Bonus: Interview with Supernatural director, Guy Norman Bee, Part 2

Over drinks, Berly and LA chat with Supernatural director, Guy Norman Bee, about his episodes through season 7 and his background as a Steadicam Operator. Now, let's get tipsy!  CW/TW for violent and lewd commentary; listeners beware! 🔞

Summary: In this episode of the Denim-wrapped Nightmares Podcast, hosts Berly and LA discuss their enjoyment of the Supernatural series, particularly seasons six and seven. They interview director Guy Norman Bee, who shares insights on his collaborative approach to directing, including the challenges and creative processes involved in episodes like "Hello, Cruel World" and "There Will Be Blood." Bee details the use of practical effects, such as shadow work and stunt doubles, and the importance of maintaining continuity in set design. He also reflects on his transition from camera operator to director and his experiences working on various TV shows and films, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and teamwork in the industry.

Resources:

• https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0066218/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Bee

Transcript

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Berly: 0:01

Ellie, welcome to denim wrapped nightmares, Tipsy Exchange Podcast where we explore the supernatural series, episode by episode,

LA: 0:10

over drinks, we'll discuss the lore the gore and what we adore about the Winchesters and their adventures.

Berly: 0:17

I'm Burleigh, and I'm a new fan of the series. I'm

LA: 0:20

LA, and I'm here along for the ride. Now let's get Tipsy. Hello,

Berly: 0:27

LA, hey, Burley. I've received a couple of compliments on our past couple of seasons. I've had a couple of listeners message us that they always hated seasons six and seven before, and would even skip a lot of it during their re watch. But they watched the episodes with us, and they said they actually liked everything more. They were like, I didn't hate it this time, so we did good. Yeah, I like it. Speaking of episode season six and seven, today is part two of our interview with Mr. Guy, Norman b

LA: 1:01

I know, and I, I mean, I know we had to split it into two interviews, just because we talked for so long, but I could have just kept on going. Not that I was even talking that much, but just listening to him I loved, and I will say I loved that he touched on so much, how it's such a collaborative situation, even though he's the director, and he's in charge of it and everything. I loved that. Every time you asked him something, it was never just like him. You know, I

Berly: 1:27

loved that. Well, in our last episode, we focused on Season One, because he did have an episode in Season One, asylum and season six. But today's episode is focusing on season seven, and we got some more information on Mr. Guy Norman B's background. So here is the remainder of our conversation with Mr. Guy Norman B, moving into season seven, you did the second episode of the season on this one? Do you remember? Okay, so,

Guy Bee: 1:59

so first season seven, episode two, which what was that? Hello,

Berly: 2:03

cruel world. And I tell you, you were masterful with your episodes, because there were a lot of episodes in season seven where those scripts were stuffed to the brim of stuff happening. And this was one of those episodes you were in a in the water reservoir with Castiel exploding. You were in the hospital. You were in the park showing the leviathans getting their people. It was all over the place. Kim Rhodes

Guy Bee: 2:30

in the hospital. That was Riverview. Kim's, Kim's incredible. Kim is fun and easy to work with as they come as you guys know, I mean, I was lucky. I don't really think I had any bad one bad script. A lot of times, you know, when you're an episodic TV director, you're assigned an episode. The script is assigned to us, a writer or a team of writers. And in TV, you know, there's a whole writer's room. There's like 10 writers on the show, all the producers. And even though, you know, one or two of the writers will team up and write, quote, unquote, an episode. It's usually the show runner will go back through it, you know, whether it's Sarah or Jeremy Carver was, you know, came in a little after Sarah, of course, Eric Kripke the first five seasons, and the showrunner will, will do a pass, and that becomes the one you shoot. And then you get a ton of notes from the studio and a ton of notes. They got a question for you, and things you have to fix, or things, yeah, I know things you have to remember from, you know, like you're because a lot of times your leg pipe maintaining a storyline, you started it the last season as a team that and the writers have to, like, keep up on all that. So, yeah, I think all the scripts I got were pretty damn good. I was always happy. If there's something I wasn't happy with, usually I can make a suggestion, you know, you let go your ego a little bit, because, you know, they have every right to say, No, we like it the way it is. Because TV could be a little expositionally, where, you know, expositiony, where one of the characters starts talking as if he's talking to the audience, and you go, Okay, this is just to get everybody up to speed. Writers hate writing it. Directors hate directing it, and actors certainly hate spitting it out.

Berly: 4:05

There were a couple of scenes in this episode. Hello, cruel world that you did that. LA and I both really liked there's a scene where the little girl, Leviathan goes to the hospital and finds the doctor. Yeah, and you shot it. You did like shadow work behind a curtain thing? Yeah, of course. How did you do that? I mean, we know CGI had to be involved at some point, but we thought it was so clever to do the shadow rather than actually letting us see it. It was so cool.

