Zoey's Extraordinary Steadicam Operator - Bradley Crosbie
Bradley Crosbie on The Set of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
Kicking off our sixth season is long-time camera operator, Bradley Crosbie. Watching Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, I became enamored with the way the musical numbers were shot. I was so fascinated that they made a choice to do most of them as “oners” or long takes (aka shooting a scene with minimal cuts and doing it all as one take). I kept hearing Bradley’s name come from different interviews when they talked about the person capturing these genius numbers. I knew he was someone I wanted to speak to study his brilliant work that made the screen. We chatted about his experience in the industry, how the pandemic is affecting the entertainment industry, and he gives me an inside look of what it was like to work on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Listen here!
Bradley Crosbie With The Cast And Crew of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
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BRADLEY CROSBIE: Hey, everyone. It’s Bradley Crosbie. You’re about to listen to my interview on Pop Nerd Lounge.
STEPH PHAM: Welcome to Pop Nerd Lounge, a podcast for the creative soul. I’m your host, Steph Pham. Listener, we are back for Season 6! A huge thank you for allowing us to continue bringing you these insightful chats with fellow artists. For today’s conversation with a creative, I speak with Bradley Crosbie. He’s a Steadicam and Camera Operator with his latest project being my favorite TV show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Yes, I get to geek out about Zoey’s with him and even get some behind the scenes tidbits. We also talk about his journey into camera operating, and he delivers some helpful truths that will be useful for aspiring film industry professionals. Please give a warm welcome to my guest, Bradley Crosbie.
[Music Interludes]
STEPH PHAM: Welcome to Pop Nerd Lounge! My guest today is Bradley Crosbie, Bradley thank you so much for joining me!
BRADLEY CROSBIE: Yeah, no problem!
PHAM: Do you remember an impactful moment early on that made you fall in love with storytelling?
CROSBIE: With storytelling? No, it’s kind of something that’s sort of progressed through my career. There was no -- you know beyond writing stories as a kid and coming up with stuff -- but there was no actual point I would say that I fell in love with storytelling. It’s just something we do.
PHAM: Out of all the different areas of film, what drew you into cinematography?
CROSBIE: It’s the typical thing where I always had photography as a hobby as a child and growing up as a teenager. I’ve got boxes and boxes and boxes of photos in my basement. I just enjoy sort of discovering found composition.
PHAM: And what was the bridge for you between studying camera work and cinematography to booking your first real industry job?
CROSBIE: Well, that goes way way back. I started working in film 26 years ago, and I always had an interest in photography. So, I got started in the camera department and I worked my way up. I went from an apprentice to a second assistant to a first assistant and now to an operator.
PHAM: And like you mentioned, you have this impressive career that spans over 20 years. Do you have a favorite project that you’ve been able to be a part of?
CROSBIE: There’s been a lot of them. I think in terms of things that were amazing to work on the first - the first Kick Ass movie was a lot of fun to work on and an enjoyable experience. And I was a camera assistant for that. In terms of an operator, I really enjoy working on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist just because of the challenge, and the work environment, and the people I was with. And in terms of cinematography type things, The Hannibal TV series was really good. And I also enjoyed - there’s a Netflix series, a smaller Netflix series, called Anne With an E that’s won a bunch of awards for cinematography. And it was for me - you know it was a smaller job but it was a real pleasure to work on. I also like there’s another Netflix movie called Shimmer Lake that I worked with a cinematographer named Jarin Blaschke who his last thing that he just did was The Lighthouse. That was a lot of fun to work on. Anything that you know strives to be creative and do something different or interesting as opposed to just what I call vacuuming up the script, I really enjoy working on.
PHAM: So, you mentioned several different projects, and I think the assumption for somebody who’s not in the media industry -- they kind of assume that camerawork is just behind the camera. Go ahead tell people what are the different areas of the camera department on a film set. What can you do if you want to get into cinematography?
CROSBIE: Well, there are a couple of different ways to get into cinematography. And I have to clarify that I’m not a cinematographer. I don’t have any aspirations to be a cinematographer. I’m specifically a camera operator and a Steadicam operator. I do the physical act of filming as well as sort of coordinating what needs to happen to be able to actually get the shots. So, as you know as a director works with a cinematographer to think about what the shot should be, how the overall lighting look should be, and the look, and then I coordinate with the cinematographer about what the actual shots are and sort of help disseminate that through the crew to get things done.
