Spike Jonze

When I was in Emerson I had some friends but was mostly a lonely boy, spending the most time in the Video Media Library, watching the same DVD collections. Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, best of..

I watched that thing so many times, considered stealing it..remembered I could use youtube instead.

Later on, I would show dates one of Spike’s shorts, “How They Get There” and gauge their reaction. It was a second or third date kinda watch.

In May 2017 I came face to face with Spike; he was directing Frank Ocean’s World Tour, and they were building at a soundstage in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the month. At first, Production had considered shooting with Mini Alexas with vintage lenses, but Spike being Spike wanted to play with form. There would be a 70 foot screen behind Frank and he wanted to see how many old cameras with nifty looks they could get to operate and output a signal to the Screen team; what might look best to build Frank’s performance visually and emotively through tech. 

By the peak of the show, it would just be Frank and Spike alone on a stage together (with a Mini Alexa on an Easyrig) but the first phase was security cameras. 

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On the day I was hired, I clocked in at 11AM and got a walk through, here’s the camera area, Screen Team is over there, here’s some of the cameras we mentioned, also here’s this White security camera we’ve been trying to figure out…

“I can handle it from here,” I confidently state. 

In front of me is a white dome with a camera lens embedded inside pointing back at me. There’s no model names nor numbers, no indicators of any kind. If I needed to Film outside a Russian silo in the winter in periodic increments, this thing would be perfect for it, but a google search led nowhere. So I pretended it wasn’t there for the first few hours.

I looked at the rest of the mess; the camera bags arranged in a sorry owner/operator pile, and sporadic labels on everything.

I rigged up the tripods, pointed them towards the stage and focused: 

2x Ikonskops

2x Digital Bolex

2x VX2000

1x DVX100

2x Black Magic Ursa

Five assorted security cameras from local hardware stores

But it wasn’t comfortable...as I wrote down our feelings and communicated with Screen Team, there would be a LOUDDDDD BOOM AND THE SPEAKEERS WERE SCREAMING AND IT WAS HARD TO THINK

But they were TESTING the samples and BEATS of Frank’s songs in scattered order, and it was LOUD

And then it was gone

And you would talk and work and watch, and go to Screen team to say something and BOOOM AGAIN every 20 MINUTES!!

There’s a picture of me, I don’t have, sitting in a chair on the stage, Standing-in, while the other camera peeps framed up. We were a motley crew, each wondering how the other got on. I am eating a sandwich, with the image blown up on the screen behind me, chewing, looking at the Do Not Eat sticker on the floor, wondering about my life. The moment didn’t last long.

The camera team whispered to each other and I was tapped and asked to politely ask one of the producers if they could sit in, cool to still be working from their laptop.. She was much prettier than I was. She admitted she was flattered by the request, and we continued professionally. 

Spike arrived at 7. He looked very much like someone comfortable but quietly curious. He glided between Command and the Stage and had an art director he would softly conference with in the corners. 

They called a production meeting at 8 and Spike said hi, turned to the person next to him and said what’s your name?

I waited, I was 5th in line, and when he got to me, before he opened his mouth, I said immediately, Chris, what’s your name?

“I’m Spike!”

(I just wanted to hear it, you know?)

We worked further. Wrapped in the rain at 11pm but Frank’s “Bad Religion” BLASTED lovingly in my ears as I waited for the gate to reopen.

I lived on South 2nd Street at the time, so on the 2nd day I biked to work.

The Navy Yard has a great bike trail that runs from Williamsburg through Dumbo and it is filled with cultural identity, road rage, and fashion from the working class Chasids, Latinx, and Hipsters as they join the BQE and the rest of their lives. 

I hummed a tune and blasted the killers and rode on. As I neared the studio an odd thing happened and I just couldn’t stop.

At the intersection ahead, the entrance to the studio lot, a car idled behind the car at the checkpoint. I was going way too fast and slammed my breaks but I gripped the steel, with all my strength and nothing slowed and the woman in the passenger seat had the greatest expression change as she sighted me, saw my dilemma and panicked. I hit the side of the car, wheel first and bounced back, and fell, but it wasn’t the worst.

