Cinematography in Canada Since 1957

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
That concludes my time here. Thank you to the CSC & Carolyn Wong for inviting me to host. It’s been a pleasure reminiscing.

My last post is dedicated to the wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years. The skill and commitment of my team are directly responsible for my achievements as a Director of Photography, and I am very grateful to work alongside them.

Slide 2: Carine & Ashley helping me out with a lens test during their ice cream break.
Slide 3: Mahmoud & Ashley doing piggy back slating for Detention Adventure.
Slide 4: Nick & Clara having a little dance break while steadicam Dan contemplates his next move on Late Bloomer.
Slide 5: Carine, Mahmoud, and Ashley becoming delirious after several hours in a small pink room for Paying For It.
Slide 6: Mahmoud, Asmaa and Dina proud of their underslung rig for a food fight scene.
Slide 7: Mahmoud and Ashley being cuties despite all the rain.
Slide 8: Khanh and Mahmoud briefly being our stand-ins for Paying For It.
Slide 9: Dina wrapping out on the lawn beside her emotional support chip bags.
Slide 10: The electrics of Late Bloomer S1 smiling despite our 5AM call time in Bradford.
Slide 11: The electrics of Odd Squad proudly hanging out with their 18K.
Slide 12: Khanh and Dina incredibly thrilled to have Captain’s Boil after we wrapped day one of How to Fail as a Popstar. Unfortunately terribly cropped by IG.
Slide 13: Carine and Khanh turning me into an angler fish by rigging a DMG Dash on top of the easy rig.
Slide 14: Carine with her massive octodome umbrella.
Slide 15: My first project with Carine Zahner immortalized on a bus stop outside Pinewood Studios.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to check out my posts. Up next is @jon.b.elliott!

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
Directed by @sarahnomics & @slutsky , You Can Live Forever follows closeted lesbian teen Jaime, when she is sent to live in a Jehovah’s Witness community in the Gaspe.

Our 90’s setting led us to use the Alexa Mini paired with @cookeoptics Speed Panchros and the Cooke Varotal 18-100mm.

Due to the themes of faith, we had distinct “heavenly moments” throughout the film. One of our key locations was Tadoussac, a beautiful village on the St. Lawrence River, which helped to achieve this look.

Slide 1: We had a full day of exteriors this day so we had to schedule around the sun. This particular shot really felt perfectly timed, as all we needed was 4x4 silk held by the lovely @causticsuburban, our key grip.

Slide 2: The beautiful flare that the Cooke Varotal offers! This shot was a happy accident as we were waiting for the cast to be processed. The sun just happened to hit the lens when we were setting up and the rainbow flare blew me away. It certainly gave us that heavenly feel, and that it was a rainbow certainly felt appropriate for our queer film. :)

Slide 3: The sand dunes of Tadoussac. Inherently gorgeous, but look how deep you sink when you step in! God bless the crew for trekking it up and down this thing.

Slide 4: Another idyllic part of the village, shot with all natural light.

Slide 5: We shot in the Cyclorama of Jerusalem, the largest panorama in North America. The place was inherently dim to protect the centuries old artwork. We planned to use S60s to light up the artwork but quickly discovered that there were unflattering streaks and water stains, so we had to make a game time decision to just lean on our 1.2K HMI for ceiling bounce and pushed our ISO to its limits.

This was my first feature film and it’ll always have a special place in my heart! Spending two months away from home isn’t easy but the cast and crew made it entirely worthwhile.

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
My first tv gig was the revered children’s show “Odd Squad”. We averaged 10 pages daily, including tutoring, and without overtime. Because of these parameters, I knew right away that I had to hire my dear friend and gaffer @sabrina.spilotro, who I have worked with for nearly a decade. Having a short hand with her was crucial to the success of the show. Every set had to be lit for at least 270 degrees, so we could move as quickly as possible. With our rigorous schedule, every micro efficiency made a big impact.