Guy Bee: 4:36

I think that I'm almost positive that was scripted, but maybe not. I mean, maybe that was a crazy idea I had about, how are we going to do this on camera without actually showing people on camera? I don't remember. I'd love to have the script to see, because it wouldn't even tell me. A lot of the fun about being a director is I always say, you know, I show up with my toolbox, and it's a, it's a figurative toolbox that has all the different things. Uh, you know, at the disposal, disposal to tell the story, whether it's handheld, whether it's cranes or Steadicam, or all there all these things you can do, silhouettes, Shadow, you try and, you know, always have those. You know, you never want to bury one of them and go, now, I don't want to use that or do that, or forget about it. You always want to kind of deal with call those up at any time. And the great thing about that show was a lot of times I would get picked up at the hotel and search. The cameraman would would either be picked up before me or after me. What happened is that ride to work, you know, whether it was 20 minutes or an hour, we would compare notes or he would he would look at the day's work, thinking about this. So a lot of times I would have an idea that was so clear to me that I would be able to describe it to him. And as we get to work, he sees other dogs. So as we get to work, he would take his gaffer aside and go start doing this, this, this, bring all the license plate. Cut those off, bring first team in so Jensen and Jared, or whoever, whatever actors I needed for the first scene, they pulled out of hair and makeup. They come to set. We'd rehearse and walk through it while we're doing that, lights are already being set. So what it enabled us to do is save a half hour, because normally you would do that blocking, and you go, Okay, send the actors back to hair, makeup, wardrobe crew has it, and we'll be ready for you in a half hour. A lot of times, surge would be almost lit by the time we sent them away. Oh, wow. Okay, so we saved a lot of time doing that. But, I mean, I think the shadow thing was something we probably talked about, and in the nice thing is, I think, you know, we may have tested it the day before, like, you know, talk about, you know, tomorrow we got the shadow thing. Okay, let's do a little test. Serge would send a couple of his crew guys to say, Okay, put up one of these. You know, this has been the best network. Are you using the divider? You know, it could have been something that we manipulated with our own movie grade Muslim to put up there. So it's a little more opaque, or a little less opaque. You know, we're replicating a real one. Doesn't have to be a rule. Well, we did frontier land. Anytime we were in the old west, we wanted to have, like an old sepia tone, kind of like a brownish tobacco stain. And so with the digital cameras, there's a thing called lookup table lot, and it's a way to set your camera so when you when you record, you're recording with a certain LUT, and we were able to test a couple different ones. Run up to before we even went out to White Rock, we were able to test a couple of different lots, and we settled on, okay, this is the Old West Frontier land, but so wherever we're out there, all the camera guys just go to the menu on the camera go, that's it, which is nice, because then post production can't mess with our look. That's our look, and that's the way it's gonna look. A lot of times in the past you shoot film and you shoot it straight, and you rely on the post production guys instead of looking it may or may not come out the way you want it. Yeah, so we knew exactly what it was gonna look like. So a lot of stuff, like, like a shadow play kind of thing could have been designed and and, you know, rehearsed a day or two before, which is cool, so that way you're not wasting all your time figuring out how it's going to work, you already know, so you get the actors in there. But yeah, I think that. I think visual effects did a great job of picking up where the real shadows left off. Yeah,

Berly: 8:21

it was edited, or whatever. Really

Guy Bee: 8:24

well. I enjoyed. I gotta go back and watch that one again. I tried to find a clip

Berly: 8:28

I really did. It's it's cool, it's cool. It started the it's toward the beginning part of the episode. So, speaking of the leviathans, this might have just been scripted from the get go, but they were very campy villains. Did you because you were the first one who filmed a leviathan whenever Castiel gets taken over by the leviathans? And was that all Misha performance? Was that in the script? Did you kind of dictate that a little bit? Do you remember, well,

Guy Bee: 8:54

that scene that you sent me where he sends Bobby flying? Yeah, that I think, I think was shot by Phil, because the way the set, in other words, they're already lit, he's already wet, he's already baked up, yeah. And then I think I picked up the next day with him coming around the corner and going, pushing his way out of the and into the world. So, yeah, so you talk about that, like ahead of time and prep to go, okay, when? How's the next script? How's the next episode start? And you realize it's going to start when the previous episode left off? Well, the outgoing director should just go through, you know, just power through it. So I don't know, I may have done some of it. I may have done like, Bobby waking up, but I think I take all the opening of that episode by then Phil previous Okay, and then I picked up, and then we had him come through the park and out to the water. I was looking, I was looking at that. You know, he walks out of the water like this from behind us. That's a stunt double. He did a great job. Obviously, you can't

Berly: 9:52

go. We kind of chuckled at him waiting out in the water with his arms out to the side a little bit. I. La joked that he was baptizing himself. Yeah.

Guy Bee: 10:03

I mean, there was, there's always, it's funny. I'm not a religious person at all, but there's always imagery and symbolism and metaphor that I love to throw in there. I'm a big fan of like, you know, Sistine Chapel. So anytime somebody can carry somebody like, you know, Jesus Christ pose. I love all that stuff, even though the

Berly: 10:24

picture behind you, yeah, there you go. Say no more

Guy Bee: 10:28

or and I have that tattoo on this side. Nice. There's an extended part of that seed where the trench coat washes up on the shore. And it was, there was a lot of talk about how Jensen would treat it and fold it up and put it in the trunk and have some reverence towards it. I can't remember exactly what, what the issue was, whether, whether or not, you know, we felt like he should just grab it quick and throw it in there, or he should treat it like, you know, the trout of Turin, for lack of a better term, I guess, yeah, there was some, there was a lot of cool stuff. And I think, I think that was a better script as well. Ben and I got teamed up a few times. It was always a good time.

Berly: 11:08

So this episode, you also are responsible, in my opinion, you burnt down Bobby's house, yeah. So what was that like? Well, we lucked

Guy Bee: 11:18

out. We found a house that had burnt down. You know, a certain point, the firemen put it out enough wherever you can still tell us the house. So it was like, and it wasn't too far from our state, it was like, one of those, like, pure, you know, like, You got to be kidding me, pure luck, yeah. And it was kind of exactly what we needed. And I don't think they had shown the exterior Bobby's house very much. So it didn't need to match anything 100% so you just had to light it. Lighting night exteriors is never something that's easy or fast, but I don't ever remember being handicapped or decapped at all by steroids. And that crew, they're so good, they're the best of the best.