In terms of the camera department specifically, there’s a lot of different levels to the camera department. You know, the classic structure from top-down would be cinematographer, then operator, then the first assistant which is also known as the focus puller, below that is the second assistant which is also known as the clapper loader, and there’s often a utility position larger shows where they have to an extra assistant to be able just to … with the amount of equipment coming and going. There’s a trainee or an apprentice, that’s pretty universal. In certain parts of the world, the dolly grip or person who actually moves around the camera on its dolly - are included in the camera department. There’s also - they have different names depending on where you work - but there’s the DIT or the DMT which is a digital technician on the digital shows which would be coordinating the look of the show right there on set -- so there’s a guide to the final look of the show when it’s done of the footage. And if it’s a film show, often you have a film loader, that person spends a lot of time in a dark room in a truck loading and unloading film. And I spent - I think I spent 10 years doing that back in film days.
PHAM: Something that we’re told that everyone needs in the media industry is a reel. And I’ve checked out your reel on your website. How does one choose to include in your reel and to make it pop for people to look at it?
CROSBIE: Well, specifically my reel was just for Steadicam work to show that I could do it. You know, I put in - I put in shots that I felt told a little bit of a story that tried to show things that for those in the know were a little more difficult things to do to say that I have a certain level of competency to be able to do this. But that reel now on my website is -- gotta be about four or five years old. And the issue is now is it’s near impossible for even myself to get footage. It used to be that once the show’s released on broadcast you’re able to get footage for a reel together, and that’s no longer the case. The footage is now - because of piracy and privacy in the streaming service, everything is so closely guarded. And it’s a really tough thing to do because when a production’s going is when you need to get the footage cause as soon as you wrap shooting, there’s no more production to be able to contact and say “I need footage.” So it’s the sort of thing you have to be able to -- as you’re shooting get the footage which now nobody is really willing to do. It’s one of these things that I haven’t really put together another reel. I don’t have a lot of more current footage of stuff that I’ve done. I have to rely a little bit more on my resume to be able to -- and word of mouth, which is a big thing.
PHAM: We’re going to transition into a different topic right now, as we’re recording this -- I’m not sure how times are gonna change when this airs but -- one of the things a lot of people are dealing with right now is social distancing and quarantining thanks to the COVID-19 virus. Obviously, we’ve seen in the news that it’s impacted the entertainment industry. Through your perspective, how has it impacted production and what can people learn from that - how we could help possibly if there is any way for us to help - for people who are impacted by this in the entertainment industry.
CROSBIE: Well, I think as consumers, there’s not a whole lot you can do in terms of… From what I heard from our industry, the writers are still writing, the producers are still planning and everyone’s waiting till the pandemic is in the rearview mirror and hopefully they’ll pull the trigger on a lot of things. And I’m sure by then, people will be looking forward to be able to watch new things they haven’t seen before. Living in Toronto at the time in 2003, I went through SARS. And in a matter of less than a week, everything shut down. You know I was a camera assistant at the time, focus puller and I was on a show and we had done one scene and they came in and they said, “Ok, that’s it. Everyone go home.” And that was it. And that - I didn’t work for eight and a half months.
You know the whole thing - if there’s anyone in our industry that’s out that’s a younger member in the industry is that - really this shows the importance of putting money away when you’re working as a freelancer. You know… When we work in film it’s a decent wage. It’s a good middle-class wage, and it’s very easy to -- “Oh, I like to get a newer car or a new computer, or a get a more expensive apartment or take the bigger trips,” and it’s very important that you take a chunk of your wage every check and you put it aside because these sort of “black swan” situations do occur. Between 9/11, Sars in Toronto, a writer’s strike, there’s so many things that occur. Now we have COVID. I think it’s very important that - at least for people in my industry - to consciously think about putting away what they can for the slow times.
PHAM: That’s great advice! Something that I think a lot of young creatives don’t think about is - as freelancers - we don’t think about putting money away. We kind of just go by each day and we don’t really think about that in the long game but we should. ‘Cause like you said these “black swan” things can pop up. We might not be prepared. So, that’s wonderful advice. We’re gonna talk about something that you brought up and honestly one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on the show, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. You are the Steadicam Operator there. How did you become involved with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist?
