S4E170 | Finding Simplicity in Filmmaking with Michael Goi
In Season 4, Episode 170: "Finding Simplicity in Filmmaking with Michael Goi" of the Get Reelisms Podcast, hosts Adam Chase Rani and Christine W Chen dived deep into the art of filmmaking with their special guest, Michael Goi. Goi, a renowned director and cinematographer with a career spanning over three decades, shared invaluable insights into the world of film, offering advice to aspiring filmmakers and discussing the evolution of visual storytelling. Listen to the full episode here.
Full Transcript
e170s4 pre descript
Michael Goi: [00:00:00] I'm always looking for the simplest way to do something, not the most complicated way. And I know that people watch my work like on American Horror Story and think, wow, this is incredibly dense and complex and stuff. But that's not the way mentally that I approached it. I was always looking for the simplest, most direct way to get the audience to understand how the character is feeling in that exact moment.
And so I would choose the visual that would put that story point across. And all of that transferred into my professional work. It's stuff that I still do now. And plus the fact that I also love to do magical illusions. I believe magic and filmmaking go hand in hand. The stage illusions that George ese did, translated seamlessly to motion picture film when he started to incorporate film in the state shows.
Adam Chase Rani: We are the. Get Reelisms Podcast. I am Adam Chase Rani and I am Christine Chen and surprise we're [00:01:00] both filmmakers.
We get into it by sharing secrets, advice and gossip in filmmaking, and we even get our other filmmaking friends share theirs too. So please everybody join us for an ODE to filmmaking.
Welcome back to Get Reelisms Podcast, episode 170. My name is Adam Chase Rani
Christine W Chen: and I am Christine Chen and I'm really excited today to have a special guest that I somehow coerced to be on here. Michael Goi, would you mind introducing yourself? Who you are, what you do?
Michael Goi: I am a director and cinematographer. Director primarily for the last 10 years. Cinematographer for about 38 years, primarily before then lately been executive producing on shows as well. And just active in a lot of industry organizations and committees.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. Could you [00:02:00] take us back to the very, very beginning when you had any access to film? What was the first set or moment where you had access to the film industry?
Michael Goi: The professional film industry or the indie film industry or
Christine W Chen: Any of it. I can remember that I touched my dad's VHS camera and that's what inspired me to start making random stuff.
Michael Goi: When I was seven years old, I went to a friend's birthday party and he had an eight millimeter projector and was showing digest versions of horror films from the 1930s, like Frankenstein and Dracula on the wall as part of the birthday party.
And it was the first time that I had seen actual motion picture film, eight millimeter motion picture film. And I realized that it was a series of still photographs that moved into the projector and then turned it into motion when it hit the wall. So that, that to me was like magic that you could tell stories with still photos and have them move [00:03:00] and that.
Spurred my interest in getting an eight millimeter camera myself and start to make my own movies and because stop motion animation specifically three dimensional stop motion animation was like the huge inspiration for me. I was big fan of Ray Harryhausen's work and I used to watch his films and so all of my initial experiments were stop motion animation with clay models or things like that.
That's how I taught myself really the grammar of filmmaking and how you actually make stories out of images in that way. Yeah. And it's something that grew over time. By the time I got into the, my first year of high school, I wanted to make professional movies. To me professional was 16 millimeter.
And I got a used Bolex windup camera that this man used to use to shoot fishing films on weekends and stuff. And I would do my own [00:04:00] experiments and I still have that Bolex when I do.
Christine W Chen: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that.
Michael Goi: Yeah. I sometimes take out the Bolex and I shoot some footage for the movie of the films.
I've used it on American Horror Story. It all goes back to those.
Christine W Chen: And were your, was your family always supportive of this path that you have for making films or was it always it's a hobby,
Michael Goi: Yeah, there's a video on my Instagram, which is when I was presenting with an award from the ASC a few weeks ago in my speech I made mention of the fact that my parents were both born in California but were placed in internment camps during World War II. When I
was eight years old.
my love of movies prompted me to tell them that, I want to go to Hollywood and I wanna make movies. And, my mom said, then that's what you should do because you can be anything you wanna be. You know that support, even though there was [00:05:00] nothing even remotely filmmaking or even photography in the background of anybody in my family they supported, my.
Desire to be a filmmaker, even if they didn't understand how that pathway was gonna work, from Chicago. So I just started shooting then, and I basically never stopped, and for a long time, I think even when I became a member of the American Society of Cinematographers.
And I wasn't, I got nominated for an award one year and I flew out my dad and my mom to the ceremony, and it was the first time my dad had ever worn a tuxedo, and he walked into this ballroom with 1600 people in elegant dress, and he was like, wow, this is a big deal, and Bill and Billy Fraker who shot Rosemary's baby and a bullet came up to my dad and shook his hand and he said, your son is gonna be president of the A SC someday, it was at that moment I [00:06:00] realized my parents still thought I was like, making movies in the backyard.
They didn't know that I'd gotten to this, arena of professional filmmaking.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. Do you remember, what was the context for your first film with, for 16 mm? What did you shoot?
Michael Goi: I did because I really love silent movies and especially loved Buster Keaton.
The first 16 millimeter large scale 16 millimeter project I did was a tribute to those movies. So it was filled with stunts, it hit in camera effects. It was basically it was called The Perils of Patrick. And it had this whole silent movie vibe about it. It had intertitles and all the situations were based on things that I loved about Buster Keaton and Max Senate films of that era.
