Full transcript: Daniele Cuccia on London Real
0:15 Hello and welcome to London Real. My name is Brian Rose, with me as a guest host this week, again, is Mr Arash Mike Mahates, and joining us today in studio is professional photographer and cinematographer Daniele Cuccia. Welcome. Ciao, where are you from? Dude, or is it obvious?
0:35 Exactly, know. Okay, I’m Italian. I’m from Florence, but I live in London from four years already. Four, that’s it. Yeah, four, four already.
0:43 You’re here longer. I came here just for one, really, and then planning to to us, but they don’t want me. So why’d you come here originally? Because I think the one of the biggest problems about Italy is there is too close in mind. Okay, so if you are a creative, if you are an artist, it’s very, very, very tough to live in Italy, because you can be, I don’t know, a movie director only if you know somebody, if you had a nephew or somebody, if you had a son, but not because you really deserve it.
1:17 Is there any independent film there? I’m talking about everything. Now, I just mentioned the film industry, but it can be about photography, can be about whatever you want. I know the government’s like that a lot, like a lot of guys have that, they, their fathers get them the sons, the jobs, and they have these bureaucracies and they just go on, and that’s like an ideal job in Italy, right? It can happen in America as well.
1:38 I don’t know. Let’s think about Sofia Coppola or whatever you want. She has talent. Come on. Exactly.
1:44 No, no, I’m not saying this one, but it’s much easier in the States, or maybe here in England as well, just to improve yourself and get noticed by the big people. Okay, in Italy it’s very, very tough. Really, what do you think that is, Mike? I think probably some of it has to do with the culture, local business culture. I’ve noticed that in business as well.
2:09 I had a lot of good Italian friends. When they were young, they left the country for many years, and they went back when they were experienced, maybe they’ve had five, 10 years of experience in whatever industry they were working in. Then it was easier, because I think there’s a lot that you pretty much can’t get fired in Italy. If you work for a corporate, it’s very difficult to get fired. Very difficult.
2:27 Yeah. So everything kind of stays the same, and the youth have a really hard time breaking in. Right? It’s the same problem. Now it’s changing.
2:34 Now it’s changing. For example, now if you want to find the job in Italy, it’s very difficult to find, somebody says to you, “Okay, come to me and you will work forever. I’m going to give you a permanent contract.” Now they come to you and they say, “Okay, you have to open a VAT, you have to be a VAT-registered self-employed, and you work for me. In this case, something happens, you’re free to go.”
2:57 Okay. More temporary workers. Exactly. And the young people, are they hiring them on a temporary basis as well? Right?
3:02 In Spain as well. So I don’t know about Spain, but I know that now Italy is going to get tough, and people, they can’t, they are not even allowed to buy any more houses or nothing, because you go to the bank, you ask for credit, you ask for a mortgage, and they say to you, “Okay, show me that you can pay for 25 years.” How can I do that? Because my job is today I’m working, tomorrow I don’t know. And so everybody’s renting.
3:24 Rent is going up, and people, they live in Italy, that’s it, finished. So what’s it in your, is Italy I mean, I hate to say it, it’s a dying culture or dying country, but like, are they going to sort themselves out? I mean, there’s a huge bureaucracy. Obviously the parliament is like a bunch of small parties that try to collaborate with each other but they just left there’s dead issues. I mean, like, what’s going to happen to Italy?
3:43 It’s just going to keep kind of grinding along. Okay, let’s not start talking about politics, because I’m getting very upset. Give me like a two-minute answer and and then I want to hear about taking pictures of beautiful girls. That’s, yeah, okay, it’s better. Okay, give me the politics first.
3:57 If we had really to talk about politics in Italy, I think that the best thing is justice. Start a revolution. Okay, it’s been done before, right? Okay, we have to do it again. We have to go down, and I don’t know, and say, “Listen guys, we are Italy.”
4:13 Okay, the millions of people there are in Italy, not just the few stupid that they are there and making some a lot of money. Okay, so basically they’re coming to us and they to us, to the Italian people, not me anymore because I’m here. Yeah, thank God. But they say, “Okay, guys, you have €1,000 a month, for example. Okay, you, we have to improve, we have to help Italy to pay the public debts.
4:43 Okay, so you have to pay more taxes.” So you go and you ask to pay more taxes to people then they can. It’s very difficult for them to arrive at the end of the month. Okay, but then they have 10,000 euros a month and what they pay, nothing. They have the call out of blue that basically is the public cars for them for their family.
5:07 Okay, we pay for this. Okay, so the rich people aren’t paying taxes, and the poor people are paying a large percentage. This is the problem. I think you’re right. I think they need a revolution, some bloodshed.
5:17 I don’t see how else it can happen. I think Italy, to me, first and foremost, when it comes to quality of life, other countries that I know, is the best place as a not-working quality of life. Yeah, working, complete, if you take out, if you’re, if you just have money to spend and live somewhere, Italy is beautiful. Country, good food, everybody dresses well, wine is good. I mean, it’s just amazing culture, everything.
5:42 But when it comes to working, it is so difficult. I can actually see why a lot of Italians actually leave, especially the younger generation. It’s very, very difficult. Not a lot of entrepreneurial promotion. Very few men.
5:54 There are some, very, very difficult. This is another big, big problem. You start working for a company and it’s going to be very, very tough that you arrive or you achieve some big level or start your own company. Once again, okay, start new company. Maybe it can be a little bit better now, okay, because I know that they’re doing some kind of things, because now it’s very difficult to find a job, okay, that somebody’s giving you a job.
6:20 So what people do, they say, “Okay, let’s start to open a new business,” so they’re trying, helping young people under 35 years old. Okay, do that, but if you want to work for a big company and try to achieve a big level, it’s going to be very tough. So maybe you work for that company for 20 years and you see one guy or one girl that she’s coming in after one year, she’s already higher than you, and you say, “Why?” That’s because she’s friend with the boss, best friend.
6:47 So a lot of connection. Once again, we come back to the same. That’s interesting, man. I find, I agree. When I, I kind of fell in love, literally, the first time I went and I went to Rome and I was talking about Capri, Amalfi, all these beautiful places.
6:59 I’ve been to Sicily, and yeah, it’s a wonderful quality of life, and it’s a wonderful culture. What I found is that I didn’t find a lot of counterculture there. Like, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t get a curry in Italy, you know? It was all very, a bit homogeneous and beautiful, but I just found that I couldn’t get that counterculture. You know, this is the first thing that impressed me when I came to London the first time.
7:18 The food, the diversity, it was everything. So complete. Here you go inside, I don’t know, the first train. Okay, you go central line. There’s no way that you find all the same people on the same train.
