I rode it here today and I always ride. My bike. It's amazing the stories they create in their brain. And my mom's really quick. Like if I ask her when was the last time you went to Mars, she'll say, oh, yeah, yesterday I had lunch there. We had grilled cheese sandwiches, and it was really good. And, you know, I mean, she'll, she'll make up the whole story, you know, not whatever happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the secret of that is not arguing and saying that's not the case. It's like, man, that's that was really cool, which I'll tell you which is. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I play games with her, you know, like I'll say, like, I'll just, I'll just go with it. But the one thing that I started doing, and at first the home that that she's in didn't like it. They they sort of said, you know, you're being deceptive. So what?

2:14:20 My girlfriend and I would stop every time we went to visit my mom and we'd pick up a cupcake and we'd bring it in and we'd sing happy birthday to her every time we came to. Visit her it was It was her birthday it was her birthday and she. Loved it. And she'd eat the muffin and everybody would sing and clap and stuff in the place and they kind of reprimanded me saying I was being deceptive and it's not good for a dementia patient to trick them and all this stuff. And I said basically, I said fuck you. It makes her happy, you know, she smiles, she's happy and I'm going to do it every time. So if you want me to do it in another room, I'll drag her in another room and and sing happy birthday. And then they said, you know, we think it's amazing what you're doing. We love it and and other people are starting to do it now, so why not, you know?

2:15:05 Yeah, no, Why not? Yeah, I mean, you know, you want to try and make their lives as happy as possible. And of course, of course. Yeah, it's a terrible place to be. At least, Yeah. Yeah, at least once a week I'll go and pick that up and we'll go after drive and yeah. We'll go and get a couple of. We used to do that. Unfortunately that ends that stage ends because it just becomes so hard to get them out of there and they don't remember. So you're doing it for you, you know, at some point, like, and I hope your dad never gets to that point, but you know, that's how my mom progressed. Like she used to, I used to pick her up. She lived at my sister's house at first when she first got got into this problem. And I pick her up at my sister's house whenever I flew into Calgary and take her out with me to the to the house in the mountains. And she loved it there and everything was fine. And, and then it just got to where she couldn't get up and down the stairs and, and she, she started smoking again for some reason after having not smoked for like 40 years or something.

2:16:03 And she almost burned my house down one day. Like I found a burnt cigarette and she claimed she didn't smoke. She didn't know what I was talking about and all this. So it it just got too hard. Gets a little and then we'd. We'd bring her out occasionally on Thanksgiving or something. But yeah. So anyways, good luck with your dad. I I hope that works out. OK. So now you're now you're a sales guy, right? Well, it's an interesting thing. What had happened was I'd been working, I was working in LA and I was, you know, I had this thing, I had all the, I had all my daughter racks with Neutron stuff in and Power Distribution of the film sets. Very different in the way it's done. You know, we have these, you know, 200 M lunch boxes that we pull out everywhere and you know, normally on the corner of each set you'll have a data distribution point with power.

2:16:50 And also you'll have a here like have a 1200 amp box with a bunch of bytes connectors and then you whack a node rack on top of that. And then just it just got really messy. So I went to the guys at dad come and I'm like, can you guys build me like a rack mount that is like 12 Edison sockets run off 100 amp bytes. And they went, yeah, we can, we can do that. So they built me a prototype and I was like, yeah, that's cool, but can you flip it around so that the sockets lined up more with the ports on an EN12? And they went, yeah, OK, so they, they built me that prototype and I tested it for a while and I was like, yeah, that's really cool. We should build some of these. And that was right before the strike started, But I have, I still have that first one.

2:17:34 And so I was like, oh, that's really cool. And, and later that year I came back to to Perth and I have a friend, Craig Bateson that runs a company called Amigatech. And I went to him because he makes electrical distribution products for the entertainment industry. So, you know, rack mount distros and stage boxes and cabling and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, hey man, I designed this thing with the guys in the states. He's like, I could build that. I said, I'm like, you can build something like that. And he's like, yeah, he's like, yeah, easy man, no worries. So I was like, oh, cool, OK. And so, you know, I thought, Oh, well, maybe we can do something with that. And then, you know, when I came back after a couple of years later after my mom died, he was like, Hey, man, I know you're in town.