Berly: 11:54

And then one more thing, I believe it was this episode where you crushed Edgar, the Leviathan, with a car, yeah. How did y'all do all that? That was a lot. It's a real

Guy Bee: 12:05

junkyard. We did lot of it. Practically, it was fun because we wanted, we need to pick a car because of the leviathan thing. I said, we gotta have a barracuda. And I'm a big Mopar fan. I used to have a super challenger. I'm a classic Mopar fan. And all the guys show know that they looked everywhere for a barracuda with the fish logo, and they couldn't find it. But they said, guy, we think we found something. I go, it's not a barracuda. We disappoint. He goes, how about a Dodge demon? I was like, perfect. So we got it. I think the demon is the thing that lands on it, another sweetheart of a guy. Benito Martinez, couldn't be cooler, could be nicer, could be more fun, could be very could be any more different than a scare. I love Anita, anything he's in, he's always

Berly: 12:47

good. And then just a note for this episode, thank you for validating us that that blood smear in the locker room looked like a severed penis had slapped the wall. Yeah. You

Guy Bee: 12:59

know, I try still scratch my head about that, because I think, literally, I think it was like, you know, we got there that morning and it's like somebody in the art department, like on a sock or something like, almost like it was hands and elbows and, like, getting tossed around, because those lockers are all akimbo. So I think that was it. I think it was just pure coincidence. But like I said, I like the way you guys think I just, I just think that it was just random. He does kind of look right at it and say something about Jesus.

Berly: 13:30

And we totally thought Vin meant penis was shizz, nickel like that. We thought that, yeah, I

Guy Bee: 13:35

think that was just a take off of shizzle, which is, like, you know, kind of like a slide for shit. It's so funny because I did another episode of a show called for war brothers and Fox called Fast Lane. And in it, they used chisel. They said something about he got shizzle on his whistle. I was like the writers. I said, you guys know, hopefully, doesn't mean anything, but to anybody, it's like a nonsense thing. You know, shizzle is slang for shit, right? It's a fancy way of saying. It's like pig lab,

Berly: 14:06

and I can imagine what whistle meant. So,

Guy Bee: 14:09

yeah, I don't know what they were going for. So it's just ironic that that that word or that term has shown up twice. Yeah, yeah. I remember it was really fun when we did the little girl getting infected with the water turns into the black stuff. It's cake batter, it's it's frosting. We built that water fountain from scratch because it had to be completely healthy. And, I mean, it could be. So we tested it over and over. And then you did a brand new with brand new, you know, tubing. And I actually showed the little girl, I showed her how it's going to work, and I did it that black stuff is delicious. It's like, chocolate frosting. She was like, All right, we just, we just did put a food color, you know, like food grade, black food coloring, like you would use. A for, you know, frosting a cake. Who watered it way down, obviously, because it had to look like water. But it was really, it was really cool as well done. She was great, yeah, that kid was great. Yeah. She's a local Vancouver kid. And kids are tough, man. They could go sideways quick. She was really great. That was a fun episode, good stuff. Like,

Berly: 15:19

like I said, there was so much in it. When I was going through trying to think what to ask you, I was like, oh my god, I forgot how much happened in this one episode. Speaking of another one where a lot happened, we have How to Win Friends and Influence monsters, which was episode nine in season seven. I think that was bad as well. Yep, this is the turducken. Oh yeah, that

Guy Bee: 15:42

was funny. One of the clips you sent me, the guy played Ranger Rick is, is Sean Rogerson. He's a local Vancouver guy who I had worked with, like, the year earlier, on a show called Harper Thailand, short lived, like 13 episodes, I think I directed. I got seven, and I got to be really good friends with Sean, and Sean knew the boys real well, because it's a small community in Vancouver. And on the weekends, when they get together for like, somebody's birthday, you know, the all the actors invite their fellow actors, so they all know each other. So Sean knew Jensen and Jared really well, and knew Jim Beaver really well, because Jim was on Harper's Island as well. And so Sean had a blast with it. But there's a thing where he comes up and he goes, you know, they should shine the light up and they show the guys all over hanging Sean's character, Ranger Rick goes, well, now we know what happened. A Ranger Jim and the Jetson says, That's what I said. And so I tried so hard to get him, because he's supposed to be kind of stoned. I tried to get to get Jen to look right in the camera and go, that's what I said, Yeah, because it seems like one of those like Ferris Bueller, yeah, but actors are trained and over trained to never look at camera so much that Jensen, who's loves to goof off and loves to be loves that stuff that I can't do it, he refused to do

Berly: 16:56

it, to do something like that.

Guy Bee: 16:58

And I said, just do it for one take. If they don't like it, you don't like it, we'll take it out, but at least, let's just get it on camera. It's just my note. I just think it'd be funny. I just think that the fans would love it. I think, you know, everybody down south, Sarah and, you know, Bob and Phil, and I think they'd love it. And he would not do it. He goes out because they'll use it. And, you know, and believe me, Jetson was always up for something crazy, like when they did that, there was that viral video where everybody danced, you know, like one person would dance and they go, they'll go, I can't remember what it was. It was years

Berly: 17:32

ago, Harlem Shake. Trend, the Harlem Shake. Yeah, yeah.

Guy Bee: 17:35

We did one. And we did, we did one at, like, the crossroads where, Jensen Jared is literally on the phone, and Jensen's out there dancing. It's on YouTube. Well, Jensen came to me and said, Hey, will we get to the devil's crossroads? Could we you think we have enough time to do the Harlem Shake here? Yeah, as long as you guys take the heat, if I get in trouble for it, they're not going to fire you. They're just not going to invite you back. So he's up for all that stuff. So I was really shocked when he look at the camera,

Berly: 18:04

and it really was the perfect season for it. This it was, it was a campy season. It was a campy fun season. It would have fit.

Guy Bee: 18:10

And I was all hopped up on the brick. Well, both versions, but the British version of the offense, Ricky Gerda is a version. You know, they all looked in the camera like, I can't believe what he's saying. So I wish we would have done it. That was an interesting, fun episode. And I think that at the end of that one, Bobby does get, take the bullet, get shot by, uh, you

Berly: 18:30

did, Bobby wrong twice.

Guy Bee: 18:32

Yeah, that was controversial. And boy, to keep that, keep that spoiler on our hat. Was not easy. I

Berly: 18:38

can, oh, I can imagine. Yeah. Okay, so back to Ranger Rick. After they spot the body in the tree, he goes back to the truck to call it in and gets pulled back into the bushes. And you did something similar in asylum where, yeah, an actress got pulled into one of the little side rooms. And it's, it seems to happen unbelievably fast. Is that a trick of the camera? What are you doing there? Yeah.