7:31 Absolutely. This is something beautiful. It’s something that makes me feel rich, okay, inside. And no, like in Italy, is very, very, you, you see people, they all wearing the same shoes, all wearing the same clothes, all going in the same club, and if you don’t do that, they’re looking at you and say, “Where are you coming from?” But the problem is, I think it’s pretty.
7:52 You dress like that too, though. Come on. But now I’m different, because I know a lot of people, they dress like me, not like you. Exactly. We’re thinking is like, I think there’s just very few people in the entire continent of Europe that is similar to London.
8:05 I mean, you get London. I think Berlin is a little bit like that as well. Very multicultural. Have the, know, the total different, like the Turks, the Vietnamese, and all kind of different people, but that’s pretty much it. I mean, Paris is not really.
8:19 It’s not group together, cultural, very different. It’s still segregated. In French people, they don’t like too much. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe I’d say Berlin’s close.
8:28 I, Berlin, the second one feels to me also, though, is like it’s kind of like the Germans, Turks, and a couple others, and then there’s very little else, very little else. But it’s still open, because it’s open-minded city too, right? And it’s changed so much with the reunification of east and west and stuff. I had a good time in Berlin. I’d like to go back and check it out.
8:44 I was watching that movie Hanna last night. She’s this crazy, like 14-year-old girl kicking everyone’s ass. She’s in Berlin and it looked crazy there. She’s wild. Berlin was pretty cool, because it used to be all the draft dodgers in Germany.
8:56 I mean, you still have to do military service, like Italy and France and Germany, and all the German draft evaders would go to Berlin back in the days, okay, because if you go to Berlin you didn’t have to go to military, for some reason. It was like a free zone. Oh, because maybe it was still occupied by the American, French, and before the Wall came down. After that, I mean, obviously you know it still is. A bit of the legacy of that is there, but because of the fact that all these, like, pacifists or draft dodgers or you know, because of that you have all this rich cultural melting pot there.
9:29 All artists are there, you know, all kind of, but high in unemployment, like 23, 25%. Yeah, really. I was there two years ago for the, but people don’t care about it. They don’t, they just keep going. I was there two years ago for the Berlin Film Festival.
9:40 You should check that out. It’s a really good festival. Shutter Island was there, and Scorsese was there with DiCaprio, and we got tickets for that, and it was awesome, and it was all located in the East, well, the old East Berlin, which is like where all the fun new places are. And stuff. You go back to the West Berlin and it feels like 30 years ago.
9:55 You know, it’s all that old architecture and stuff you see in like the Bourne movies and stuff, but yeah, had a good vibe. I wish I had a guide, because I think you need to know some locals to show you the cool places. Definitely, because I didn’t know where I needed to go. I’d go back to Berlin again, because once I went there, there were four days, it was raining, it was freezing, it was so windy I couldn’t enjoy. Yeah, it was snowing when I then I almost got arrested the first three hours that I was in Berlin.
10:18 Can you talk about that? That’s going to be the quote on YouTube. “I almost got arrested the first few hours.” No, basically, now this is something funny, now that I’m talking about it. I just arrived in Berlin, I can see two policemen talking.
10:33 Okay, I was looking for the bus stop that he was taking me to the bus to the hotel, so I’m going at the back of these police guys. I just put my hand on the shoulder of one of the two from the back, like, “Excuse me, I’m here, Italian.” Yeah, exactly, but not in Germany. “Excuse me, I need help.” Wow, it was the last thing that I supposed to do with that one.
10:58 They just, and immediately the guy has his hands on their gun. I say, “Wow guys, easy, I’m just looking for the bus.” Though, so I say, “Okay, that was the perfect example of how German people are, or how different they are. It’s still in their blood, you understand?” Then I just came back from Asia, so yeah, we want to talk about that.
11:19 So, structure, let’s talk about the international man of mystery, because when I think of Daniele as the professional photographer, I think of Austin Powers in the movies, because, like, come on, let’s be honest, back in the S, the photographer was like this cool dude, right? He was making images of people, or at least this is the Austin Powers thing, but come on, being a photographer was hip back in the day, right? I remember even Magnum PI. What was it, TJ, the black dude?
11:41 He was always taking pictures, and he had that, like, he was kind of like, oh, the photographer, but why is there this fascination, or at least there used to be, with the photographer? And is that true? I think it’s still, it still is, right? Yeah. He’s like wearing a uniform.
11:54 So when you see, I don’t know, a pilot or I don’t know, the man with uniform, as some kind of attraction. Okay, and the photographer, I don’t know, I have no idea. I didn’t know before I became a photographer that it was something like this, but it’s quite nice. Even in front of people, when you say what’s your job, you say, “I’m a photographer.” When you put the word fashion in front of photography, it’s even better, of course.
12:21 So, and plus I guess you’re also bringing out the best in people, that you’re kind of their intimate. Um, they’re showing you intimate moments, they’re actually performing for you, aren’t they? Your subjects, to a certain extent, yeah. Okay, I’m not, Martin Scorsese. So people, they don’t come in front of me and they start acting or whatever, and say, “Oh, please let me do a movie with you.”
12:39 Okay, but I’ve been on photo shoots with you and you have to bring out that moment, you know, where it’s like boom. On that same note, he took me around Old Street when he took my 40th birthday pictures, and I mean, it was me and him and a camera, and people were stopping, like 10 people, five people stopping, like, what’s going on? Is that a shoot? Yeah, and it depends even what kind of camera you have. Because if I’m coming and taking pictures of you with my iPhone 4S, right?
13:04 I’m not, less, not a lot of people, they start, even common people can tell an expensive camera. Exactly. How did you start in photography? Okay, this is another funny thing. I did study movie directing, okay?
13:17 Interesting, because that is what I want to do. This was in Italy, in Florence, for three years, and every time that we had the photography lessons, I was never there, because I say, why have I have to go and spend and waste my time in photography lessons when I want to be a movie director? So I never, never, never went on a photography lesson, and I say, “Oh, these people, they spend two, three, four, 5,000 pounds on a camera, they must be crazy. Just buy a stupid small camera you can take easily nice pictures with that.”
13:49 That was my first big mistake, a huge mistake, huge mistake, because now you said your film school was very theoretical as well, right? They made you watch a lot of old movies, as opposed to do a lot of practice, right? So you start with all the lessons, Lumière brothers, and all these kinds of things, um, how The Bicycle Thief, all the old school. Yeah, that was my first movie. My dad took me.
14:10 I was four. That’s crazy. Victoria Theik. Oh, you see, I’ve seen it. Old school Italian filmmakers, man, it’s different.
14:18 Different world, beautiful, beautiful movies. You talk about Theik, Fellini. We have plenty, plenty of all the people that make big cinema industry. Now it’s not like this anymore. Was your film school trying to produce that kind of director?