Slide 1: This was my very first moonbox build. I believe we had 3x Skypanels in our rig wrapped with ¼ grid.

Slide 2: Leaning into a bit of a Fincher palette to showcase our villain of the season. Lit by a S60 going through 216 and a cookie.

Slide 3: We used a series of MossLED strips, Chroma Qs and Skypanels in the set to do fun lighting cues. I unfortunately don’t have a proper BTS of this but here’s our electric’s clean cart of Skypanels.

Slide 4: Here we are using a 24 ft jimmy jib in Nathan Philips Square!

Slide 5: We shot in the heart Father Duffy’s Square in New York. We weren’t able to put any lights onto stands so we stuck with some handheld titantubes.

Although the days were rigorous, one of the most wonderful things about working with children is that they have such a curiosity about the world around them and are bustling with enthusiasm. Even on the hardest days, the cast would pull pranks on the crew, which was a good reminder that the experience should come before the results.

Some of my favourite moments from working on the show include: shooting on Liberty Island and Rockfeller center before it was open to the public and of course, finding out we won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lighting Direction from Twitter at the height of lockdown.

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
For the second season of @latebloomerseries, we had the exciting opportunity to expand the looks of the show. Our inspirations ranged from Saltburn, Perfect Days, Pen15 to Beef.

Here are a few of my favourite moments with some BTS photos and lighting plans.

Slide 1: Kyle Church (key grip), @coffinfilms (1st AC) and I discussed a multitude of ways to capture our food delivery cyclist in episode 6. We humoured a couple of configurations with an action camera mount before ultimately landing on a combination of a cargo e-bike with a vibration isolator. This setup gave movement that felt more natural and the pedal assist mode allowed @siddharth_sharmaa to bike at a comfortable speed despite the heavy camera attachment.

Slide 2: Episode 7’s eerie tone called for an aesthetic akin to Saltburn. Our superstar operator, @danmackenzie667 used floaty steadicam movements to heighten the unease. The camera acts as a voyeuristic character, tracking our characters but also diverging independently.

Slide 3: Also from episode 7, out of context, it’s hard to believe that this frame could be comedic, but there’s something about how heavy-handed it is that makes me chuckle.

Slide 4: Director Peter Huang and I called this effect “Blah Blah Land” as it was a budget ode to La La Land in terms of its surreal nature. We had two S60s lighting both sides of the wall and an Aputure 600X w/ a spotlight mount on a lift to give us our spotlight effect.

Slide 5: The beloved Spike Lee double dolly shot used in episode 4! Great rig by our grip team.

Slide 6: Another great rig by our grip team mimicking stained glass. We used a 1200d to back light the church band, 18k hitting the back stained glass and a 4K thru bleached mus to key them.

Both seasons were shot on the Sony Venice with @7isatribe T-Tuneds.

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
@latebloomerseries Season 1 is one of the most creatively fulfilling projects I have ever worked on.

The show follows a 30-something Sikh millennial who is trying to carve out his place in the entertainment industry while still living at home with his family. When I first met @jusreign, the creator and lead, we bonded over the memories of our immigrant parents’ winter frugalness. Notably, our parents’ method of saving money involved keeping the house dark. Every light in the home had to feel functional above anything else. This set the stage for the approach of the show which was to honour the reality of the winter, and the limits of ambition that society puts on racialized folks.

In tv, sometimes the note is “can we make it brighter?” but on this show we would ask ourselves “can we make it darker?” We embraced the drabness and isolation because it was truthful to Jasmeet’s trajectory in the season. To heighten our winter feel, our show LUT had an inherent coolness, but we also wanted to be cognizant of creating colour depth. To contrast the coolness, we would have hits of warmth from our practicals.

One of my favourite things to do is tuck a small LED panel under the hood of stove tops; the warm, soft glow reminds me of winter evenings in my childhood home, when my parents would use only that light to cook, filling the kitchen with a cozy ambiance.