Guy Bee: 19:03

I mean, it's probably nothing more than, I think that was probably Sean stunt all the way. And basically we put, like a harness under their wardrobe with a pick point right in the back, you know, a D ring, and with a carabiner that goes through it and a wire. And it's, it's a triangulated thing. And so basically, one of our effects guys, I can't remember his name now, but he was like a former football player, and he basically gets in the in the same like he's on the line of the Gridiron, okay? And we say, you know, 321, go. And he runs with it around his waist, and it triangulates to the actor. It pulls them out of the frame. And I think we do it like classic 24 frames per second, but we might go to 20 frames per second, which makes it even faster, and we probably because we're really out of the woods. That's a paintball area that's like down by White Rock, but it's a private piece of woods that is rented out on the weekends for paintball. All. There's like structures and stuff, and these guys go out there and play paintball. We used it quite a bit. I remember we used it for purgatory. Probably in some upcoming episodes you'll see what Benny, hi Olson. We probably put an eye hook in a tree and found a good place to triangulate that off camera. 321, action. The actor you know, the actor you know hover emphasizes, you know, his body, so he really goes with it, lets it, take it. But yeah, that's an easy one. We

Berly: 20:30

rewound that and watch that a couple of times. It was just so fast. Yeah,

Guy Bee: 20:34

we may have done 20 frames per second, 18 frames per second.

Berly: 20:38

So the monster in this episode is absolutely the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. It's a young woman.

Guy Bee: 20:47

She's a she's a real stunt person. I don't know if she still does it. Alan Mitchell and the sweetest, cutest gymnast, Lou, who's no longer with us, our stunt coordinator. And Lou goes way back with her, like she's always been, like one of his utility he's a young lady to take a ball, take a hit again gym. This very agile, very strong upper body strength, she'll do whatever you need you're doing. You put her in like, three hours of makeup, the

Berly: 21:15

prosthetics were insane. Yeah,

Guy Bee: 21:19

The Jersey Devil, yeah. And then

Berly: 21:21

the sandwich, did they have a pump going to the sandwich and just like, hand pumped it, okay, yeah,

Guy Bee: 21:27

yeah. And then it was that same kind of like, uh, not that anyone had to eat the gray matter, but I think it was a cake batter or frosting, watered down frosting, yeah, it's clubbed, it's it's pumped right through whatever we knew what piece of furniture was going to go into. So, you know, we shot everything up to that, okay, bring in the bring in the offensive sandwich, and we pull that piece of furniture out, and everything comes in on moss. And literally, it's like a plunger that, you know, super easy again, that's all the prep. You don't want to spend time like, like, workshopping. How's it going to work? What's it going to look like? How's it going? Well, we say we need the sandwich here now it comes in and within five minutes, it's just the way it has to work in TV. We're really good at it.

Berly: 22:12

Okay, that makes sense. So did you get to cut together the rise of dick? Video? Were you involved in that throughout the course of

Guy Bee: 22:21

the show, anytime we knew we had James Patrick Stewart, again, one of the sweetest, coolest, funniest. He's a soap opera star, so he's very aware of like, that smile he has super funny. You know, his dad was Chad Jeremy. The they were a pop duo. I think they did. I mean, they had some major hit in the 60s. Anyway, his dad, I think, was Jeremy Chad. Jeremy, good trivia. But James is awesome. I just, I couldn't help but call Jimmy Stewart. I guess he's used to it. But yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I think anytime we had him working that day, we had, like, we used to refer to it as a phone booth, because every prop truck would have a phone booth. And of course, we're aging ourselves now, because nobody even knows their phone. But any movie or TV show, they would always have a phone booth, because they would start cutting these episodes together, you know, like Mannix or out of 12, and they go, we have to describe, you know, there's something that's not clear. So they would script a phone call, an expositional dialog phone call, and they would pop, they'd go, Okay, we got time to get the phone booth. They put it out. They'd have the actor. And then they would always cover the actor's mouth, because they could loop later something that wasn't clear, so we called that like a faux booth shot. But yeah, I mean, anytime James was working that day, we'd say, Okay, let's, let's knock off pieces of the Montage. We call it. They part it out. Part out. So we'll do, we'll bring in the extras for the crowd, and we'll dolly over the crowd. We have the lecture. The lectern was kind of our phone booth, and then the editors can create their own graphics based on like you can see all that. I thought it was horribly fun, horrible but funny, the badly Photoshop.

Berly: 24:11

Yeah, it was great. That's why I was asking. I cracked up at the bad Photoshop.

Guy Bee: 24:16

So funny, because you realize when we shot that, what year was that?

Berly: 24:20

2011 or 2011 I think,

Guy Bee: 24:24

okay, look at the political situation is right now. That's 14 years ago. It's almost like, you know, sort of predicted some of the stuff, and, like, some of the dialog. I was like, Oh my God, you know the idea that somebody you know, and it's manipulating us. I mean, that's the horror movie version of it, where we're using corn syrup and taking over the corn. But there's other things that are very similar that are happening this minute. Yeah, so James, he loved it. He was so good at it. And that was one again, the show like supernatural, where you've got one foot in reality of. On foot in sort of this core, campy to use your term. It's a fine line between making it like, like, too muggy, too big, too loud. But yeah, we had a lot of fun with that. Yeah, I think so. Between the editors. I think as we go and we provide them footage, we probably got some notes about, hey, get it. Get a cool shot of him doing this, see if he can get that. Oh, it's pretty easy to I don't remember being that big of a deal to gather that footage to make that feel emotional. I

Berly: 25:30

just got a kick out of it. So I wanted to know if you, if you got to help. Yeah, it was funny. So your last episode There will be blood. I imagine you were excited to work with Rick worthy again.