14:34 Is that the feeling you got? Very classical film education. The point is, this one, my teacher is a Sicilian guy, okay, and my father is Sicilian, so it’s something very important for me. Okay, my favorite designers are Dolce and Gabbana, Dominic. So you still, exactly, you still have this nice, man, old style, with bass, all these kinds of things.
15:01 There’s an edge to it, and so I can tell you that, yeah, Italy has this something for me, something very important. Why do you think the movie industry or the art industry has gone backwards like that? I mean, from being almost like a birthplace, as a… No, you can think about Sergio Leone, for example. Okay, he was an Italian director.
15:25 He just moved to the US and is the guy that invented the spaghetti western, shot in Italy, right? No, they were shot in the US, really. Yeah, of course. Oh, I thought they were shot in Italy to look like the US. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
15:39 Just think that Clint was the main actor. All I thought, they moved him over to Italy to shoot those. No, no, no, no, no. I thought they made Italy look like the US. No, because I might check you on this one.
15:49 Yeah, we, we’re going to, we’re going to, because later he definitely came over and made some movies. But anyways, he’s a genius. Was it, was okay. Now we can, I don’t know. We have a Tarantino.
15:58 Tarantino always say one of my first inspirations is Sergio Leone, so every time that Tarantino says, “Give me a Sergio, yeah, extreme close-up,” can you imagine? It’s something, wow, it’s like Eyes Only close-ups. You know, so you see this, could it be? I’m always thinking about that, but it would be nice to hear what you guys think. Could it be that just because of the post-World War Two era, it’s still not easy, difficulties?
16:25 Is it, could it be because of that that art, especially the movies in Italy, grew like that, came from a realism? I think it could be. I think you get a lot of creativity when you get in a tough situation. But the funny thing about Bicycle Thief is it was made in the late ’40s or something, right, after the war, and you can see all the guys walking around, and the unemployment, and the whole thing. That was the golden era for it.
16:48 How did they make that movie? I mean, that was like literally ’48 to ’49, when there was no money and massive unemployment. And anyways, there’s another thing. Now, unfortunately, we miss these big minds in Italy. We have a few directors.
17:04 I don’t know, I’m thinking about Gabriele Muccino. Then he is an Italian young director. What did he direct? And who directed Gomorrah? Gomorrah, no, it’s not him.
17:15 Very good. Yeah, have you seen the movie Gomorrah? Oh, that is a very tough movie. Tough movie. I loved it, and it is impossible to understand for me that I’m Italian, so I need subtitles as well.
17:26 Oh, really? Because you can’t understand the Neapolitan dialect, so you can imagine, but that is a big, big movie, and I think that the director of the movie is even traveling with bodyguards. He must be because the director, I know, the author is gone. The director, maybe, maybe it’s the author. The author definitely is.
17:42 Yeah, because he’s talking about something true, and it’s very dangerous when you go to Italy and you go in that subject. It’s very, very, very dangerous, but we, exactly, we need this kind of people. Okay, so I’m thinking about Muccino. He’s more easy guy, but will I fall in love with him after the movie? Um, L’Ultimo Bacio, the last kiss.
18:01 Okay, I don’t know. I should watch it. And then they made the movie together, two movies together, The Pursuit of Happyness, and another one, I can’t remember the title. Was this years ago? Yeah, no, not a long time, maybe five, four years ago.
18:23 What was the name of the guy who won Oscars for Life Is Beautiful? Benigni? Roberto Benigni. He did it. Did, yeah, that that movie was a very powerful movie.
18:32 Very powerful. Yeah, basically, what he did, I know, there’s some Jewish people, they start complaining about that movie. Yeah, because you say you’re laughing about something that there were nothing to laugh at, but what he did, he wanted to do, he wanted to show that life is beautiful. So everything that happens, the bad things and the good things, you have always to see in a positive way. Positive way.
18:56 I think he showed the bad stuff by by making fun of it, making it good, showed how, because you watch Schindler’s List and you’re like, this is bad, but when Fellini shows you, it almost looks not worse, but it looks bad, because, dude, it was tough, and he’s making fun of it, and the real, I’ve got to say, I cried in the end of them when the kid, oh, the kid was the end. He’s Jewish, right? Fellini? Ah, no, sorry. But Roberto Benigni.
19:19 Okay, I think he is. No, I don’t think really. I’m going to call you on that one again. He’s actually from my city, so is he? I saw him in F when I was there, like four years ago.
19:27 He came into a restaurant after the Oscar speech. Did you hear that? Crazy. Yeah, it was. But this is him.
19:32 It was him from the movie, basically, right? He was like, that’s no difference when you see him on the cinema screen or you see him in the real life, there’s no difference. He’s no acting. He just, remember, he was in a Jewish movie, um, the, when the prisoners run away? The prisoners run away.
19:48 What’s the name of that movie? He was there. Benigni, was he an actor in the Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. Remember that? There, where, where are they?
19:58 Are they in Italy? I don’t remember. No, I think it’s US movie. Really? You can, you can Google, check it out.
20:04 He was in one of the movies there. I’ll check him out. I know now he did something with, uh, in Rome. Um, okay, I will tell you. Okay, what, in Rome, with the director?
20:17 Okay, what, later, very, very famous director. I can’t remember the name now. All right, we’ll come to that. Yeah, exact. So tell us more about the glamorous life of taking pictures of beautiful men in my case, and women.
20:26 Come on, tell us the inside scoop, and yeah, lie to me if you have to, but come on, you’ve been all over, you fly over, you know, you take all sorts of pictures. You’ve been to Poland and besides the documentary pictures, but I want to talk about later. But what about just being a photographer? What’s that like? Okay, because I tell people I used to be a banker.
20:42 I was in a meeting the other day and I told that and I just could hear the boo coming. So if I tell someone I’m a fashion photographer, they be like, “Yay.” No, especially if you talk with girls about fashion photography, because, um, bastard. No, everybody loves fashion, almost everybody. Okay, especially girls, especially girls.
21:03 So when you talk about fashion, when you talk about a nice picture, like the one that we have an hour back there, you open a Vogue magazine, Elle magazine, or whatever, what he sells, the article most of the time is the model. Okay, so when you go in a store, on a shop, you have to choose something. You have 500, 100 different products. What does it make you think? Okay, I’m going to buy this one instead of the other one.
21:33 The first thing is, if you are already a customer, you’re happy with the product. If you are not, and this is your first time, you always will remember the advertisement, the marketing campaign of something, or more, you talk about a product and people, they get excited. Absolutely. Let’s think, so it’s a picture, really? It comes down to that.