2:18:19 I know what happened. He said, hey, man, if you're bored or if you need some money or if you want to come and do something, come and hang out of the shop for a couple of days. And because I've known, I've known Craig for about 25 years. He was a, he was like a young kid with a van with, you know, a few, a few parking bars and he was doing little gigs and stuff. And then he had a small rental company and, and, you know, at the time, before I left Perth, I had a lot of club gigs. I was doing bands and all this sort of stuff. And then I decided to move to America. I called him up. I said, hey, man, I'm moving to the USI got all these gigs. Do you want him? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he began the heir apparent. He, you know, I basically gave him my slate. Of gigs you handed him your business, Yeah. Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

2:18:59 Yeah. And then so, you know, when I was here, he, he, you know, I only ended up working a few, you know, 3-4 days, whatever it was. And then, you know, we kept in touch and he's like, see, and I sort of started to intimate to him that I was going to move back to Australia. And, you know, obviously his focus has always been live entertainment, live events. I'm a film guy. I know film guys. Let's, let's, let's see if we can get a film product line going. Let's, let's see if I can help you build your business. You know, let's see if we can get into the lighting control side of things. Yeah. So there was a few things going on.

2:19:39 And when I basically made the decision to move home, I told him and he said, all right, I've got a job for you. I was just like, well, OK, Because you know, I'd had a few people say to me, look, listen man, if you move back to Australia, throw your hat in the pool as a film program in Australia, you know, you'd be top five day one. And I'm kind of like, yeah, but all most of the major film production happens in, you know, Brisbane or Melbourne or Sydney and, you know, if I'm going to. Work on might as well be in LA, yeah? Might as well be in LA. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a 5 hour flight instead of a 20 hour flight, but can't be there for my dad if I'm in Brisbane flight four or five months at a time. Right. So, you know, yeah, Craig basically offered me a job in sales and marketing, which is again a tie back to that first job that I had at a high school where my, where I learned about inventory control and and customer relations and all that sort of stuff. Yeah.

2:20:33 So I started working for Craig, still running Sydney control in the US, which is one of the reasons that I was, you know, at LDI and met you this year. Yeah, one of one of the things for a few years now, Cedar and I have been running training classes on Onyx for Local 728. We call it the lighting or the film lighting program as boot camp because if you go to any major console manufacturers training class, they're teaching how to be a rock'n'roll program and not how to be a film programmer. So basically we sat down and we wrote a training course for how to be a film programmer. You know how we use, you know, groups and presets differently. How can we, how we can utilize 2D plans differently?

2:21:16 How we can do, you know, the same skill set that you would use in a class, but that's slightly tweaked application for a movie set? Yeah. So we've been teaching that for a few years and we decided to basically record that. And in fact, I'm heading back to LA at the end of February and early March. We're going to be teaching a couple of courses for 7:28 again. We're going to be we're going to be opening up our class to the public for the first time. And we're also filming the advanced portion of the class where we really dive into pixel mapping and, you know, the effects engineering, lots of the stuff. Very cool. At the moment I'm still kind of jumping back and forth between both a little bit, but I'm really, you know, we, one of the things I like about Craig and Omega and the way the business works is that there's this general product line that he makes.

2:22:07 But we had, we had a client call up last week that was like, hey man, you know, I could do a lot of stuff with like corporate gigs. And, you know, we've always got cameras and then, you know, like there's always someone that just wants to take a power board and gaffe tape it to the leg of the tripod and doesn't look very professional. Can you guys come up with something? And so, you know, like we make a large stage box, which is like, you know, power con or true con in and six GPO outlets and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, could we put a power board in like a metal, metal housing? So basically over the course of a couple of days and working with this client, we basically, I said, I said to Craig, I said, all right, what about if we build this? And I just drew up something and, you know, handed over the desk and he looked at it and then he jumped into his design software and he came up with something and he send that to me. And I'm like, yeah, that's cool.