Guy Bee: 25:40

Yeah. I mean dream come. I mean the fact that I started reading that, I was like, I really get all this stuff. This is so cool. I don't think it was 100% random that would just happen to get teamed up again like that. Because, again, it's pure luck of the draw. I think there was a little bit of Sarah saying, you know, you guys had so much fun with each other. And in that episode where you know that we designed it were because I think that season, they booked me April or May for three episodes throughout the season. So I think it was sort of preordained. They knew which one I was going to do. So when they decided to bring back the Alpha vamp, I think they said, let's manipulate

Berly: 26:18

that was an interesting set as well, with the fake room,

Guy Bee: 26:22

yeah, I mean, that was a combination of real location, and we built the big board room, the one where Jensen gets thrown across the table and all the scrolls into the fireplace that was set. That's the kind of the fun and the smoke and mirrors of being a director is, you know, having somebody exit a frame on location, and then you immediately cut to them coming through another doorway. And it's a set. It never gets old. It's always get a thrill out of the wow. That seamlessly. You'll build a tea hallway, let's say, and you have people walking down, and then you have an accident. You come back the next day, you've lit it slightly different, you've changed the artwork on the walls, and you put a potted plant, and you have to do the same exact walk, and it feels like a second entirely different tea hallway, right? You create all this stuff with the reality is you really only could shoot three ways, but by manipulating what's on the wall and lights, doors missing or added, you can create nine different ones with the same set. That's always a lot of fun that got you again. It's sort of the real life magic that you get to create as a director, and you got to do a fast on a TV

Berly: 27:33

budget. And then I loved whenever he is sending the boys out of the room because Edgar the leviathans there, and they're trying to warn him like, no, he's he's here to hurt you. I love how you did the angles whenever Alpha vampire was just kind of talking to himself about, there's no harm in getting both sides of the story and all of that. I thought those were nice choices. It was kind of adding a little bit to the chaos of the moment. Who knows what

Guy Bee: 28:00

the inspiration was on the day. I mean, the thing with with a set like that, is you have to, you know, the nuts and bolts of filmmaking is you kind of have to maintain what we call the line, so Rick's always looking right. So when you cut it together, it's very clear to the audience who wasn't there, who's looking at who. Because if you cut to Rick here looking right, and then you jump the line. You go the other way. The boys are looking right. The audience goes, Wait, why are they looking in the same direction, or, depending on its kind, why are they looking away from each other? So you always try and tie them together. That's why you'll see those big wide shots with the boys. We reorient the audience generally. When you shoot these scenes, you shoot the big wide ones first, get them out of the way, because a lot of times, actors are still learning the dialog, depending on how busy they were the day before or how much a dialog there is. Also it's a discovery process for the actors and definitely the director. Way you see how they read it in the wide shots. And you go, when you go into the close ups, go, Hey, do a version where you know, take away the question mark. So you find things in that. Jerry's crew builds these great sets. Well, they don't fully shoot it. Give me three walls. They give me a fourth wall. So I knew that a certain point we had to turn around and look at that fourth wall. And that's what we ended up doing, like a lot of that fight stuff, where he turns into the Leviathan. You got to be careful, because you're sort of lighting. It Rick looking right, the boys looking left. They're backlit. So there's lights probably off the set that are back lighting, which is a much flattering light. And then, like you can see, like the way I live right now, big source out there, and nothing here. This is key. This is Phil. So if you're shooting, you always want to shoot this way, on the shadow side, so over my shoulder to who I'm talking to, and if you jump that line, you're suddenly on the gaudy side everybody wants to be, unless there's a story point or, you know, you're near a window and that's a story point. Oh, look at that airplane about to crash. You know you're going to look that way. And it all makes sense. I always felt like, you know, all the years being a camera operator, watching. Directors not understand that concept and then painting themselves in the corner. There's one thing I was sort of good at as a director. I hope I was good at everything. But it's that whole idea of, like, be able to go to Sarah, we're on this side. This looks great, and this is loyal to the them looking right. But at a certain point I got to sell this fourth wall. And so, you know, I don't know whether or not we want to establish candles, and candles are cool and light source replicate off camera. They have like a flicker machine. So you put on you plug the light into it, and you can change the frequencies to get like kind of that flicker. Also, we do that with TVs, like a TV that's the only thing why, you see, you could do that by flicker effect. So that was, that was a set that I want. I definitely needed to sell four walls shit out of the the stained glass and the fireplace was practical. Yeah, I want to shoot the shit out of the fireplace. So I knew that was gonna look that way. And I was looking at it yesterday. It was, it was interesting to see how we transition to flip it over, all the fight stuff, the need over. It worked out good. I was pretty happy

Berly: 31:06

with that. Yeah. How do you do the head decapitations? I've done

Guy Bee: 31:10

quite a few of them. There's one coming up in one of the ones that would be because it doesn't

Berly: 31:14

look like a model head. It looks like it looked like Benito Martinez. You

Guy Bee: 31:19

get a clean plate. So you get that, you know, the actor not there, and then you put the actor in it. And I think we need, I mean, sometimes we put, like a green sock over their head, but basically you just have, you have the actor swing, we go now, and they just go, and then we cut. And then, you know, they sort of meld everything together. So you have clean plate, the real person who's acting up to a certain point. And then you have the green head. And they take, you know, they're able to take that green head out of the shot, in its place is the clean plate. And then they just kind of animate the falling away. And then we call it the meat pipe. And they painted what the meat pipe wrote, The whole spine, or anything. Yeah, we did that in family matters. When at the beginning, when they go up, they go up to the house, and Jessica comes around the corner, he looks out there and sees all the dead bodies laid a bunch of extra green socks over it. All been decapitated. It's pretty easy to do. There's

Berly: 32:18

a scene where Crowley tells them something and leaves, and he leaves a message for them, and the table like catches on fire, and then there's this etched message in the table. Do you remember? Oh,