21:54 Exactly. Let’s talk. I don’t, don’t know about the king of marketing, that is Apple Computer, yeah, for example. Okay, we’ve had some of those discussions. When they, Daniele is in love with Apple, by the way.
22:05 Exactly. How many Apple products do you currently own at this moment? Pieces of hardware, or that are in transaction? No, four, four. I was thinking 10.
22:15 No, no, why 10? Because anyway I have a laptop, I have a screen, I have an iPhone, iPad, so that’s like three iPads. But all right, anyways, tell me, tell me about Apple, because I thought you were going to say Dolce and Gabbana. There, actually, I was going to say, ask about the old Benetton. Remember Benetton had the advertising, many colors, or multicolors.
22:35 Benetton, yeah. They had, like, multiple different, like different races of people, black, white. Mario Testino was that, was amazing. Yeah, exactly. Oh, this is another big example.
22:45 So you think about Benetton and you think about colors. Okay, something that makes you happy, and people were buying, buying, buying a lot of Benetton stuff, simple clothes, right? They were low price points, simple clothes. It used to be, it used to be much more, you know, hip, cooler. It just somehow it was definitely cool.
23:02 It was cool, definitely, 10 years ago. 10 years ago, yeah, or even longer. And that advertising, I remember they started with this, revolutionary, I mean, first time you ever saw black face, white face, face, and they were playing that, that was just amazing. United Colors of, United Colors of. Exactly, exactly.
23:18 Yeah, they made famous Mario Testino, that is one of the biggest photographers, interesting, thanks to Benetton. So when, when you think Apple, what’s the one, what’s the one or two ads that come to your mind when you think about their marketing, or is it more than just a picture? No. Okay, when you think about Apple, okay, my first Apple computer, it was when I was 18, so 12 years ago, 18 years ago, on a Mac. It was very, I know you were talking with people.
23:46 I have Apple, and say, what is Apple at least in Italy? Okay, Office, Microsoft Office, even didn’t exist for Apple at the time, true. But, um, um, I was studying movie directing, okay, so you have to own an Apple because it makes your life much, much easier. Then when you own your first Mac, you become like when you buy a Ferrari, or you buy a Ducati motorbike, you start, you don’t have something in your hands, okay, you, it becomes part of you. How did you describe this on our last episode?
24:24 What do you call that, when a product becomes, I, I would say it’s a, it’s an emotional connection, then it turns into a lifestyle product. Right, you called it a lifestyle product, where it’s part of your life. Apple is the lifestyle product. Yeah, exactly. It is.
24:39 I know it is. With you, I mean, you’re, you’re constantly using your Apple. If I took all your Apple products away for 24 hours, what would you do? Oh, I will kill myself. I’m, I’m on, no, seriously.
24:49 Um, every time I’m traveling abroad, okay, the first thing that I’m buying when I arrive in the airport is the SIM for my iPhone, because I need to be on internet all the time. So I remember when I was in LA, I did the same, and I had big problems, because in LA, in US, you cannot have a micro SIM like here, like a top-up. You have to have a contract. To have a contract, you have to have a US bank account, so you cannot have a US bank account if you don’t have a property, and so I say, how can I do that?
25:22 Every 10 minutes I was in the Mac drive using the free Wi-Fi connection from McDonald’s and try to go on Twitter, on Facebook, or uploading all my pictures, even because I was alone, so it wasn’t more important. Yeah, it was the only way to connect to the world. Okay, it’s a lifestyle product at that point, so you have to do that as well. Or, for example, when I went to Auschwitz and I took a picture of Auschwitz, I say, how can I not share this picture with everybody?
25:49 Tell us about that. You just went to Poland. Did you go there for some other work or no? I was there on holiday, and Auschwitz was on my mind for a long, long time. I was always attracted by history, and especially what did happen, Hitler, Mussolini, all these kinds of things, and you never realize how, uh, reality it was until you know, there.
26:14 I’m 30, almost 31 now, and only now I can really feel, when I was there, that I was, I was working like a Jesus Christ on the water. I was working like on the blood. I could feel it. The scream, coming out from that land, powerful, right? It was unbelievable.
26:31 Is it untouched, pretty much, since the war? Yeah, is still the same thing. Exactly. So this is the best, the only thing that he did disappoint me. It was the Schindler’s factory.
26:42 Then now they make like a museum. I was expecting to go there and see exactly how the factory was at the time, and now it’s just a museum. So you go there and you start with the history, how the world started, how the world did end up, and all these kinds of things. So I was disappointed, but Auschwitz, it was amazing. I think that I did travel a lot, and I can say that Auschwitz is the only place that I have to say people have to visit once in their life.
27:09 Why do you say that? You can, you cannot do that, you can just not do that. When I was talking with the our guide, she said that only German people is difficult for them to visit ours, because I do believe that when they go there, they still feel responsible for it. When you go inside the crematorium and you see there is on the big, right, that on the wall, and say here, 700 people a day were burned. 700 people a day, between a man, woman, and child.
27:44 Unbelievable. And they had four of them, and the 700 was the smallest one. If you go on the second, third, and fourth, they had 1,500. So for them to burn people, it was like an industry, like for Apple to produce iPhone. Crazy, can you believe that?
27:59 Yeah, it’s powerful. I’m curious if I went to somewhere like Nagasaki or Hiroshima, if I feel that, I’m sure I would, because you’re sitting there and you just got to think about it. Okay, it wasn’t me, but still it was a, maybe you don’t see that the way, if you go to Dachau or outside Munich or Auschwitz. When you go there, to Dachau, I think I’ve been to Dachau. If you go to the gas chambers.
28:20 I was really like, the ovens, I mean, you’re like, wow, I mean, really, is this harsh? And then in the time when you’re inside the gas chamber, when you are inside the crematorium, when you are whatever, even inside, you’re already you can see how you feel, how lucky you are to live today. Absolutely. You say, can you imagine if I was I don’t know, a homosexual, um, a Jewish person, a Gypsy, or whatever, at that time, how it could be my life? Okay, um, if you were doing something wrong, as something wrong there, it was, for example, talking Polish.
28:59 The only language in Auschwitz is German. Okay, if somebody was talking in another language that was not German, you were killed immediately. So let me tell you a story, because we were talking about my old business partner being Italian. Okay, he’s half Italian. He’s, from his mother’s side, his grandfather was a Croatian partisan who fought against the Nazis.
29:22 Okay, the old Yugoslavia under Tito, and so on. Later, his grandmother was from Ukraine, and his grandmother’s family was wiped out in front of her, in Ukraine, and she was sent to, as I think, because either she was a doctor or nurse, so they needed that. So the family, out, and her grand, his grandfather, his grandfather was captured during the fight, and he’s also sent to Auschwitz. So his grandparents from his mother’s side met in Auschwitz and survived, and they had a child, which they, you’re not allowed, so his uncle was hidden in the blankets for the first year.