CROSBIE: Well the - I did not do the pilot. The pilot was done a year before in Vancouver. And the show was taken over - sort of a showrunner - by a director named Adam Davidson who I worked with before on a pilot for a show called Wisdom of The Crowd was a short-lived Jeremy Piven series. And I got along really well with Adam. I really liked Adam. He had put my name in a hat. And I had a couple of other jobs here in the Toronto area where I live, and this was to be shoot in Vancouver. And I spoke with Shasta Spahn who was the Cinematographer, and she offered me the job. And I looked at it and I looked at what the content was and something about it really enticed me so I said, “Sure.” You know, I’m gonna pack my bags up and left the family behind for a little bit. I have to say it was an extremely rewarding experience. It was really good.
PHAM: A huge difference between Zoey’s with a lot of musical series is the way the musical numbers are shot, which a lot of people who’ve done interviews on the show have spoken about. Most of them are minimal cuts. They’re not very music video styled. They’re very in the moment. Can you take us a little behind-the-scenes of what that’s like as the Steadicam operator making these kinds of numbers happen?
CROSBIE: I have to say, I really enjoy the way they’re done. Not having it over-edited and letting the songs play to themselves. As an operator that’s always enticing to know that you know, if you’re doing a oner 100% of your work is going on the screen. It’s not being inner cut with other shots.
I had the fortune of working with Mandy Moore, the choreographer. She’s incredibly talented. Incredibly, incredibly talented. Her ability to think visually on top of the choreography was just so impressive. Being able to work with Mandy - and I told Mandy this all the time - It’s like if I could finish out my career working with Mandy Moore. I absolutely adored working with her. She’s a great human, and she’s incredibly good at her job.
And so we did - I think Mandy said - we did roughly 60 songs over the course of the season. Which is a lot, and she had them all choreographed and memorized and often multiple versions memorized to try to appease some of the directors. So generally for me, there was a few instances where I’d actually be able to go and see rehearsals. There’s a finale number that I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about yet, cause I don’t know when it’s gonna air where I actually had a whole day to go and spend on the set with the cast and choreograph that with Mandy which was - well, help out Mandy. [laughs] There were a couple of other times where I could go to dance rehearsals, but generally what would happen is if Mandy could she’d send me a rough video the day before. But most of the time - I’d arrive, see a rehearsal, start to go through with uh where the camera needs to go.
So, there’s a lot of things that had to be satisfied with stamping - one was that we didn’t want us to notice there was a camera there. So, you know we didn’t want to make arbitrary movements. A lot of the times it had to be oners. It also had to go with the emotion of the scene, and it had to cover the story of what’s happened in the song. And so it was kind of figuring that out, and I’d say most - you know we’d do a rehearsal or two - and then - some dance numbers, song, and dance numbers, we’d get in 4 takes other times we’d go up to 12 or 13 takes just to really hone in on the nuances as we went. But it was such a great experience because you have - a lot of the actors aren’t trained dancers or singers as well as say for Alex. So, they’re trying to get all their bits in, and as the actors are improving, the choreography or the cameras are improving, and it was great. It was a really great challenge. It was good to be able to do that sort of thing. It was the sort of thing where we’d do these dance numbers and if you’re on a regular show, it’d be like “if one of these dance numbers, it’d be like ‘Oh, my God! We had this dance number on the show!” But on our show, we shot an episode in eight days. We do an average around five to six song and dance numbers that we had to perform, and it was good. It was a great experience.
PHAM: Speaking on that, what was the most challenging number to shoot, because I heard a lot of different things from the cast - so far! So far from what we’ve seen. As we’re recording this we’re at episode seven about to be episode eight. And I think one of the most challenging numbers was that number, Mo in the club where she’s singing “Bailamos.” Was that one of the more difficult numbers to shoot considering the fact that you had to weave through people and focus on them while everything else is going on.
CROSBIE: Uh, that was definitely a challenge. A lot of the dancers around us were really really helpful. Like someone - I think Alex Newell had posted something on Instagram earlier this week where you could actually see the dance floor during rehearsal. I had my dolly grip with me, Emma - Emma McDuff and she was an amazing help for that sort of thing because she had the ability to memorize all the camera movements and the choreography, and the timing of the song. So, she could anticipate where I was going and sort of help - help push me around to make sure I’m not gonna hurt anyone. But yeah that number was a definite challenge. That took us - I think we were - in nine or ten takes on there.