Guy Bee: 32:29

yeah, Google, yeah, that was, that was easy to do. I think we had two tables, and I think you kind of lock off the camera. You don't have to lock it up. So you used to have to, when I first got the camera, nobody touch the camera. And you move one one table out, put the other one in that, I think that was, that was pre plumbed, and they run like little like copper gas pipe, and they put little holes in it, like little pinholes in it. And it's literally just like you light a barbecue, you put a little bit of gas up. They take the little wand and divide it. It's pretty straightforward. Again, it's all in the prep. It's like this, you want to you need to know exactly what they're they need to know exactly what you want to see, and sort of the angle you're going to do with that. And if everybody's on the same page, it always works out pretty good. And those guys are so good. And anything with fire explosions, squibs, which are the bullet hits, they bury. We also use, like I was talking about paintball these paintball guns, if an actor runs, you have these people, instead of paint, they're full of dust. And so when it hits, you see, get a dust hit. And then we also have them where it's it's got, like a little bit of a gun powder in it. So if you're hitting metal, it sparks. So if somebody's running alongside of a car and you just kind of chase them with it, you get sparks on the metal car. Yeah, the cool easter egg in that episode is when we cut to the convenience store, the clerk behind the counter has a name tag that says Mott, Mo TT, because there's a band called bought the Hoople, so being a rock and roll fan, and then that's also where they're at the gas station, they get a new car, because the transfer department's like, we got to get a boat park for guys. I didn't

Berly: 34:14

notice those two. I do remember they were the gas station. There was that guy that had that hot dog covered in mustard.

Guy Bee: 34:19

Yeah, those are, like, special business extras. They don't have any time you pay them for the goal. And like the one lady just looking at, yeah, and that's interesting, because there's rules about how a director can talk to back hours. The director starts directing the background hours that background hours can go later into, hey, I was directed. I'm getting my 750 a day, or whatever. The way to do it is my my assistant directors, you know, have a first and a couple seconds later, we'll all go as a team. And I'll say, it'd be great if, when she's looking and so she could hear me, she's looking at me. So I'll talk to them. I'll say, be great. So she look at there's like, this dead kind of look on her face, like, you know, blank, you know, 1000 mile stair or whatever. And then, of course, later, I'll go over later, and go, thank you for your help and stuff. But if I talk to them too much, they can, they don't grieve and use you, but they go, hey, the director would talk directed me, and they're only supposed to be, you know, it's a different country, so things are slightly different than they are in LA, what I think, where I don't ever remember there being a problem. We talk in the background. Who knows? I can't remember

Berly: 35:25

all the tricks of the trade, right? Well, if you still have just a few more minutes, we did get some questions sent to us from our Patreon supporters, where they a little bit more about your background, right? Okay, so first we have Why and how did you transition from camera operator to director? Was that always the plan, or was it something you became interested in later? Oh,

Guy Bee: 35:49

it was always the plan. Um, I realized in college that I really loved having a camera in my hand, but I really love looking through the camera. I love craft of the camera operator. You know, there's a whole department. There's, there's a set camera assistance. There's the second assistant. First assistant controls the focus, manipulating that lens. They're maintaining that camera. I never really wanted to do any, any of that stuff. I wanted to start a load Steadicam when I was still working at a rental house right out of college, in my early 20s, and at the time, you know, the late 80s, there was a ton of music videos and things going on there were non union. So I worked at the row house for about two and a half years. But then I started getting jobs, Steadicam operator. And, you know, all these years later, you know, I felt I tell kids, I go, Yeah, Anderson man, cherry pie by warrants. I did all of those guys videos in Japan, and they threw this all over the place, and it was a blast, because usually there was nobody on the crew over there, 30 years old. So we like this band of pirates. We'd show up at LAX, and we fly, we see the same route, fly it to Milwaukee, and we get our own tour bus, and we follow the band to lacrosse and Madison and go back to Milwaukee and fly home, because evidently, those three college towns had the best crowd. We did queens, right? Suicidal tendencies, and Nelson, all these bands. So funny. Now I look back on it now get two hours of sleep. I was able to, you know, learn Steadicam, and once I got in the camera union, you start getting, you're on a list of operators that are available. So I started getting calls from TV shows and movies. But yeah, I knew I wanted to direct. I mean, when I was 10 years old, I saw Jaws, but it combines everything I love, you know, storytelling, great actors. And I knew I wanted to direct since I was 10 years old. But yeah, I mean, there was always a plan to come at it. I wasn't sure I was going to come up, come at it, but I came at the camera operator. And then in 94 my first daughter was born. She's now 30, and getting married in October, she was she was born in August of 94 and I got a call from a show of Warner Brothers in October that said, we got your name from one of our directors. We're looking for a camera operator, 510 minute drive I needed. I was looking for somebody keeping the account, so I called him up and I go, Yeah, hey, this is guy. I got your message to a guy we're doing the show. It's new show called, er, and it's a medical drama on a lot of more, but I still went down and met with them. It could have been cooler. And my again, my mom being a big influence on me. I said, Mom, you seen the show? Er, she was, Oh, it's so good, you're gonna love it. It's like, they run down this hallways and they go around the gurneys, and it's like, oh, it's steady camp stuff. Of course, they showed me some clips. I was like, Yeah, this is that's what I do. So I ended up doing two, two seasons, 40 episodes, and I kind of made a deal with them when I moved on, that I want to come back and do a new show with the produce group, hopefully. You know, they were, they were lining up projects, and I said, you don't want to be part of something, because I took over, like on episode seven or something, we are. They said, Cool. And I said, you know, the idea would be that at some point I can let them interact. They saw how I work with that. Some of the directors walking and let's do this, and we'll come here. We'll put the other camera here. They called me and said, We're doing two next season. This is in 90s, 98 one called it's all about the president, the people who work for the West Wing and the White House with Martin Sheen. And then there's another one about cops and firemen and paramedics on the streets of New York in New York City. And I'd always wanted to, like, hang in New York City. I'd always been told you could take a year in your life and take subways and calves and walk in New York City and live New York City. Yeah, I want to was third watch, and that's where I got my first shot to direct. It's also, I mean, I didn't realize it at the time. It wasn't until later when I noticed other guys sort of try to attempt to do the same thing that I had done, which is make that leap. It's very difficult, like the odds of you going to. Back being a camera operator. Two Two episodes does not a career make, as they say, so you can't even get an agent on that. It was until I got made a producer off third watch that I got an agent and I was able to get alias Las Vegas, some other shows that were outside of the job world, third watch world, because I did an ER as well. I directed an ER stuff going into the game, or once I started the ball rolling, that was like 99 2000 by the time 2005 rolled around, supernatural, I was I was staying really busy.