29:59 Wow, one year. It’s amazing. So I met his granddad, and then he passed away. His grandfather, at a time when I met him, was 84 or 83. He was the oldest professional marathon runner in the world.
30:12 Dude, OG. I mean, we’re talking old partisan. You know, he was a professional, he was sponsored, I think, by Nike and Coca-Cola. Wow. And he would, so he survived Auschwitz, basically he survived Auschwitz, and with the kid got the kid as well.
30:28 Wow. Did the Americans liberate Auschwitz in time before they destroyed everything? They did, right? I mean, they found people alive. They could, quite a lot of people found, but I mean, a lot of people died as well.
30:41 Obviously. Yeah, obviously, and they died, almost one million and 500,000 people at that place. Exactly. It’s got to be heavy to be in a place like that, but then I think that when you were going to Auschwitz, if you died immediately, it was the best thing, probably. Yeah, because the way that they suffered, that people, is just crazy.
30:59 The way they were doing experiments on people, especially they were interested in twins, child, right? Okay, already when you can see the railroad inside Auschwitz, the people that were coming outside from the train, and they were staying three, four, five days, one week, inside the train, because they were coming, for example, from Greece. From Greece they were going to Auschwitz. People, can you imagine the travel they had to do, and they were not stopping.
31:29 So there were no toilets inside the train, so you can already imagine how people can survive inside there. The ones who were alive, they were arriving in Auschwitz, a doctor immediately went to do a selection and say, you’re good, you’re not good. People that were not good, immediately gas chamber, burned, that’s it, like this. Okay, if you were good, you go to work tomorrow morning. Immediately, you stop.
31:53 Some people, they were working 14 hours a day. After, um, they were going, and you can do, like, very disturbing torture. They were staying up all night in five, inside, like maybe two metres square. Okay, stay up all night and they couldn’t fall asleep. Can you imagine?
32:14 And in the morning they don’t go to bed, they’re going to work again. And you saw this at the museums there. Yeah, exactly. This is something that you see in the museum. Is crazy.
32:24 So you really think, wow, I think it’s, what, the trip, this surprised me. Okay, you have one person, Hitler, okay? He can be Hitler, okay, sick. But how can you convince an entire country to believe in what you believe? Yeah, that’s a whole another podcast.
32:44 That’s a tough question, because he was, he was popular in the late ’30s. Oh, you live in Germany, okay? I lived in Munich for seven years, and, um, I have German friends. I actually have a good German friend of mine whose, uh, grandfather was a high-level Army person, I think, general, or just around that, and they were fighting Hitler, and they all got killed. I think it was a movie made there, a movie with Tom Cruise.
33:07 There were even Germans who didn’t agree. And bear in mind, Hitler took over not even a majority initially in that country. So it’s, you know, these types of things can happen literally anywhere, and he was very popular in the late ’30s. Once you, a broken nation coming off of World War I, they wanted their, so many different factors, you know, so many different facts that once it comes together, you know, it could take a culture like German culture is a very rich culture.
33:32 I mean, you think about music, you think about philosophy, think technology, everything they had. I mean it just got ruined by one generation of people who, suddenly, and they were in minority as well, initially. Do your German friends talk about it much? You know, some of them, some, for some of them, you can definitely see, still today, a collective shame, right? I mean, it’s even worse with the young.
33:57 I mean, once you’re past two generations the younger generation in Germany today, a very open mind. Actually, Germany as a country is probably one of the most open-minded countries I’ve lived in, to be honest. Now, because of the backlash of that, the younger generation, they just can’t believe that, right? It’s how it’s emerging. I think Germany almost ended up paying for a lot of, um, Western European reconstruction and their economy pulling everyone up the last 30 years, and I think in the last couple years they’re kind of now getting a little bit of swagger.
34:26 US pay with the Marshall Fund, they did that as well, but like, the last 20 years the German economy is really the backbone of, is the backbone of Europe, and yet they haven’t asserted the power along with it until kind of now. And I think now, you know, they’re asserting it with Greece and Italy and debt destruction, and people are feeling it, but they have the power, they do, and, and I don’t know, you could argue they paid their dues. I don’t know, but, um, I guess everyone should probably check out Auschwitz or Dachau or something like that.
34:48 I’ve been to Dachau when I was 15. It was pretty heavy, but I’d like to go back now that I’m a little older. Sure, it’s something that I really advise everybody. We’re going to put some of Daniele’s pictures up on this, on the video if you’re listening on audio, but if you check it out on YouTube, we’re going to put some of his pictures up, and, um, and check them out. But, uh, I’m just going to switch gears here.
35:04 We had a bunch, a bunch of questions on Facebook about Daniele, because he’s got the coolest job in the world. You know, when I have a Goldman Sachs trader who’s become a fake cage fighter, no one wants questions. We have a professional photographer. Don’t know, it would be better if I was Robert Pattinson, the shooting Twilight. Okay, then maybe.
35:20 But we actually had questions from guys too. It wasn’t just girls, but, um, you saw some of those questions, um, yesterday. Um, Daniele, I’m going to get some first of all, thank you to Rob Mamud, she’s a big supporter of us. For, uh, your question, um, the brain, uh, yeah, she asked about, she did ask about the brain, isn’t it? I’m going to ask that one first.
35:36 Also Brad Walter, who was here two weeks ago. You know Brad, he’s a cool dude. And, um, there was a bunch of people asking questions um, I’m just going to, Jason Shoniker, Richard Jason Shoniker. Um, so Rabia asked about your right and left side of the brain when you do photographs. I guess she’s talking because it’s technical and artistic at the same time.
35:53 Yeah, I know that there’s one side of the brain that is more, more advanced about the memory, and the other one is more advanced about what you’re actually doing, or is it creative as well? Do you know anything about this? Uh, no, it’s not a stupid question. Let’s talk about it, but I’m not a doctor, and so I cannot answer properly about this, so every time I’m taking a picture, I don’t know what side of my brain I’m using. Yeah, but you’re doing it, and I’ve seen your pictures, and they’re beautiful, and you shoot digitally.
36:21 You’ve got some very complicated cameras, you’ve got some huge f***ing lenses that you pull out that, like, ,000 lens. Yeah, but can I talk about this? Yeah. Um, my trip to Auschwitz, to Poland, came as a big surprise for me, because I had with me on my backpack a big lens, no, three big lenses, one body, so it was almost a 6,000 equipment. Okay, 90% of my pictures were taken with the iPhone.