So that was the first one, the first project.
Christine W Chen: How do you see your earlier very early work affecting everything [00:07:00] that you've done? Since then
Michael Goi: I still do the same things. I'm always looking for the simplest way to do something, not the most complicated way. And I know that people watch my work like on American Horror Story and think, wow, this is incredibly dense and complex and stuff.
But that's not the way mentally that I approached it. I was always looking for the simplest, most direct way to get the audience to understand how the character is feeling in that exact moment. And so I would choose the visual that would put that story point across. All of that transferred into my professional work.
It's stuff that I still do now. And plus the fact that I also love to do magical illusions. I believe magic and filmmaking go hand in hand. The stage illusions that George ese did, translated seamlessly to motion picture film when he started to incorporate film in the state shows. Case in point on the show, the [00:08:00] rookie feds, there was a sequence where I was directing where a woman terrorist is shooting with a machine gun as she's running across the street to try to get to a car to escape, and then she gets hit by another car and it's a shock moment.
And originally the production thought that was going to be a CGI thing, right? And I said there's no CGI here, all we do is we set up the camera, we have her run into the street, turn around and shoot, and then we cut. She goes away. Then we drive a truck with a dummy of her across the frame.
Then we drive the truck across again with no dummy on it, and we just use a simple traveling split screen toward her at and when she's gonna get hit by the truck, we cut to the dummy on front of the truck for the rest of the frames. But all of these things stem from the fact, the realization that film is essentially a two dimensional medium, and you can get away with things [00:09:00] that, because the mine fills in the gaps. Yeah. We are, we're gonna cut from this to this and in between the mind bridges it because it wants to follow the logic of what it's seen.
But today we seem to have lost that sense of wonder about things that we can do. Just with the immediate resources we have at hand, there's a tendency to mentally immediately jump into pushing the digital button. Okay, this is a CGI effective. No, it doesn't have to be. And it's a lot more fun to do it by hand and do it live.
Sure.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. Were, are there any other examples where people just jumped to the conclusion of VFX, but you decided to do practical instead?
Michael Goi: Oh, sure. Yeah. All, all through my work you'll see a lot of it, from everything I've done. So all, all through my career, when I was shooting the television show, Salem, there was a sequence where. Jan Montgomery, who plays the witch is [00:10:00] looking in into the mirror. And in the mirror her reflection is of a haggard, ugly witch.
And we were gonna do all this and they thought that we were going to green screen the mirror and then shoot them as individual things. I said no. What we do is we shoot Janet, she looks the way she is and the camera starts coming around her. And as the camera's coming around, we have the woman who plays the old haggard, which sitting, lying down next to her and she just sits up and then we're over Janet's shoulder into the reflection of the old Hagger woman.
It just doesn't see Janet. And it's simple. And because they're right next to each other, they can perfectly mimic, what the other is doing. So it doesn't have to be calculated in a CGI.
Christine W Chen: Would you say that would be one of your suggestions for filmmakers now is to try to think outside and do practical stuff before they press the digital button?
It would [00:11:00] make their filmmaking more interesting. What do you think the benefit is the most from thinking outside of the digital box?
Michael Goi: It's gonna vary with every individual person, I think. But for me, I love Warner Brothers Looney Tunes. I used to study those cartoons frame by frame especially the cartoons by Bob Clampett.
Because nobody animated Daffy Duck the way he did. And when I look at Daffy having a rant or a tirade, and I study it frame by frame. The frames are so radically different. Like on one frame he'd be like this, and next frame he'd be like this. And next frame he'd be like this. And I was like, how the heck did he think that this was gonna flow?
But it does, so studying motion in that way gave me a sense of what is capable, what is possible in the motion picture medium. And then you see it applied in so [00:12:00] many great films, like in Bonnie and Clyde, the editing that that Didi did and Bonnie and Clyde Didi Allen, where she would cut out the entire middle of an action sequence.
She'd just chop out all the parts that don't apply to the action that's happening in the moment. And it gave the film such a tremendous burst of energy.
And these things are simple in concept and relatively simple in execution, but your mind has to be open to see it.
You have to be able to see it and to recognize that as filmmakers, we can manipulate time, we can manipulate, the way something is happening to heighten the experience for the character and subsequently for the audience. So it depends on what your position is. I think in the filmmaking world, as a cinematographer, certainly this directly applies.
As a
director I love being able to have that immediacy on set.
But
for me, [00:13:00] directing, when I'm directing the number one most important thing is to make sure that I'm getting the performance.
Christine W Chen: Yeah.
Michael Goi: And so that's my concentration, but I know that within the context of that world, I am introducing this element, which is gonna enhance what's happening with the actors?
Christine W Chen: When you first started, did you already go on the path of, I want to 'cause. I direct, but I now write so that I can direct. But I'll always identify as a director first. Do you identify as a cinematographer first or as a director first? In your early career path, was it always to direct, was it always your ultimate goal or was it really just to film and be a cinematographer?
Michael Goi: Early on I wanted to be an editor.
Christine W Chen: Oh, interesting.
Michael Goi: Because I loved taking two pieces and putting them together and seeing what the impact of that cut.
I still do edit quite [00:14:00] a bit.
Christine W Chen: Yeah.