Berly: 40:32

One of our listeners wants to know what is a favorite show you've guest directed on, or a favorite episode that you've directed?

Guy Bee: 40:40

Look as you guys know, I had nothing but a great time with supernatural, because it just kind of went beyond making a TV show, because I spent a lot of time on the weekends meeting Jensen Jared for football week, Sundays. And like, the other cool thing about that is we'd be sitting there eat wings, drinking beer, and somebody would come up and sit down and I go, Hey, what are you doing? It's Tom Welling like, you know, half the cast of Eureka would show up at half the cast of anything it was shooting Vancouver. They all knew what each other was doing. So, you know, became like this motley crew of wealthy and fun loving pirates. So that, you know, I've done the fond memories in Vancouver, but I was, I was able to do a two part Terminator, Sarah Connor Chronicles. First episode I did, I got a call out of the blue. I was already working on something else, but I was in prep, so I said, Yeah, I can't get the glass of six. So I got there while I'm alive, Warner Brothers, and they gave me an episode. And again, we were talking about, like, episodes sometimes run long and you gotta cut stuff out. Well, the one that I did wasn't my fault. It just ran about 1015 minutes too long. It was near the end of the first season. So they pitched the idea. I moved on already. I turned to my cut and I was like, I don't know what you guys cut out. And they called me a couple weeks later, and they said we had a brilliant idea, which we shoot another five days. We'll have a part two, because what the writers have figured out as a way to use all the footage you already shot and then get shoot five days, and they're used to, you know, an eight day episode. So it actually is going to save us money. Are you available to come back and do part two? So I did. I did. It's called today. Is the day parts one and two, the whole Terminator. Like mythology of the Terminator, I was always a big fan of, but it was cool because the two episodes I did, I did, like every iteration of Terminator, the ones that look exactly like humans, the early ones that are kind of like plasticky, the ones that, you know, the Robert Patrick character pan into a blade. So I got to photograph every different iteration of the Terminator series, t1 1000. That was good. I mean, I had a good time on Alias because it was early and I had a lot to prove. It was the first time I was stepping outside that I had the third watch. You know, the cameraman was, you know, not super happy with the young former camera operator coming in and becoming the director, the kind of business we're in. I mean, it's heartbreaking, but that's what happens.

Unknown: 43:10

Jericho was a fun one. Oh, I loved that show. Yeah, that was a

Guy Bee: 43:15

fun show to do for a couple different reasons. Yeah, Richard spay was in that I go back with Richard spay to ER. He was a young actor in 94 so I know I've known Richard.

Berly: 43:26

He's my favorite. Yeah, he said that.

Guy Bee: 43:31

Well, I just did, like, couple weeks ago, him and Rob interview me about frontier land. That

Berly: 43:35

was one of our that was one of our favorite episodes. Um, we loved, like you said that Dean kept getting his bubble burst, yeah, over the fantasy of what it was going to be like. We loved the Phoenix.

Guy Bee: 43:47

One of the things the script that just cracked us all up was, you know, when I first landed in the old west, and, you know, we kind of tilt down real quick, and they go, and Jared takes one step right into horse shit, yeah, the first, first note we got from the network, as you guys can't use real horseshit. We're like, why? And then we go, No, don't worry about we're gonna make our own the effects department already knows 20 feet away making perfectly good. But it was like, Well, is it a prop? If it's steaming, it's a special effect. If the actors touch it, it's, it's a hand problem. I mean, it became a whole, like, do the whole thing. Everything became, you know, this is the horseshit conundrum, of course. You know, we did, we did the shot a great. Tail away. Shot with Jared really played up all trying to get it off. Be very annoying. But well,

Berly: 44:40

and I love the line when he's like, You know what that is? And Dean says, authenticity, yeah. I mean, it was it was so good. It was so good. It's a super fun episode. So we have one more question from one of our listeners that you've already kind of answered, but I'm going to ask you, just in case it brings something else to mind, because you've had a very long. Career, lots of experience. Question is, what was the elementary age dream career? If it was working in this industry, was there a singular moment that confirmed you were in the right place? If it was not in this industry, what catalyst led you into this career? Yeah,