36:49 Really? Yes. Can you explain that? I can, I just can. Maybe it was because, okay, the problem is that I have one body, three different lenses, so for every kind of picture you have to change the lens, a convenience, so it starts to be tough.
37:08 Every time, open the backpack, and people, they don’t wait for you. I was with a guy, I was with a lot of people with me, they just don’t bother. Okay, with the iPhone you just take the iPhone out from your pocket. Do you use the finger thing to focus on certain things in the iPhone? Ex, you do?
37:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that, and is that pretty good with the S? Then you have amazing applications for the iPhone that can transform your pictures from a basic one to a very very, very good one. Which app do you use? So, Camera Plus, yeah, use that. It’s a good one.
37:36 Yeah, check that out. It’s my favorite. Fast as well, isn’t it? Yeah, that is my favorite one, and then you can immediately upload the picture on Facebook, on Twitter, or whatever. So it’s going to be very, very, very fast social payout, right away.
37:48 Yeah, exactly. You don’t need adrenaline to take a picture with your big DSLR, put on your MacBook, editing the picture, and then transfer. No, just you want to do something quickly. You know, Mike talked about this last week, where you talked about the whole concept of a text message, how you’re transferring emotions on an instant basis, and that’s why people love it, right, because they know that they’ve sending emotions on a real-time basis. To me, it’s very interesting, because once, we, back in days, when we started making phones with cameras in them, everybody thought, like, what the f***?
38:18 Oh, why do you have camera there? There’s digital camera, everyone thought that was so. I’m very, very interested to see somebody who’s professional photographer actually looking at a mobile phone and using it in a way, because of the convenience factor, or whatever reason, the instant reason, you can actually instantly take a picture, you know, and then upload it or whatever. There’s actually, right now, I think one of the girls, Elizabeth Bethan, that everybody should check out, she’s traveling around the world.
38:47 She was one of the girls that she created Camera Plus application. Okay, what’s your name? Lisa. Lisa Bethany. Lisa Bethany, yeah, double check.
38:56 Okay, okay. She’s very pretty as well. Is that why you remembered her? Yeah, she’s, yeah, even because I started following her even before Camera Plus, because she was actually a model, then she became a photographer. She’s actually a good photographer, and then she helped them, uh, these people, out from Tipt to the Camera Plus application.
39:16 Okay, and now she’s traveling the world, I think in 40 days or something like this, only with an iPhone 4S. Wow. You just said something there. You said she’s a good photographer, and I just wanted to know what makes a good photographer. I mean, the most famous one, I think, out of is Annie Leibovitz.
39:31 She has all those pictures with Vanity Fair. She took a picture of Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub full of milk. She took some picture of some dude with an octopus on his head. I mean, she’s done these famous, you know, people consider her a good photographer. But what makes a good photographer, and not saying you are one.
39:43 I think you are. We have one of the questions from the guy on Facebook that he was talking about, um, how you can mix the technique with the art and do us some nice photography. Yeah. So it was, um, I think it was, yeah, Brad Walter. He said, uh, a bit of tech.
39:58 What’s the balance between having to know the science of photography and the art of a beautiful picture? Is that what you mean? Exactly, exactly. There was that one. Brad is it’s very difficult to answer this one, because something that is nice for me cannot be nice for you.
40:13 So I have my kind of photography, so I know what I like. So my perfect photography is Tim Walker. Everybody that likes fashion and knows him, he was shooting for Vogue since he was very young, and he’s still shooting today, every single Vogue. What’s his, what’s his name? Tim Walker.
40:31 Tim Walker, okay. He is from London, he’s actually an English guy, okay, and he’s a big, big guy. And some other people, they look at the picture and they say, I, they just didn’t say anything to me, okay? And this, I’m crazy. It’s not just possible.
40:49 Like, people, when I see people and say I don’t like iPhone, how can you not like iPhone? And then there exist people, they can do that. And so you just do what you like. I’m sure, 100%, that a lot of times I took pictures that for me were perfect pictures, and for my client they were not nice. For example, why did you cut my head?
41:12 Because this is what fashion likes. Now you cut the head, so you can see, I don’t know, just half of the face of the model. Right, right, okay. And maybe the model says, I don’t like this picture, because we cannot see my face, so my face looks weird or something. So something that is beautiful for me can easily not be beautiful for somebody else.
41:30 It’s interesting, because Daniele brings his own version of what he thinks into a photo shoot. For me, he had this crazy image of me, probably because of a short film I did. He’s like, okay, Brian, you’re the James Bond guy, and so he came in and he’s like, this is what I want, and like, regardless of whether I thought that or not, I was like, okay, let’s do it. And so it was like really almost like a collaboration, or almost like you were the artist and I was just the subject, and you, this is, you were seeing me through your eyes.
41:53 Okay, the Brian photoshoot, you, it’s the perfect example, because every time that I saw him, I was thinking, yeah, he’s the kind of, you know, James Bond guy. I can see him. James Bond. Okay, stop that life, a long time, I have to, I have to take a picture of this guy. Of course, I cannot make him, like, I don’t know, Tom Cruise in Top Gun, because he’s not what I feel like.
42:14 Okay, it’s not what he gives to me. Okay, I have to make him feel like James Bond. So I say, okay, Brian, get your best dress, tuxedo, nice, you know, and that are the best pictures. I’m sure, 100%, that if everybody’s going now on my Facebook page and they see Brian, the best one I saw, that I liked it. The tuxedo one.
42:32 The tux had really, Co, and he’s got a great eye, because there’s some subtleties in that picture that maybe aren’t so subtle, but what he does is I had my girlfriend at the time there, and he just has her in the background, out of focus most of the time. So it’s like, who is this guy? There’s a girl behind him. You don’t see her, but you see her, and it’s like all these subtleties he has to his image, and you told me at the time, now what did you say? If there had been, if she had been in focus with me, why would that have ruined the picture?
42:56 Can you explain that? Yeah, because I had to explain this to the girlfriend, and it took me two days to explain it. She was extremely upset, and she say, how that every picture, I’m not, I’m out of focus. And I say it to her, and I say to Brian as well, because it’s normal when you have a picture and you have a guy and a girl on the picture, both men and both girls, they will always look at the girl. The girls first.
43:19 Always. It’s a simple concept, but so true, isn’t it? They always look at the girl. So because the main subject was Brian, I couldn’t put the girl in focus, because nobody is going to look at the picture and say, oh, look, nice Brian. They’re going to say, oh, look, nice girl, beautiful dress, beautiful makeup, and this is not what we wanted in that kind of picture.
43:39 So I say, let’s put it in the background, out of focus. So it makes sense: you are the main subject, and she’s at the back, like, uh, following you, running, you, and you are in front, on not the same level. So the James Bond style, the the bad guy. And what did you say about, there is no Bond without, what did they say? He said there’s no James Bond without Bond girls.