I hobbled to work and surveyed the room.

A long stage, like a dock into the pier. Stream Team with their command center double ikea tables, 12 Cameras on sticks in the house right corner. Frank would walk up and down and sing these songs I’d been hearing on dates and in dreams, and now, EVERY 20 MINUTES OR SO as the audio crew arrived to TEST.

Spike came in earlier, wielding a camera out of the 90s. A stills rangefinder, 35mm camera and he took some photos of what the art team was working on and nostalgia photos here and there. 

Frank came in later and sat on the edge of the stage with his keyboard and some small instruments.

Instinctively, I pointed a camera towards his direction.

He looked at me after a minute and said politely, Can we not right now?

And I apologized, pointed it away and shame left to crafty.

Frank performed a few songs later that evening and I held a camera and it was a private deep experience. During the show, Spike held a camera and walked around, pausing Frank to speak, just occasionally. There was a heavy presence of two refined creatives who spent a lot of time listening and a lot of time adapting. Spike would say, and camera goes over here..and picture, all of this background, lit by people on their cellphones, soft focus, light casting starry highlights, gonna look beautiful. And Frank nodded and suggested additions and his team drew and painted graphics on the stage with love and poetry.

On the 3rd day there was more producer talk overheard. They had been trying to reign in James Laxton to DP the project for Spike but he had not arrived, nor seemed to be planning on it anymore. At the time, he had shot Moonlight, which had just won the Oscar. Perhaps he was offered Beale Street or something cool, but it was whispered in the hallways that he wasn’t coming, which was partially why we were testing. We prepped the cameras and pointed them at a stand-in while Stream Team checked in. 

There was a figure watching from a respectful distance. You could see his eyes evaluating the scene, answering questions in his head first and then making small controlled movements. It was odd to picture because he wasn’t a loud or ambitious looking DP. He came to me and said are you AC-ing? And I said, nah I’m operating and helping Screen Team get signal and whatever else, what can I do for you?”

And I help him mount a Mini to the stage platform that will jib up and down for parts of the show, and he asks me, could you hand the WCU4, and I say sure and I do. And he begins clicking buttons on it and I turn, and there’s a man with a laptop, a Colorist, who’s just appeared, Apparated, and Chayse is working with the Colorist to try different looks, different LUTS quickly, and I just had a Moment, watching the speed and efficiency of the mechanism. 

Visualists like Spike will always want a new look that makes sense.

The DPs I had met, the overambitious ones, were always trying to bash their look into their creatives as a behavior. The older DPs were salty as shit about everything and just kind of did their baseline cinematographic photography and let the script do the work.

Chayse must have tried 20 different looks in 10 minutes and I was stymied. They were making notes, building cues with the light board operator, and discarding LUTs with a certainty I’d never seen. So I looked up “Chayse cinematographer”, and saw Chayse Irvin and realized he had shot Lemonade, and that another favorite music video was on his IMDB. He was a legend in the making, visual collaborator with Kahlil Joseph, (music video director).

So we wrapped and I told him, hey Chayse, looked you up, really love your work and I always show new clients “River” as a reference, thanks man

He says Thanks man, good working with you.

And I say, slyly, are you based in New York?

And he says ya

And I say cool, I am too man, hope we can work together again.

He says aight and walked on.

A few days later Frank is giving full rehearsals with the band, and we’re holding cameras that Screen team is projecting. I have my camera on Frank. And Spike says Chris, hold your frame, that’s great, and he takes his littles 90s camera and puts Franks in the foreground and my image is on the big screen behind him, and he snaps a few, and I faint a little but keep the camera level.

When that project ended, they went on, but the producer who brought me on had their film accepted to Sundance, and so they left the project, and with them everyone they hired.

We got tickets to Panorama and watched it later, on it’s closing night. Was truly a spectacle.

I left the room deciding that I needed to join the Union now. I would never work with people of that caliber again without it. That wasn’t completely true, but Spike or Chayse if you read this, please hit me up. I’m ready.