Guy Bee: 45:16

but, you know, my mom was a massive movie fan. And you know, when I was a kid, there was no VCRs or no, you know you, if you if there was a movie you saw. My mom saw a movie, and then she saw, like in a TV guy that was playing at midnight on a TV she used to wake me up and say, You got to see this movie I saw when I was a kid, or wherever I saw drive in or wherever. So she was a massive fan. And I just always love storytelling. I love telling jokes. And jokes are the most beautiful format, because it's a beginning, a middle and end, and it pays off. You start at the beginning and you get paid off with a good laugh at the end. So I love jokes. I mean, I remember, I was about six or seven. My parents went on a cruise. I grew up in Florida. My parents went on a cruise in Miami and made friends with this couple from Brooklyn. And the Brooklyn couple were like, you guys got to come up this summer and come and visit. We'll take you to city. And my mom grew up in Brooklyn until she was 10. My grandparents moved her to Miami because they were stuck in a snowstorm. My grandfather, I had this story as my grandfather came up from work, and he says, I can find a car while driving to Miami to move to Miami snow. So my mom kind of knew Brooklyn, so we flew up there as a family. We went out to dinner in Greenwich Village, and we're walking home, and we saw these bright lights down the street, and I was like, what is that? And as we come around the corner, there's a horse drawn carriage that pulled into the like the fort co chair of this really nice of harbor complex, and I see this thing drop down like this, and it kind of pushes in here and cut. My mom was, yeah, they're making a Benson and hedges commercial. You know, she could figure that out just from looking at the benzoin. I want to do that. I want to be the guy that rides on that thing. So I knew that, yeah, I kind of knew that that was a thing. But I was, I was interested in either like being a fireman or a stuntman or something where all the action is and and that, you know, being a camera operator, Director, somehow, who's five years older than me, somehow got scared the crap out of me, and I knew that it was just a movie. I knew it was all fake, but it's still that was enough for me to sort of follow that path and figure out how they how they do that again, telling a story. And then, you know, I knew I grew up in Florida and knew nobody in the movie this so sort of blind naivete. Went two years to junior college, right out of high school and became a California resident. Then went two years to Cal State Long Beach, and there was, like, you know, the major was radio, TV, film. And there was maybe 10 of us that were, like, hardcore cinema. Don't want to do movies. That's it. Film, film, film, film. You know, like, what was that? The mid 80s Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Blood Simple. I mean, I could go on, but it was, like, such a good hurdle time for great films. And, you know, was always a big fan of all the TV dramas, and then at the time, like St elsewhere and Hill Street Blues and all that was going on TV, there was sort of a renaissance and quality TV, and I knew I was in the right place. And so, yeah, I mean, I never kind of looked back. I guess I impressed enough people on my way that they saw things in me that I didn't see myself. Because I definitely had forks in the road all the way where I could go on this bike to run that way. I mean, I think back a lot. I tell my daughter now Film School here in Chicago, she's 20, and I talk about, you know, like there'll be a movie we'll talk about, although, yeah, I had to turn that down. Turned it down week earlier. The cameraman had called me to come, go do this, and I couldn't do it. I'd already committed. And as much as I would have liked to have done that, I'm glad I did the movie I did, because I met so and so she took me on this movie. It was quite a journey again. I don't really think I have that many regrets. And you fall into things and see where, see how they pan out. But yeah, I mean, you know, around 10 years old, seeing jobs is a big one. I always go into the right place, even working at the rental house, where two of the guys that were a year ahead of me that got me the job I knew from college, they got me the job when I came in to do the to take over what they had done a year earlier. There's a lot of driving the truck and cleaning filthy tripods and things that came back from rental. We rented cameras and we rented a steadicam. Come in. I head down on the road all day, dropping off equipment or picking up equipment. Coming in my boss's office, you look up and go, Why are you smiling? I go, because I'm in the movie. This is the best thing in the world. And the other guys, he never got that phone. Used to take me aside. They'd leave at five o'clock. He used to take me aside to go, you know, those guys are gonna do okay, but you, you're, you're gonna be the success story that I'm gonna talk about some day. So there you go. I love that. I still keep in touch with it. I still

Berly: 49:53

can't believe that you filmed warrants cherry pie. Like, that's my stripper song. Yeah, yeah.

Guy Bee: 49:58

That's, that was a lot of fun. Uh, yeah, i Enter Sandman. I did hundreds of them that, like, probably aired once, and they never saw them again. I used to have a resume, because I would take that resume with me everywhere. I printed it out on, like, the most neon yellow color I could find, so it would stick out in a file. I mean, I do Metallica on Thursday and NWA on Monday, and then I jump on Japanese version of Madonna. You leave about Sequoia, you know, soccer. We follow her around Japan. And, yeah, I was in my 20s. It was insane. I remember these directors. And, you know, it was the 80s, late 80s, early 90s. Not that, not that they were all completely, all out of their mind on drugs. But a lot of times I get there and I go, Thank God you're here. Guy, do whatever, you know, just do this. Or, you know, the cameraman would go, I can't rely on him to just, let's just close you some cool stuff. So, and it was like the same three or four directors. I love them dearly. Keep in touch with a few of them, because what would happen is they become friends with the management. So it was either doc McGee or all the management of these bands. So like the guy that managed Bon Jovi, a lot of it, Doc McGee, Bon Jovi became skid row, and then the Motley Crew guy became these offshoots, and these bands would come in, and it was a lot of like hair metal, but yeah, we're in LA so they sent us to these rap videos all the time. It was crazy, because we, lot of times we go to the projects like the real watch and stuff, shoot these things and our security were like, you know, like these crypts of Bloods. I mean, the real deal to shoot, you know, ice cube or whatever we shoot our videos that would get about like this time we're starting to get a little dusky out. They go, you guys maybe should wrap it up and get out of here. Oh, okay. Make sure we all got okay. Don't stop until you get to the 101. Those kind of neighborhoods, yeah. But you know, again, I was 47 years old with Bulletproof, as far as I was concerned.

Berly: 52:07

When I was editing, I like, texted my sister, I said, if you were listening to our episode, and you heard me say, That's my stripper song, which you know what I was talking about. And she messaged me back, and she was like, Yes, mine is pour some sugar on me. And I was like, Okay, no, okay, okay, we're safe. I'm gonna leave it in. Then I cut out the part where I was like, explaining to him what it is. I cut it out. I was like, No, we don't need to spend any more time on that. And I love that. Whenever he brought up Richard spay junior, and I was like, he's my favorite. He went, he's a nut. Oh, that conversation was so fun. It was, and I loved that. At the end, he said, Okay, so I'll be coming back. Like,

Unknown: 52:55

I know. I was like, okay, good, yes. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Berly: 53:00

Yes, yes, excited for having him back. That was a lot of fun. Well, thank you guys so much for your time. We hope you enjoyed this interview. If you did remember to leave a review on Apple podcasts or leave a comment on Spotify and let us know what you think until next time. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you for listening to denim wrapped nightmares.

LA: 53:26

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram, leave a review and let us know how we can get involved in the fandom. This was fun, jerk. It always is, bitch. You.