44:04 Yeah, true, that’s true. True, a great quote, right? It’s true. Can you imagine a Bourne with those? No, Bond girls.
44:09 He would be Jason Bourne, and then I like Jason Bourne, cool, but different, but different cool. Exactly. So that one, you see, when you take pictures, you always have to study everything. So you, you not go in a photo shoot and say, okay, let’s just take pictures. You have to study everything, so you know you have this model, this model, you have the location, you have to put everything together.
44:33 So a photographer is just an artist, so you go to the National Gallery, you see Van Gogh, you say, okay, I like it, I don’t like it, you see Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, whatever. You can choose which one you like most. You cannot say something is not good, so you can see the F of the chair of Van Gogh. You see the 3D effect of the chair is completely wrong. It’s completely mess.
44:55 So this guy looks like that. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he didn’t know what he was doing, and for this reason he’s Van Gogh. So you love Van Gogh because he was crazy. He was doing something that is not reality, it is not real. So he did put that chair, then in the reality he was completely different.
45:13 So the ability of an artist is to make you, people, that they look at this art to see that kind of painting in the same way that he did, to challenge him a bit, or put, make him a little uncomfortable. No, this is very difficult, so you are a big, extremely big artist when you can do that. Okay, so where is that? I mean, I have a very, um, it’s a big question for myself. I’m, if you look at, for instance, Scandinavian now movies or pictures and design, which is your area of fashion, it’s because of their culture.
45:44 I can really see, uh, by the movie or the clothing or whatever, the device or anything they do, that’s coming from Scandinavia. You can see the feel, the vibe, very simple, conservative, not necessarily conservative, but very simple because of the, and very direct, even in the movies or, you know, the element of culture. I see that. Do you think that’s something that, for instance, for yourself, when you shoot a picture, that your own Italian background, your own where you are from, has an impact in your viewing?
46:15 Surely does. It must be. Must, no, it’s for sure, 100%. You do. You like the ultra-beautiful.
46:21 You like the, come on, the blinged up. Exactly. No, but it’s completely right, because if you put me, okay, you can have even Italian photographers, and they take completely different photos. This is normal. Thank God we’re not shooting all the same way, because if not, only one will work.
46:39 But you have something. So for example, when I told you before, I’m crazy, I have something about Sicily, about this extremely strong culture, warm, and this is what I’m trying to do even in my pictures. So for example, the Dolce Gabbana pictures are my perfect style. Okay, so, but Sicily is not even your, I mean, it’s your parents? Yeah, my father, so you’re one generation away.
47:04 Is my father, but I was always in love, because my favorite movie is The Godfather. Okay, obviously. So you love all these kinds of things. So every time I’m going to Sicily there’s something that I’m falling in love with. Every time is something new, interesting.
47:22 I love Florence as well. I love Tuscany. I think is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Okay, but Sicilia is that something rawness, is that something that rustic. Very rustic.
47:34 Exactly. They still on that very old age, and this is what you love. This is what makes them different from the others, and this is what you love, and that comes into your art a little bit, subtly, like you said, almost a generation removed. You’re trying to find kind of where the cultural, yeah. For me, it’s very interesting, because I’m interested to find out that, because that’s artist.
47:56 I mean, we can talk about the technique and asking what’s your favorite camera, et cetera, because that’s another area where some people that I know, friends, like, okay, I just shoot with Canon, whereas somebody, not just Leica, or the other guys are just Sony, and have their certain way of, because of the way that type of device obviously brings out whatever they want to bring out, but to me, the artist artistic part is what sets apart a really great, you know, picture. You don’t, you don’t really need a particular kind of camera or something. You can just express yourself with whatever iPhone.
48:33 Um, yeah, exactly, with an iPhone, for example. Um, yeah, like we were talking before about the iPhone. Then when you own a camera, my camera is my girlfriend, okay, so I’m, I can even, I’m not thinking in my life without my camera. Every time I’m traveling, I’m traveling with British Airways, because it’s the only company that allows me to take all my gear with me on the plane. Really?
49:01 Yeah, because the size of the bag. Exactly. Okay, so if I have to think to travel with Ryan, for example, and they say, “No, listen, sir, you have to check in your bag with your camera and lenses,” I’m not traveling. Thanks, go away. He goes out in public and takes pictures of random people, sometimes just because he wants to get the right look or the right shot.
49:21 That’s crazy. Yeah, the most important, the most beautiful thing in this world are people and spontaneity, and spontaneity, you like. So when you go just in central London with your camera and you just take pictures of people when they don’t know that you’re taking them. Can you capture the energy of Victoria Station at 8:30 in the morning? I mean, I don’t know.
49:41 When people talk about energy, I mean, amazing. I don’t know if, like, a lot of our friends maybe don’t live in London, but some, most of us who do, 8:30 in the morning, Russia or Victoria Station or Waterloo. I mean, the energy, it’s amazing. You’re such a dash. Huh?
49:56 Yeah, no, it’s true, it’s definitely true, and this is why I like people, thinking just people, everybody. So sounds like a great picture: get some, like, picture of like a guy and a girl in a mid-argument or something at a dinner table somewhere. Get that snapshot where she’s like him, and he’s like [expletive] something. That’s something that I’m trying to do in my photo shoot with my models as well. I’m always telling them, the best picture is when you don’t know that I’m there.
50:26 So just behave like if there’s nobody in front of you. Don’t concentrate on me, don’t concentrate on the camera, on the lens. Just act like if you were alone. Okay, it’s just… It’s tricky.
50:37 It’s a tricky thing. What was that movie, Zoolander, where it’s very, he’s he’s polishing this look at the very end. They call this Blue Steel. It’s like, yeah, exactly, Blue Steel. And so when he was taking pictures of me, I was like Blue Steel.
50:47 I was like, because, like, what I’m thinking about at the time comes out on your face. And so if I’m thinking I’m in a photo shoot, or if I’m thinking how much longer, or if I’m thinking I better try to look cool, that doesn’t work, you know? You’ve got to be out of the moment a little bit. Exactly. I get props to these models.
51:01 Just be yourself, and like, if I was not there, they are the best ones. Then sometimes you really need an extremely POS for the model, or something. It depends on the photo shoot, but my favorite pictures, they are always, sometimes I’m taking pictures of the models in the meantime, then I don’t know, she’s thinking, okay, how can I POS? I’m taking the picture in the mid, and then she’s not posing. Yeah, and they are always the best ones.
51:26 Yeah, definitely. I have one extremely good picture that I can give to Brian. Post that it was taken like this, and this is one of my favorite ones. Good. All right, we’re going to get those pictures up while we’re talking.