Michael Goi: And it's a great discipline. It teaches you about what kind of shots and how many of them you actually think you need to
Christine W Chen: agreed
Michael Goi: to tell the story.
So the editing background really helped me, but ultimately I didn't wanna spend my entire professional career in a little room by myself.
Which is why I gravitated toward being a cinematographer. But all of that kind of went hand in hand now because, my mind is always thinking in terms of the jigsaw puzzle of how that sequence comes together.
Yes. And as a cinematographer, I know how to get those pieces to make the fit within that timeline. So it's all of those experiences led me to be the filmmaker that I am. I've also written, but I wouldn't call myself like a writer necessarily. I wrote myself a comedy because nobody hires me to direct comedy.
I'd like to direct a comedy, so I wrote myself one. So it's, an interesting time right now because I feel like. [00:15:00] I can be taken seriously with the projects that I bring forward, and I can move the dialogue from things that I do to things that I especially want to do.
Christine W Chen: And yeah, for what's happening now and throughout your career, what has been the biggest thing that you've done that's been able to continue to push it forward? Because there's going to be, I think every juncture, there's always times when things are slow, right? Or you don't have the right connections or to try, jump to the next step.
You don't know how to do that. What would you say at each of these big, pivotal career milestones was? What got you to that next step?
Michael Goi: I don't know that I necessarily recognize a career milestone when it's happening. In the same vein, like people will ask me, what's your favorite thing that you've done?
Or what do you think is the best word? It's I can't really think about that way. I don't analyze what I've done in the [00:16:00] context of what viewers would do, people will say, oh wow, this, your work on this show on American Horror Story, for example, was profound and, did this and that. And I don't have that same kind of perspective in history as far as my own work goes because I feel like if you retread your own history, you inevitably start repeating your own history because you know that this worked.
You did this
before and it worked.
And that stops the mental process of discovering new things. So people will ask me sometimes when did you know that you made it? And honestly, I still feel like every morning I wake up, I'm hoping this is the day that I make it. I hope this is the day that, I achieve some sort of creative, artistic, whatever breakthrough that takes me to a new level.
But you're never really feeling like you've gotten there.
Christine W Chen: Yeah.
Michael Goi: And that's, I think an [00:17:00] important thing because I always tell, I mentor a lot of young filmmakers, and I always tell them it's not fear of failure that causes people to fail. It's fear of success because everybody fails.
All of us fail. You, both of you, me, we all fail at some point, and all of us have mechanisms that we use to deal with the fact that we failed to make ourselves feel better. There are things that we can do to take the sting off of it, whatever. We'll binge watch our favorite show, whatever it is, because all of us fail at some point.
But when you succeed, the very definition of success is that you have attempted to do something that you never did before, and it actually worked. That's success. So that in itself is not the plateau, that's not the ultimate goal because what that does then is opens up two other opportunities that you have never been faced with [00:18:00] before.
And you have to choose one, you have to choose a pathway.
And you choose this way. And let's say it was the right one. And then that opens up two others. So being successful, the very definition of success means being comfortable with the fact that you're never gonna be comfortable, that you're always gonna be stepping through doorways that you've never been through before.
And that freaks people out.
So
they retreat into failure and that's when you start getting the excuses of oh I'm sure they were gonna choose somebody else for that job anyway, or, I'm sure they're looking for somebody with more experience in that field, we say these things to make ourselves feel better about the fact that we stopped ourselves
From
getting there. So it's fear of success that really stops people. It's easier to retreat into failure because we know how to deal with it.
But
we don't know how to deal with success. It's an unknown and you have to be comfortable with that if you're gonna be successful.
Christine W Chen: Do you have any specific [00:19:00] moments you can pinpoint where you could have just been okay with failure and been done?
And do you know what that moment was? What allowed you to push forward instead?
Michael Goi: It's, at every point in your career, in your life really, you have to decide what is the most important thing, what is the most important thing to do, whether that's creatively, artistically, or in terms of your family or whatever.
'cause family is always number one, I always decide what is the most important thing for me to do. And sometimes it has nothing to do with what I thought I should be doing or I want to do it's in this moment in time, I really need to do this. I need to move this thing forward.
And once you acknowledge to yourself that. I need to do the thing that, that I need to do. [00:20:00] It makes it easier to make those decisions, those tough decisions sometimes that people talk about of, the tug of war inside their brain. And it boils down to simple.
Like me, my daughter was just here in my screening room office. And I remember one time that I was in a meeting with top executives from a film studio, and she came in and she was upset because her toy wasn't working anymore. And I said, okay, probably just needs battery. Hold on
to put, change the battery for your daughter's toy. And I said, I had to choose what was the most important thing that I needed to do in that moment. That was the most important thing I needed to do. More important than talking to you in this moment. And she said, I love that. I love that.
That's exactly right. So that's what we do. Overthinking that process, I think leads to confusion and anxiety. And so I don't overthink it. You have your parameters. For me, the basic parameters is family is number one. [00:21:00] Over and above everything else, and that's not something that I adopted when, my work became popular.
That's something that I adopted way before I even had a career. You have to do those things that you feel are the things that you are driven to do.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. In the beginning when you didn't have a career or wasn't taking off and stuff, I'm sure. I think were you, did you always work in Los Angeles or where else were you at?