2:22:49 And I said that to the client. I said, what do you think of this? And he's like, yeah, how about, but what about this, this and this? Give that back to Craig. Craig sits there and spends another day drawing it. And, you know, in the course of four days, we'd basically redesign this new product. And we got the we got the cost of the the metal stampings from the from our sheet metal guys today. And so tomorrow I'm going to be able to call the client and say, yeah, it's amazing. That's one of the best things about being a small company is that you, you still listen to your customers. You know, like when you get big enough that you now think that you know everything and use this because I told you, you should use this, right? I hate that. I hate that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you know, that's, that's one of the things. I mean, that's always been Craig's philosophy. If you buy ten of them, I'll build it. Yeah, and that's amazing.

2:23:36 So this customer. It's not very scalable. It's difficult to scale that type of a business. Although like City Theatrical did it, there's a bunch of companies that are sort of like little skunk works manufacturers and they're able to to quickly be able to create those those nichy products. Yeah, just because I want to need some. Where I find it really interesting is, is that a megatech sort of falls and, you know, you have the guys that are just like one guy building something in this garage. And then you have someone like, you know, LSC who builds, you know, Right. You know, we're kind of in the middle. Yeah. You know, we could we could spend a bunch of money on R&D and build a more digital interface and that would put us all into the LSC league.

2:24:17 But that's going to take a lot of capital. But at the same time, we're still in that sort of niche boutique kind of thing where someone says, can you build me this? Yep, we can do that for you. We're going to do that for you in a couple. Yeah. You know, like we. Does con but does Khan do the the Obsidian stuff as well or just elation? They're the, as far as I know, they're the national distributor for for. Obsidian. Well, I know they're elation, but I didn't know if they're Obsidian as well ula yeah. I think they handle more of the neutron stuff than Netflix stuff. OK, so. Yeah. That's a whole interesting, Yeah, but you know, it's again, it's one of my areas of expertise because I'm actually a certified trainer for relation.

2:25:08 So yeah, actually it was really cool. I got to got to go to HQ in in the Netherlands last year and and kit anointed as a trainer for those guys, which was really cool. That's cool. Very nice people. I mean, Eric, Eric is a very, very close friend of mine. He has been for a long time. I'm not close with with Toby at all. I know him, but I'm not close with them. And I was, I was close with Scott and Chuck Davies back in the day, you know, But so, yeah. Well, I mean, this is this is where the Elation guys got really smart. As you know, when when Martin started to sort of empty out the talent pool, they picked up a whole bunch of those guys. They did that's. Been a huge part of their success. I mean, I, you know, like I said, late 90s, you know, Martin was like this company that made these cheap crappy DJ lights. And then, you know, the pinnacle at that stage was, you know, very light or whoever.

2:25:58 And then, you know, 10 years later, Martin was the the thing. Yeah. And elation made cheap little DJ. Lights and it's funny how nice to all. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was all you had, was it? Was got LDI and and Martin and high end had the big booths and and then all of a sudden, like by the early 2000s, Martin and high end had tiny little booths and Elation and Chauvet were huge. You know, it was like what just happened here? Something happened, so it's. Just again, I think it's that ability to manufacture at scale, yeah. Well, I mean, the next interesting step with all of that is going to be seeing, you know, I think everyone's in a bit of a panic to try and find an alternative to manufacturing in China, partially because of the president who's now in the US who's dead set on, on tariffs.

2:26:49 And, you know, it makes it complicated when you're manufacturing in China because you're able to manufacture for, call it, 70% less or 60% less than somewhere else in the world. Well, now if you've got a president who's adding 50% tariffs in your largest market in the world, you know, possibly 50% of your sales, yeah, it's brutal. So you got to find alternatives. And I know a lot of them are scrambling to do that now, so. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's going to be another thing that's going to have an interesting effect on the industry and, and how it how it's going to get a function. I mean, you know, as a guy that runs a sales company, it's going to be like, like, I think it's interesting.

2:27:34 You know, I think one of the one of the advantages that Megatech certainly has is the fact that we're based in Australia. We manufacture in Australia. Our customer base is mostly Australian, although we do have clients in New Zealand and other regions in the apex. So, yeah, you know, for us, I mean, I've had this discussion with Craig, would would not make a lot of sense for us to try and track into the American market just because of the volume and the saturation there and the fact that going to the UL listing is a pain in the arse. All of that, yeah, yeah, more money, your problems. We could, well, no, but I mean this is the thing, the product that we make in Australia would work equally as well in Europe. Yeah. So, you know, that could be, that could be part of the fabulous five year plan.