51:36 Um, I just want, we’ve got about 10 minutes left. I just want to quick then I want to hear more about, um, your website, your Twitter, and that kind of thing, how people get in touch with you. But it was the one question where someone asked about, um, DSLR filmmaking. He’s, uh, it was um, Zaki Solo Doo. Um, does it challenge conventional methods in the right way, or does it stray away from what film is all about, and can you explain what he means by that?
53:07 Okay, I’m a huge, huge fan of DSLR filmmaking. Okay, okay. Um, is that, that’s obviously separate just from digital. This is digital, what, single lens reflective? Maybe you can explain that really quick.
53:19 Okay, so basically, before, to shoot a movie, usually you need a big, expensive camera. Okay, they were shooting in film, and now we don’t shoot film anymore. Kodak just called bankrupt. They still do it in Hollywood, but they’re phasing it out, right? No, now, when they finish the film, that’s it.
53:35 They’re not going to do them anymore. There’s a lot of directors that still like it. So, for example, if you think about the last Martin Scorsese, Hugo, he was shot completely on an Alexa, so digital, all the moving digital. It was 3D as well. Yeah, yeah.
53:48 So it looked beautiful. It looked digital. Did you like it? I love it. Won cinematography, Academy.
53:54 Exactly. When I saw the movie, I said this movie will win the Oscar for cinematography, and he did, because it was like the most important thing about the movie is that, what it impresses, the photography is just perfect. So every time I’m thinking, like, when we start this podcasting and say the photography was stupid things, why I have to go on a photography lesson to do movies? Biggest mistake. Can you imagine?
54:16 You go with that without that kind of photography. It heightened the reality. Beautiful. It just brought everything up, like, times two. So sometimes I think that cinematography is even more important than the director.
54:29 But okay, okay. I Y Matrix. No, you can think about every single movie. Go, and even Hanna. I watched Hanna last night, and there are some shots that are like four minutes long, where they have these long shots that draw the audience in.
54:42 Beautiful cinematography. I would say if you’re a good director, you probably have done camera work. Yeah, no, no, definitely, definitely, because you really need that angles. Steven Soderbergh does all his own camera work. He does it under an alias name, so the cinematographer comes up under a different name, but he’s behind the camera on all of his films.
54:59 That’s crazy, because most of the time, photo, directors, they’re in love with these kinds of things. I don’t know, I’m thinking about that because I’m following him, Ron Howard, on Twitter. Yeah, and he’s always posting pictures of the new setup, of the lens, these kinds of things. Who’s this on Twitter, Ron Howard? Okay, the guy that did Apollo 13.
55:18 Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he did start acting. Yes, he did. Days, he, yeah, he went right into, went right into filming after that.
55:28 So what’s the DSLR? Explain the DSLR. Let’s go back to the DSLR. For me, it was a revolution, and I’m happy that it did happen, because it did open the door to millions of people who cannot afford just to make big-production movies. So you can just have a small DSLR for 6, 700 pounds, and you can really make short movies and go on internet, upload a video on YouTube, upload the video, whatever you want, and that’s it.
55:59 The game is done. Before, it was impossible to do that. And how is that different than just a digital camera? This, the SLR, the single lens reflective, is it just because you can put the lenses on? No, the DSLR, what exactly what they have good is that you can change lenses.
56:14 Okay, so every time that you change lens, you change your expression to say something. Okay, so you can have an amazing, um, out of focus. You can have extremely good conditions if you have a full-frame camera, so in low-light conditions, very, extremely low ISO. So you have, um, I don’t know, I’m thinking about Stanley Kubrick, that he did Barry Lyndon, yeah, with just the candles, and his lens is from NASA or something. He asked Zeiss to make a special lens for this.
56:47 Okay, and he says, because I don’t like artificial lights. I want to just do it. And then he says, okay, let’s try to do that, and they made a special lens for that. He shot on film, of course, because at the time they didn’t have Canon 5D Mark II or 7D. But I can imagine now Stanley Kubrick working with Canon 5D one.
57:07 George Lucas, that we all know him because he likes to experiment, he likes new stuff. He did call a friend of mine, who is an extremely good filmmaker here in England, called Philip Bloom. Everybody will know him if they like DSLR, and he said to him, come on the set of Red Tails, the latest Lucas film, that didn’t come out here in England, in Europe. We don’t know why yet. It’s the Second World War, or First.
57:37 Exactly. Um, basically, at the end of the movie, I think more than 20 minutes of the movie was shot on Canon DSLR. So when you go on the cinema camera, camera B, it was the film camera, camera C, and camera D, there was digital DSLR. You won’t be able to see the difference between a film camera that cost £100,000, that required five people to work on it, if you want to put the camera from place A to place B, you need four hours, and a DSLR that requires one person, it’s big like this, it cost 1,500.
58:21 Where is the difference? There’s no difference. Big screen, black R was shot on Canon 7D as well. It was. Gosh.
58:28 All right, well, we’re going to get some, definitely some controversial comments on the back of this, because there’ll be some film lovers out there that will say the film keeps it so warm. But I know what you mean, especially with all the post-production, uh, digital things. You can make a digital image look like anything you want, right? Is exactly the same thing, with Mac, with a digital camera. You’re done.
58:46 It’s crazy. Cut through. I know. Wow. All right, well, um, guys, this hour has flown by.
58:50 If people want to get in touch with you, Daniele, for their own photo shoots, if they want to hire you as a cinematographer for their short film or for their feature film, how do they get a hold of you? What’s your Twitter, Facebook, all that good stuff? My Twitter is Daniele, Facebook Daniele Cuccia. You can find Daniele Cuccia Photographer, Daniele Cuccia Photography, and my website dana.com. Okay, I’ll put all those on screen and stuff.
59:12 So, um, do you Twitter? A little bit, not a lot. Okay, not a lot. We’re at, um, we’re at London Real TV. We’re getting bigger and bigger, getting some great retweets lately.
59:21 So thanks for everyone. If you can join us there, we’re also at facebook.com/londonreal. Like us, and uh, there’s also our website, londonreal.tv. But that was fun, guys. Thanks.
59:30 I feel like we could do another hour, just like scratch the surface. But um, right, is I know it always is like that. Meditation, I know, right? Um, next week we’ve got, um, Nick Gabriel back in the house. We will be talking about our iasa challenge.
59:43 Nick and I will be consuming iasa in nine days, and, uh, we’re going to talk about it before and afterwards. So wish us well, say a prayer for us, and, uh, don’t turn us in. And, um, that’s it. Thanks, guys, for coming. Awesome.
59:56 It’s about the journey. Appreciate it. All right, peace. Peace.