Michael Goi: No, I was in Chicago. Okay. Yeah. I started out in Chicago. And I was creating a career for myself and doing things, like I would shoot really low budget spec commercials for companies and like on Spanish television because I would see who had the worst commercials on Spanish television and I'd shoot a spec commercial, yeah. They would buy it, yeah. And some of them did. But ultimately, when productions would come into [00:22:00] Chicago, I would see if I could get work on them as the fourth string camera department PA or whatever it is. And I worked on a very large production in that came into Chicago, but it was a difficult learning experience because there were a lot of things on it that didn't jive with me in terms of safety and things like that.
I figured, okay, I'm gonna try to make it work from Chicago, if that's what Hollywood filmmaking is like, I don't want any part of that. I'm gonna make it work from Chicago. My first six features were done when I was based in Chicago still, even though I shot 'em all over the place.
Christine W Chen: Okay.
Michael Goi: Moon Stalker chains, hellmaster, all those things, they were sh shot in different areas, but I was based outta Chicago and, but ultimately I wanted to be the person who brought the movie to Chicago, not the person who was scrambling to be on the crew. And to do that, I had to be in Los Angeles. I had to be where the meetings were and where the [00:23:00] executives were.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. And so I. During. 'cause right now, I think a, I was joke joking with a friend from the DGA and we're like, it's like the Hunger Games right now. Things are slow, but there's always gonna be lots of periods of time that's like that.
Were there times when you felt like, oh, this is it. Like my career is done and I need to find something else to do now. Do you ever come to a point like that during your whole journey?
Michael Goi: I don't know that I necessarily take any thoughts that I might have in that direction.
Seriously. But, every day it's like a mix of I feel like I'm all spent out, but at the same time. Oh, I wanna do all these things. So the forward momentum, is driven by, I think, different priorities in your life. Like I'm the chair of the artificial Intelligence Committee for the Motion Imaging Technology [00:24:00] Council of the A SC.
And we are very active in exploring that technology and the ramifications it might have for professional filmmaking. We've done interviews with a lot of industry professionals and tech developers and stuff like that. Does this mean that I have a huge interest in technology? No. Like I said, I like things really dirt simple, but I do have an interest in things that affect the future of motion imaging and how we tell stories.
And so that led me into that aspect of it at the same time. I'm really interested in film preservation and restoration. I have, I'm in my theater right now. I have a huge collection of movies, including very rare pieces of 16 millimeter and 35 millimeter film. And I think it's important to find and preserve these works, for future generations to see.
[00:25:00] So it's all the things that I'm involved in, all the committees that I'm the chair of, that I participate in. I remember my dad telling me when I was young, he said, don't ever become a member of any organization. You are not willing to be in charge of.
So I go into these places, not expecting these organizations to do something for me necessarily, but if I believe in what the mission of this organization is, how can I help that?
How can I help that get to where they're trying to go to? And that, propels you into areas of the industry that affect certainly your own employment, but also just the wellbeing of the industry in general as it goes forward and the people who follow you. The reason why I do movie nights in my theater on Saturday nights with my mentees is because a lot of these younger emerging filmmakers have never been exposed to the over 20,000 movies that I have in my collection that I feel are essential viewing.
So being able to open [00:26:00] that up to them, having them talk with each other about it, and ultimately then having them network with each other about their own personal experiences on things that they're doing. Gets them into the industry, in a way that is more I think proactive than sitting around in your kitchen wondering
Why.
Christine W Chen: What would be your advice for, let's say somebody who is sitting at home and stressed out because they haven't booked a gig in a while, and so they're worried about money, and then they feel like they haven't moved their career forward in the direction.
What do you think, what would you say step 1, 2, 3, should be for them to get back and propel themselves forward?
Michael Goi: First of all, you know that pain is real. Yeah. That pain of feeling like you have no self-worth because you haven't worked in six months because you don't have the context to get, the job and whatever.
That's real. And [00:27:00] you acknowledge to yourself that is real. You're not just feeling sorry for yourself. It's a really tough time.
What you're going through, it has validity, but at the same time, you also have to realize that. Going down the path of extreme self depression is debilitating to your ability to be the creative person that you want to be and that you want to present yourself as to the rest of the world.
So being able to find small, creative outlets to exercise your brain in that realm. Even though you're in work, shutdown mode is important and sometimes it's just the photograph that you take on your phone of something that you feel has, significance. Sometimes the way to get out of the monotony of repetitiveness that sucks up your life is to do something as simple as get out bed on a different side of the bed tomorrow, because everybody probably gets outta bed on the same [00:28:00] side, but if you get out bed the next morning on a different side of the bed and you just stand there on the floor, you've immediately changed your world. You've broken that, that chain of monotony and repetition, and then it makes it easier step by step to, to free up your mind and let the new creative ideas into it.
So those are things that we can do for ourselves during periods of work. Slow down. It's important to be able to take of care of things financially, no matter what you have to do, no matter what job you have to get that actually pays you something because it's hard to think creatively from a point of financial desperation.
Christine W Chen: Yes.
Michael Goi: And it's not selling yourself out as a creative person. If you take a job as a waiter or you drive Uber or whatever you do to survive, because you have to survive in order to be in the game.
Yes. In order
to be able to do these things. So all of that is is just about being able to hang [00:29:00] on, to be able to be in the game.
And the thing is, and it's true, the only time that you're definitely gonna fail is when you stop trying. When you give up. You're going to fail. It's inevitable because nothing is moving forward anymore.