2:28:17 I don't know. Yeah, yeah. You know the. Well, it's always the argument when, when you're in business, you, you either need to find, you need to create more product for your customers or find more customers for your product. So there's new ways to grow a business. And those are the two. Well, it's it's not that scientific really so. Yeah, and, and it's it's interesting. I had a couple of people with conversations with people that know both Craig and I Craig is a, Craig is a, a genius when it comes to designing this stuff and, and, and the, the thought and the logic and how things work together. You know, like we have a, we have a little, you know, one of the bumper stickers we made recently, it says made by the people who have fought the fight because he's been there and he's done that same as me. So he knows, he knows what clients want. And if he's not sure, he asks them. We, we, you know, our products are built to solve problems that people have faced.

2:29:11 And he's really, really good at that. I'm really good at getting in front of people and being like, hey, you need this and you need this, and This is why this is good. And yeah, you know, like. Well, you gave me that indication right when you said you were in, in that town in, in Oregon and you walked right up to the grip truck and said, hey, you the lighting guys, you know, I'm Chris. Nice to meet you. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean you. Ever. Need somebody? Yeah. That's kind of my personality. Like I'm a I'm a people person. I like interacting with people. I think that's one of the reasons that I enjoy, you know, the training side of what I do so much. You know, when it comes back to someone showed me, I feel indebted in a way. You know, I've got the career that I've got because someone saw me and said, oh, this kid is interested. I want to show him something that I know. Whereas for me, it's like, I want to, I want to, you know, like even when I was, when I was working on movie sets full time, there's always that one guy that was kind of like hanging around the console, kind of like, Oh yeah, what are you doing, man? That looks really cool.

2:30:07 I'm like, are you interested in this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, man, Hang out. I'll show you what I'm doing. You're. So right, you're so right. You know, I have a 20 year old son and I'm trying to teach him the same thing. Like my magic power is, is, is, you know, my network, you know, it's, it's not me. It's the friends that I have. They're, they're the, they're the important people. I'm not, I just, I talk to a lot of people. I know a lot of people and that brings a lot of value to me both personally and professionally. But, and I try to tell my son that talk to everyone. Assume the guy next to you at McDonald's ordering his food is the next guy that's going to make a difference in your life. And if he's.

2:30:48 Not. What did you lose, you know? Exactly. Well, one of the one of the things that I first did when I first joined 728 in 2015 and I tell this story to people because I'm like, you should do this when I first joined. I'm still living in Portland and a mate of mine who I met on that first movie in Ashland was living in LA at the time and I was like, hey man, I'm coming down to LA, can I crash on your couch? So I crashed on his couch for like 6 months. So in order to get out of his hair a little bit, if there was a training class at the 728 hall on the weekend, I went in the training class and it might have been something that I knew that I thought I knew something about. And every time I went to a class I always learned something, I was met some new people and there was always a free lunch, which is pretty rare these days 3.

2:31:36 Pretty great reasons. Exactly, you know, pick up some knowledge, increase your network, get some free, fill your belly and meet some cool people. And and I think that was a reason why I became, you know, more well known in in the local more quickly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the fact that I'm an Aussie doesn't hurt. But you know, there's, yeah, you know, there's a million Aussies in LA, so it's not actually a huge deal in LA. But you know, like increasing your knowledge base, increasing your network is critical things if you want to if you want to be successful in this industry to the point. That. As someone that teaches training classes, I like to go to training classes just to see how other people are doing it, You know, what are their techniques? What?

2:32:20 Do they teach? Yeah. It's it's smart because it's smart, man. It's smart it. Increases your own skill set, yeah. Well, and even even if it's just sitting down at a bar to grab a beer, talk to the person next to you, you know, like what, what are you losing? You're already sitting there, you're already having the beer. And and not just talk to them, listen to them. Like sometimes I'll be 20 minutes into a conversation before we get around to what do I do, you know, cuz I'm, I'm learning about that person because I'm slotting them in somewhere, whether it's useless information, information that could help me personally, information that I could help him personally, professionally, etcetera.