The big thing I really got with that one is because, the whole thing is there’s that house beat that’s going and then there’s whole other sub song going, so there’s two different songs going on at once. Being able to get the timing and specifically the timing changes where you’re going from slow movement to fast movement to slow movement to fast movement - just to sort of to keep the right feel, to capture the right bits that Mandy had choreographed for that whole dance number. And it was good in the sense that the dancers could actually pay attention to what’s going on, because if you keep in mind that you know, we did that on a slightly longer lens. So, if you know the camera’s filming people and it’s gotta get all the way around them to see them on the other side, you know when you watch it on your screen it looks “oh, the camera’s going around them.” But that’s - you know for me, that’s 20 feet of movement that has to happen very quickly. So it’s constantly going from a walk to a run to walk to a run to back and to back out to try to get all the right timing, so it’s - . That one was challenging, yeah. But it was good. In terms of what I thought the most challenging was? Uh, I can’t tell you about that one either cause it hasn’t aired. [laughs]
PHAM: [laughs] I’m so excited to see this! I know that we have five more episodes left at the time that we’re recording this. I just can’t wait to see all the different numbers. I think Austin said we have about 30 more numbers to go, and we’re just like “Yes!” We can’t wait to see all the amazingness, especially the episode coming up where - I think it’s called “Zoey’s Extraordinary Glitch,” where she’s the one that’s breaking out into song. So, I can’t wait to see all of that.
CROSBIE: In the trailer for it, she does Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”
PHAM: Yes!
CROSBIE: Which, I’d have to say that was one of my favorite ones to do.
PHAM: Ooooh!
CROSBIE: It was just super super fun to do. It wasn’t easy but was it was fun and it was just doing a lot of new movements. I haven’t seen the edited - you know it’s like it was shot as a Steadicam oner, but we also had you know a 50-foot crane there that day, and we did some other shots. So, I’m excited to see how it comes out.
PHAM: I’m excited as well. Now, before we wrap up our interview, I just want to ask you what advice would you give people out there who might want to get into camera operating or camera work in general and like what’s a practical step that they can take to go from amateur to the next step?
CROSBIE: Well it’s - The business has changed a lot since I’ve been in it. You know, when I started it was really a lot more based on apprenticeship. Film schools have become a lot more prevalent now. But I think the biggest advice for regardless of what you want to do in the film business because it is freelance, is let people know what you want to do. You know for some reason, a lot of people they have aspirations and they keep their cards really close to their chests. But if you're a hard worker and people like you, and you let people know what you want to do I think people inherently are kind, and will want to help others that they like. So, if there's a younger person that I work with, you know on camera assistant says "I want to do this," I'm like if you'd like to do Steadicam let me know. And let's get the Steadicam on you and let's try some practicing. See if you actually like doing it. I think my advice would be to let people know what you'd like to do and let them help you.
PHAM: Well, we’re going to take this opportunity and we’re gonna pull a Hot Ones, and you can plug whatever you want to plug. You can plug your website where people can find you. You can plug any projects that you’re on. I’m gonna open up the floor to you and you can promote whatever you want to promote.
CROSBIE: Uh, well don’t really have a whole lot to promote. You know, everything’s kinda shut down right now. But yeah, I do have a website, it’s BradleyCrobsie.com Crosbie is spelt uh the old way with b-i-e on the end, all one word. There’s just some photos and a four or five year old reel on there. That’s about that and just - The only thing I can say is stay healthy, be kind to each other during this time, and wash your hands.
PHAM: Excellent! Well, thank you so much for speaking with me Bradley. I enjoyed this chat thoroughly!
CROSBIE: You’re welcome!
PHAM: A huge thank you to Bradley for such a marvelous chat. I really enjoyed getting to know the role of camera operating. I never really study the ins and outs of a camera operator before so it was really interesting to see what they’re role is like in a film setting. Thank you Bradley, and if you want to learn more about him visit the links in the show notes.
Make sure to follow us where you listen to podcasts. We’re on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts, and basically anywhere podcasts are streaming. Take it away outro me!
Pop Nerd Lounge is a two-man operation, rather I should say a two women operation. It is executive produced by Steph Pham and Vee Koh. Vee Koh serves as the show’s Creative Director, and Steph Pham is the show’s host and editor. You can find us on social media @popnerdlounge. For an easy convenient hub of everything Pop Nerd Lounge, visit our website popnerdlounge.com That’s it for this week, tune in next time for another conversation with a fellow creative. I’m Steph Pham.