You have no idea if you're gonna succeed, but if you don't keep trying to succeed, you know you're gonna fail.
Christine W Chen: Would you enlighten us of some of the things you've had to do to keep the momentum forward? Just so that people, 'cause I think there is always this mental block of Yeah, if I take that waiter, wait waiter job, if Yeah, if I drive Uber or whatever, then I'm not a good filmmaker.
I'm not an artist or whatever.
Michael Goi: Oh, that's baloney. Because everything you do is a life experience that you process into the things that you create. It's impossible to be a storyteller when you don't have stories to tell.
When you don't have life experiences, no matter what they are, you don't have any [00:30:00] frame of reference for being able to describe film, write about whatever these things, so those life experiences are important and like for me, in periods where.
I'm not working, even though, like I said, writing is not the most favorite thing that I do. But, when I write in a very targeted way. It's I don't tend to write, I'm always thinking about what is the, what am I aiming for? What, why am I doing this?
Where do I think this is going to go? And that drives a lot of my choices of what I do. And certainly when I sit down to write, like I won't write something if I don't know where I'm gonna take it.
Even if that particular company doesn't end up producing that script, I have to have a target.
And so I write it with this company in mind with this kinds of things that they do in this campaign, and it gives me a starting [00:31:00] point then. And that's where it takes off to. But doing the important thing is really to do it. It's very easy to talk about stuff.
You know how you have to keep dreaming big and stuff like that? Yeah, that's fine. But dreaming is not enough. You really have to be a doer. You have to be somebody who actually does what they dream about and that's what makes you then a valuable filmmaker to producers and to the industry. Is when you have that vivid imagination and you actually do it.
That's the people that they want to hire. So keeping yourself, vital during times like this and stuff. And the thing is you analyze a time like this, you start to look at the industry and you say, okay, throughout the entire history of the motion picture business, there have been down times like this.
What was the thing that generated income for studios and things like that. You look at the Great [00:32:00] Depression, during that period of time, what did they do? Universal Studios went to produce a bunch of really low budget horror movies. People contracted and they went to a genre that they knew could still attract an audience that didn't require huge, expensive stars. They bring innovative concepts to that work. That's what you do. You analyze what has happened before, and then you go into that direction whether you know there's gonna be a need.
Adam Chase Rani: It's interesting you say that. It feels like that nowadays, like what you and Christine are saying is that we're dangerously close to, a recession. Whether or not you blame the current administration running our country or whatever, it's still feels like there's that emptiness.
Do you feel that studios have an obligation to produce more low budget films? That kinda gives a little more freedom for independent filmmakers and other filmmakers alike [00:33:00] to finally have that vision, come true. Is that the problem? Or because it just seems like studios push large budget films and put all their eggs in one basket.
It feels like it's economically way more efficient to produce lower budget films.
Michael Goi: Studios are going to serve the agendas. The business model that they've agreed upon is what they need to do in order to be successful studios. Right now most of the studios are controlled by huge corporations whose main business is doing something other than making movies.
The filmmaking end of it is a very small component of that. But it's still gotta be successful within that framework, I think we're in a period of contraction now where a lot of the huge mega million budget films are being scaled back.
That they're looking to make things in a smaller way, but still make a big impact. They're looking for ideas that are creatively a little more out of the box. Some [00:34:00] people ask me, how do you direct children so well? Because I've directed a lot of things with kids. And then they said, isn't that very difficult?
And I said, no, it's really simple because kids will go along with anything that's cool. They don't have the rules in front of them that adults have built up over years and say, oh, I can't do this or I won't do that. And for kids, as long as it's cool, they'll go with it.
And when you get into times like this, every studio that's looking to remake themselves is looking for what's cool, what's going to hit the zeitgeist what's going to make an impact with the audience that they're trying to reach out for? Not necessarily even the audience that they used to have, but the broader, newer audience that's looking for content and stuff like that.
Do you have that, what they're looking for? Do you have that vision? So it's. I think creatively what we're looking at as with every time where the, there's contraction going on in the motion picture industry is we're gonna see [00:35:00] a lot of creative work come out of it. We're gonna see new people come up through the ranks and excel and that's the thing I think that ultimately, you have to keep in mind while you're going through this depressing time, of trying to establish yourself, trying to get work, trying to figure out what the next step is.
There's gotta be a little bit of an acknowledgement of the industry the way that it was, is gone, and trying to chase after what's gone is just eating up the time that you could be spending
Christine W Chen: Yes.
Michael Goi: Redirecting your thinking in a different direction.
Christine W Chen: Question, what non film interest or past job that you had to do that you feel like added a very fun experience to your storytelling?
Michael Goi: I don't know. I have a bunch of varied interests. Certainly one of them is trains.
It's been well publicized that I, jack hammered [00:36:00] all the cement around our house and put in steel rail and I built trains that we could ride around our house, that was motivated by the fact that growing up, relatively poor meant that I never really had a train set when I was a kid, and I always wanted to have a train.
So I made my own railroad. So these things that inspire my imagination. That turning the cement in my backyard into an Asian garden with a koi pond, I just sit there at two o'clock in the morning and, watch my fish swim around and then jump on my train and take a ride around the house.