2:33:02 You know, and, and, and sometimes it's just meaningless conversation. Sometimes it's just killing time. We're talking about, Hey, how do you think the dolphins are going to do next year? You know and. And if yeah, if, if anything from me, I, I want to talk less about what I do for a living because the minute you tell people that you work in the film industry or that you worked on the Star Wars show. Yeah, they shut up. Novel. Yeah, they shut up. No, no, they, they, well, they either shut up or they ask you a million questions just about that thing. And it's just like it becomes about that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, not only that, you, you lose all the value that you were going to get. Like, you know, it's like dinner parties I used to say to to people, like I hate going to to dinner parties with regular people who aren't in the industry.

2:33:45 And they're like, well, why? That's kind of weird. And it's because as soon as someone realizes that last week you just met Taylor Swift and and, you know, you were backstage and hanging out because your buddy is the lighting designer or something, the the whole room sort of either shuts down completely or they ask you a billion questions, but they shut down because their stories dwarf in comparison to. I was hanging out with Taylor Swift last week, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting industry from that standpoint because, you know, I remember a great conversation I had with a guy. I got upgraded to 1st class. I was flying to Chicago and this guy spent two hours telling me that he works in springs. He's in the in the springs business springs, anything from the tiniest little spring in these springs that are 25 feet in diameter or whatever, right?

2:34:35 And he's going to a hardware show in, in, in Chicago. And it probably wasn't two hours, it was probably 1/2 hour. And I learned way more about springs and the spring business than I ever wanted to know he. Wanted to know Yeah. And I. Listened to his entire conversation and then he said, So what do you do? And I said, well, you know, I sell lighting and, and concert lighting and stuff. And he's like, oh, you know, and he just felt shitty about his own life after that moment, You know, It's like, oh, man, my life sucks. But you know the thing I would have been the the take away I would have had from that conversation. And and if you're going to talk about springs for two hours, you better be pretty bloody passionate about it. He's passionate about springs and that's.

2:35:15 What? And that's what would have struck me about that conversation and I would have been there for sure. Can you make me a set of springs from my 84 SVI? That would have been my question. Yeah, that's perfect. But but no, it's you know what? So like I said. It's it's been 2 hours and I think 2 1/2 hours actually because we started over again at one point. But I know it's friggin it's what is it? It's 12:30 in the morning for you too, so. Yeah, yeah. I'd, I'd, I'd stop watching. I'd stop looking at I feel like we can talk. For another two hours, though, like this is probably is. I hate to say it, but it's been way more interesting than I expected. Not that I expected you to be boring, but I don't know enough about, I don't know enough about television and film lighting to really have have good conversations. But you're a great conversationalist, so. So you've taught me a lot.

2:36:01 So. Well, here's here's what I would do. You should get, you should get Ben Wild back on the podcast. Yeah. And then you should talk to my business partner, Sayda Devero, who is actually a nominal lighting drafts person in 728. I'm sure Sarah is all over. That because we do a podcast called leading Ladies and it's it's all about the women in the industry and. Yeah. It's been great. She's she's the host of it and I think she's probably on her 8th or 9th episode by now. And she's done a great job and had some amazing people. So I'm sure she unfortunately, when great women come forward now, she usually nips them before I ever get to even talk to them or know about them or anything.

2:36:45 She just grabs them and and I lose that opportunity. So sure. But yeah, we'll definitely do that. So, but I mean, we should do this again someday. You know, I'd, I'd love to hear a lot more and, and I'm sure given the sort of path that your life has taken, there's going to be 1000 more stories, you know, in the next year. I mean, it's, it's definitely been, it's been a great adventure and I've had a lot of fun and I've met some amazing people. And, and one of the things I've loved about working in film is you get to see shit that I look like I've rigged lights inside the wings of the Spruce Goose. Not everyone can say they've even been on the Spruce Goose, but I've been it's wings.

2:37:26 There. That is crazy, Yeah. It's just, it's just fun, man. It's been a trip. And yeah, and again, you know, like I said, people help me along the way. I want to help other people. And that's kind of kind of one of my motives about how it is. That's what it's about. That's what it's about, so. And good luck. With your another conversation you can. Help with that? Yeah, Thank you. Thank you. It's right. It's thanks so. Much to be here for him. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, all right, buddy.