Outside of our grounded look, Late Bloomer provided very exciting comedic referential moments throughout the series that we called “anxiety daydreams”. With Jasmeet’s history in the YouTube sketch space, it was important that we stay committed to the bit. For example, if there was a reference to a vlogging style video, we would let the light be harsh, shoot at a T/22 and colour it like Rec 709.

The success of a DP is largely dependent on their collaboration with the Director, and I am incredibly fortunate to have worked alongside Peter Huang on this project, as we share many of the same creative sensibilities. Season one and two are now out of Crave. I will cover season two in a later post!

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye

From 2017 to 2019, I worked with World Vision Canada on several documentaries filmed in remote communities across Myanmar, Kenya, Honduras, and El Salvador. I was profoundly influenced by my first visit to Myanmar. The documentary highlighted the various obstacles women encountered in their journeys to receive essential prenatal and postnatal medical care in their respective remote communities. When working with non-actors in vulnerable regions, it requires you to throw your ego out the door, be present and protective of the experience for everyone. Having been in Canada my whole life, I acknowledged the western gaze and the biases I carry. We found the best way to shake off our preconceived notions was to build rapport with our subjects. During our trips, we made a rule to never film on the first day of meeting them. I discovered that the most fruitful and memorable connections I had frequently occurred during shared meals. Remote community fieldwork often includes a home-cooked meal invitations.

The remote region we were working in Myanmar, was accessible only by dirt bike or by boat. So we had to be incredibly nimble. We travelled with two Sony A7Ss, no lights, and a 5 in 1 diffusion which our project lead and photographer, @paulbettings would become our human c-stand ha! We would shoot our exteriors in the early morning and late afternoon to get some good light and left the majority of our indoor work during high noon. There is something quite freeing about not getting bogged down about gear and making the most of what you have. It really forces you to be present.

I am elated to be back in the documentary world after a long hiatus. I am currently in prep for a documentary with the National Film Board that follows six non-binary, trans and genderfluid folks and their relationship and expression through clothing. As someone who has recently come out as genderfluid, I am so honoured to learn not only about others, but myself as well through my craft. It’s a wonderful privilege!

#GayleYe #AssociateMemberCSC @gayle_ye
Sook-Yin Lee’s film, “Paying for It,” is an adaptation of her former partner Chester Brown’s popular graphic novel. The movie is set in the 90’s where Chester describes his interactions with s*x workers, contrasting it with SY’s pattern of serial monogamy.

The shoot had many challenges like a tight budget and even tighter spaces. In order to subvert the expectations of s*x work, we drew our lighting inspo from Return to Seoul which isn’t incredibly flashy but truthful. Some of my favourite scenes were in the tiny basement of Sook-Yin’s house with incredibly low ceilings. Gaffer @mahmoudsarouji and I would twist the practicals in a litany of ways and pair it with a DMG Dash and an Aputure 600X through the small window. I’m always a fan of lighting that isn’t clean so working in a space that allowed for organic textures worked really well for us.
Many of our compositions were inspired by the novel’s use of bird’s eye angles to depict intimate scenes. Graphic novels have a certain flatness that’s usually avoided in film, but we wanted to stay true to the source material. During our initial meeting, SY expressed doubt about our ability to film a Costa Rica-set scene. To slightly spoil it, this beach scene revisits the film’s opening break up scene, which features an overhead shot of two people lying down. I suggested we do a visual ode to the opening scene by doing a similar overhead shot of two people laying down in the sand. This meant we wouldn’t have to worry about trying to find a tropical beach view in Ontario, as we were to only look at sand. The mighty art department got a bunch from Cherry Beach and brought it to the alleyway near SY’s house. We shot it at night with a 1200D bouncing off a graffiti wall which surprisingly provided a more lively daylight.

This was my first experience working with an intimacy coordinator intensively. It was incredible to see Mimi Cote not only provide a safe space for all the cast and crew but sell chemistry on screen. A special shout out to @danbeirne, @emilytkle and the rest of our cast whose honesty and vulnerabilities imbued so much dimension into their characters.