These little things that you do, that, that may seem offbeat and stuff are the things that inspire you. For some people it's making the perfect souffle or breeding the perfect rose or whatever it is. And that's all valid because it keeps you creative juices flowing.
There was one young woman who was a pa on a show I was directing. And I [00:37:00] was making my way around the back of the sets where I thought nobody was.
To, to the bathroom very quickly. And I saw there was a work light on the floor. And as I was passing, my shadow was really big and I took two seconds.
To make a little hand shadow flying across the thing. And then I went to the bathroom and then she told me later, she said, you didn't see me, but I was tucked away in the corner there, and I saw you when you were passing by that light and you did that. And she said, I was thinking, oh my God.
He's always thinking creatively. and you may not realize it in that moment. But you will find yourself bringing back that recollection and that moment in how you approach things.
I remember vividly. There was a, when I was in Chicago, I was in a car with a bunch of my friends and there was a woman standing with a laundry basket waiting for the bus. And the sunlight was hitting this gleaming building with a lot of glass on it and then it was almost like she was back lit by the shaft [00:38:00] of light and it was only for maybe two or three seconds and none of my friends saw it.
And really not a month has gone by in my life. And this was like 40 years ago, some over 40 years ago. Not a month has gone by where I haven't thought of that moment in that woman, in that gleam of light. You never know when that spark. Of inspiration is going to come to you and you know how profound it's gonna be.
Adam Chase Rani: Yeah. It seems like you open yourself up to that, right? You open yourself up to even doing like the childhood things that you've always wanted, like building a train and stuff like that. If you just allow that to pass through you, it's almost like you're giving a creative validity.
I, for lack of better term, but like you can have these creative juices flow through any direction that you can possibly go in. Because at the end of the day, we are all storytellers, right? Like even, from camera to costume you gotta find [00:39:00] inspiration, you gotta find yourself to work in all of these things.
So allowing yourself to have that childlike, wonder is I don't know. That's the impetus of creativity,
Michael Goi: That's what you're saying, yeah. Is that it's exactly that sense of wonder. You need to retain that sense of wonder and what it does for you and how it motivates you.
And I always tell people, because I love job interviews. Everybody who knows me knows that I love job interviews. It's my favorite thing in the industry to do is interview for a job, and they said why is it your favorite thing? I said, because there's no pressure, because, I don't even have the job yet.
So it's all about me and what I'm thinking in terms of this script that they gave me and how I would approach it and stuff like that. And I hear all of the barriers and the walls come up on people, when they say, yeah, what if you don't have the experience they're looking for?
Or What if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I can't think that way because job interviews for me are way too much [00:40:00] fun. It's much more fun than actually doing the job in most cases because you don't have to worry about budgets or schedules or lack of equipment or whatever like that.
Yeah. All you have to think about is yes, is what this is and the possibilities of this. And I love that aspect of it. It's, when you think about a job interview, you have to think a little bit from their perspective. What are they looking for? And it really boils down to two things.
Do they like you and do they trust you? And that supersedes experience. That supersedes everything. They wanna know if they like you and they trust you. In order for them to determine that, they have to know a little bit about you and what drives you beyond the resume. People always start reciting their resume when people ask, what have you been up to?
Oh no. I did this, and. I always tell them whatever's happening in my life in that moment, that really drives my passion. That's what I talk about. At one point, it was about my train. I built a train around my house, or at another point it was [00:41:00] that I found a place with the perfect Chicago deep dish pizza.
Christine W Chen: Where. Because I love pizza.
Michael Goi: I'm keeping that a secret for me because that's my private oasis to get away to. It's those things when you start to talk about what really drives your passion, and it may not have anything to do with the film industry.
It has to do with the thing you really feel deeply about that makes you memorable to them. That gives them an insight into who you are and what you do. And I've talked about the fact that me talking about my train, which I just built at that time, the insight it gave that production company was that, yes, I'm a dreamer.
I thought about this, but I actually did it.
So I'm
somebody who accomplishes those things. And those are the qualities that they were looking for that project. They wanted somebody with the big imagination, but who could actually figure out how to do it. And that's what we do when we express what's important to us.
Christine W Chen: If you couldn't ever [00:42:00] work in the film industry again, what would be An alternative industry that you would be interested in?
Michael Goi: Like I said, I love film restoration and preservation, right? Really what I want to do when I retire from production is I want to be the Indiana Jones of film Preservationist.
I want to travel around the world and climb through dusty attics and find a piece of film that hasn't been seen in over a hundred years. And restore it. That's my number one interest. But, aside from that, there are so many other things that I like, I love to scuba dive and a lot of times with productions and stuff, it's time intensive and I don't have as much time to pursue something like that.
That's something that I would love to do. You're probably figuring out from this podcast I tend to go on a stream of consciousness kind of thing, and see where it takes me and there's a bunch of things that especially with the status of the world now. I've talked with my wife, [00:43:00] politics. Am I deeply interested in politics? Maybe not necessarily am I deeply interested in the way that society and the country is going?
And do I think it's right or wrong? And is there a way that I can affect that in a positive way possibly. Does that mean I have to run for a public office possibly? So these things are driven by, sometimes my wife will tell my sons, are you gonna be like daddy and go out and save the world?
Because she wants to know like how much this is influencing them.
Christine W Chen: What do they wanna do?
Michael Goi: My oldest son who's 17 he wants to study business and engineering.
Christine W Chen: Okay.
Michael Goi: That's where his mind goes. My, my middle son, my son who's 14 is interested in biological like underwater studies
In addition to gaming and kinda like the methodology behind gaming. My daughter who's just turned five. I think she's gonna [00:44:00] be the singer, dancer, actress in the group. Yeah. I see that coming. But yeah that's what their interest is.
I don't push my kids to join the motion picture industry. I think maybe dad makes it look like a lot of hard work, so maybe there's not that interest anyway.
They see certainly how much time I put into committees and into helping industry objectives and things like that.
Christine W Chen: Have they ever been on set?
Michael Goi: They've, visited, a few times, not a huge amount of times, but a few times enough to understand what it is that I do.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. A lot of waiting, a lot of, sitting around, hurry up.
Michael Goi: There's not a lot of waiting on them on the shows that I direct.
Christine W Chen: Yes, I've heard about that.
Michael Goi: I like to keep things moving. I don't believe in working long hours. I've never had a single day on shows that I've directed go over 12 hours. I don't believe in beating up the crew. I think, there has to be a reality about how much work can be [00:45:00] accomplished in a day.
And then you organize your day to be the most efficient way that you can get that day done. But sometimes, the atmosphere becomes one of an assumption of a 14 or 16 hour day. And that's not where my head is at. If I can get the day done in 10 and a half hours, I'm gonna do it.
And I'm always looking to turn out the best show or the best movie that I can, but it's equally important to me that the people who are working on that show that their safety, their health, and their wellbeing is respected in that process.
Christine W Chen: Yeah. So I think that's a very important point.
From your years of doing this and being this career, if you could identify five tips for anybody who wants to come into the industry or whatever, what would they be? Or life in general what would be your biggest advice that you tell your mentees or whatnot?
Michael Goi: [00:46:00] One of them would certainly be you have to have a life, as we're saying, you have to have experiences, real experiences.
That you can translate into your art. If you've only visited the Grand Canyon through, virtual reality goggles and you've never actually been to the Grand Canyon, you have no idea. You have no idea what the Grand Canyon is actually like.
Christine W Chen: Yeah.
Michael Goi: So having those real experiences I think is really important.
I think helping each other as we go through these processes is important. A lot of times people feel this intense feeling of competition with other people who are on the same kind of level.
Competition for jobs or competition to meet this person or that person. It's, the reality is that a lot of times whoever gets selected for a particular position has nothing to do with, what you did or did not say during your job [00:47:00] interview.
Somebody, one of the producers may have a nephew who's looking for a position in that department and stuff like that. And then when you find out you didn't get it, you take it as a personal failure. That's like a senseless waste of brain power, to dwell on those things.
You don't have any control over any of those things. I think finding mentors in the industry is really important. Finding people who are actually doing the things that you want to do is important because film school is really terrific. It gives you, access to equipment that you'd otherwise have to rent.
It gives you access to crew people who you would otherwise have to pay for. It gives you an environment where you can make mistakes. And that's a big thing, is you wanna make your mistakes and make big ones, in film school.
I shot
So many film projects in film school and messed up every single one of them in different ways trying things. [00:48:00] But, by the time I got to a shooting a show like American Horror Story, I had no fear of
trying something that nobody else had ever done before, or doing things that nobody had ever tried.
Pulling the processing on the film three stops and then putting it back in the bath and forcing the processing three stops, things that I felt, would work. I never had any qualms about, about trying, so you can only do that if you go into it without fear and with building up your knowledge of how things work as you go.
Christine W Chen: Yeah.
Michael Goi: I don't know how many tips that is so far...
Christine W Chen: it was like four I think.
Michael Goi: The important thing is to actually do it. To do it and not talk about it. If you've got a great idea for your screenplay, write the screenplay.
Don't talk about it.
Christine W Chen: Yep. I agree a hundred percent. Just fucking do it.
Adam Chase Rani: I do it. It is fascinating to me. I, man, I really wish I, I was trying to find the name of this [00:49:00] article, but we were talking about film preservation and I watched the Beatles documentary on Disney not too long ago.
It was by Peter Jackson. He took all the footage of making let it be, I think. And in the process of making that album. Had tapes on tapes and recordings of so many things, and Peter Jackson was able to go through and restore them. And the article that I'm talking about I think it was from I think it was Vanity Fair long time ago, and I can't find it, but there was this interesting thing about it where they said that AI could lead to margin film restoration.
And I never thought about AI in that way of restoring things like that. But I have seen on TikTok, few times where I would see like a, a certain scene of a film and it would be like super bright and super like wild. And the, in the caption, it said that it was all made by ai, it was restored.
This whole scene was [00:50:00] recolored and restored, from ai. What's your take on this? Can, AI feels like it's a a tool that's always evolving, right? So it is there like a pursuing in, like not replacing the work of filmmakers of with ai, but utilizing it as a tool for maybe not just only film restoration, but for storyboarding and planning, like shot lists and stuff like that.
I feel like there's so much given with ai, how do you feel about AI in the direction that it's going in? Is it, does it feel like. It's gonna take our jobs? Or is it more it's a tool. It's a tool that's, that we can utilize.
Michael Goi: Like I said, I'm the chair of the AI committee for the Motion Imaging Technology Council. We just had a segment for the ASC masterclass on AI where I brought in Eleanor Agropolis, who's an AI content creator. She's built her entire brand and her career on artificial intelligence in the recent years.
And I paired her with Caleb Deschanel, the [00:51:00] cinematographer of the Black Stallion and the Right stuff and all these fantastic movies so that they could work together with Caleb's vision of what he wanted to see in this New York Street in the 1890s, and the quality of the character that he's placing into the environment it's, first I think we're getting past the whole burn down Frankenstein castle attitude about ai because that's not productive. There are certainly risks and things to watch out for, and there are certainly ethical questions that have to be addressed as this goes forward.
Different organizations are tackling different aspects of the issue. Some are concentrating on trademarks and copyrights and things like that. Others are dealing with creative rights and how do you preserve the original artists intentions? But.
Ultimately what's gonna happen with AI is that the commotion is gonna die down probably around the time that there's so much AI in our everyday [00:52:00] lives, that we take it for granted. Like we are now taking for granted the internet. The internet didn't exist until in recent history and it's revolutionized everything, but it's boiled down to a little mild roar now and ai, the fewer is gonna boil down again, how much relevance it has to the professional motions picture industry. The motion picture industry is figuring out, one of the things we talked about a year and a half ago in our committee is for an AI algorithm to be taken seriously for motion picture production, it has to be at least 4K.
Which none of them were at that time, they were 1080 or 720. It has to have predictable repeatability. It can't spit out a completely different image, even though you feed the exact same algorithm, the exact same prop, it comes out with something completely different. The movie industry can't work that way.
We have to work on predictable repeatability. So these issues are being worked out, but. The important [00:53:00] thing is to understand what it is, what it's capable of. And I think the big takeaway about this session that they had last Friday at the a SC is that everybody got to see just the amount of work and skill and craft it's necessary to be able to use that tool for a very specific purpose.
And this is a conversation that James Cameron and I have, fairly repeatedly is that, AI is not gonna make a mediocre filmmaker or somebody who with no vision, it's not gonna make them. A great filmmaker. It's not gonna make them Orson Wells all of a sudden.
But it can help a really great creative, inventive filmmaker take their work farther. It can help refine that vision. But it takes, a lot of effort still, and you have to have a great deal of knowledge of, especially about prompting especially about what are the [00:54:00] particular quirks in this AI as opposed to this one where, it will help process this, but it will just reject this aspect of it.
All of that takes a lot of study and knowledge, so it's going to be a tool. It's gonna be a tool the way we've adopted tools in the past, you know when we went from black and white to color film, ultimately we discovered okay, some subjects are more effective in black and white and some subjects are more effective in color.
When we picked up sound, the initial talkies were all just like headshots of people saying words and then they found that that's not enough for the audience. We want our visual storytelling back. So they had to figure out how to incorporate visual storytelling into being able to have sync sound.
When we came up with digital motion picture cameras as opposed to shooting film, ultimately we discovered that [00:55:00] film is still better. In my personal opinion, I still love film. So all these things have their process of evolution and ultimately we find what their worth is.
Individually as creative people, we will find that, okay, yeah, AI can really enhance this and give us this, this great. And some filmmakers are like I just want to shoot this, simply with a lens and an actor and a camera and all of that is valid. It's entirely valid.
It'll become a matter of choice.
Christine W Chen: Michael, this has been awesome. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I know you're a very busy person and I really appreciate that you took the time to just chat with us about your process, your journey.
Michael Goi: You can thank my wife, Gina.
Because I don't do many things on Sundays, cause it's family time. But I tell you, having Gina and that's I guess my last piece of advice for people listening [00:56:00] is that having a significant other who really understands and supports you, nobody makes it into this industry alone.
You need that, that one family member, that very close friend and that person who's always going to be your voice of reason. And support. And it's really important. Sometimes it's small. I was saying, there was one time where I missed an opportunity for what would've been like a game changing thing in my career.
And Gina came in with a cookie and a cup of tea for me and she put it down, she kissed me. Here's a cookie for you. Keep fighting. Yeah.
Adam Chase Rani: Yeah.
Christine W Chen: Love that.
Adam Chase Rani: You got anything else, Christine, that you wanted to
Christine W Chen: I think we, we touched everything.
Adam Chase Rani: We basically got everything in yeah. Thank you again for your time, Michael. Yeah that's been the Get Reelisms podcast. Ladies and gentlemen you know what time it is. Some great housekeeping. Get Reelisms.com, pick up your film books.
Pick up your hats, pick up your tees like [00:57:00] these. We also got ABCs books that Christine's holding onto. Ladies and gentlemen, pick it up today. And again, thank you so much. Michael this has been an honor.
Christine W Chen: I learned a lot.
Adam Chase Rani: Everyone come back on the pod. You just, you text us, you message us, you.
Christine W Chen: He's never again.
Adam Chase Rani: We're not doing this ever again, but.we would love to have you come back, Michael.
Michael Goi: Thank you.
Adam Chase Rani: Thank you.
Christine W Chen: Yeah, thank you for your knowledge, for teaching and for just perspective. I always find that perspectives is the part that keeps me going in this industry and knowing that I'm not alone in a lot of the feelings that I have during the hard times, like what we're facing right now.
Remember to have a life.
Adam Chase Rani: Thank you guys so much. We appreciate you. We will see you next time. Until then, keep making films, never stop making movies y'all. Thank you so much.
Christine W Chen: Make movies.
