deep fried movies

I’ve got a new interview up for Filmmaker Magazine with DP Markus Mentzer, who’s been behind the camera for all three seasons of Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave. Whatever your favorite bit – coffin flops, sloppy steaks, this badass store named Dan Flashes that’s exactly my style – Markus shot it.

The latest season’s 25-plus sketches were shot in just 24 days, largely on location in and around L.A. Here’s Mentzer on a few of them. Check out the full story here.

On Summer Loving…
Mentzer: We were aiming for this HBO show called FBoy Island. It’s basically the hottest looking dudes you could find and then Tim. That was a one-day sketch. We shot it at a mansion up in Glendale with a pretty small loading area. That was a big day. 

On the Darmine Dogg Door…
Mentzer: The animal work for that sketch turned into a second unit day. At that point we had the set already built and could go in and spend eight hours just shooting animals, because there was more than just the raccoon. There were a bunch of options [that didn’t ultimately make it into the final sketch].

Filmmaker: That sketch has a cutaway joke where Robinson says something about his wife swing dancing with a guy at a wedding. That one line means you have to create a wedding scene with a room full of people in costume and a dancing stunt.
Mentzer: Those pieces are the hardest schedule-wise. Jay Patumanoan, one of our EPs and our line producer, is constantly juggling, and those little breakout piece can end up anywhere in the schedule at any time. Theyfloat around and if we have access to a location where we can make a little wedding over in a corner, it gets thrown onto the schedule. Then we have to make sure that we have some kind of continuity [that extends to any of those breakout pieces]. My ACs were constantly keeping their notebooks full of all that info and the correct LUT for each sketch so that we could match everything. 

Filmmaker: The Metal Motto Search gameshow is one of your stage-based sketches for the new season. How did you get the POV shots for the cam that’s rigged to the Metaloid Maniac mascot, who has to climb up the game’s board to flip over clues?
Mentzer: It was a GoPro Hero 4 Session, which is just like a little cube. Fatal Farm directed that sketch, so they’re super used to using things like GoPros. They actually went ahead and bought a bunch of cameras on Amazon, and we tested them out to see what would work best mounted to these metal helmets.

Filmmaker: Was that wall reflective in a way that was troublesome with lights?
Mentzer: Correct, it was troublesome. [laughs] But in some cases, those reflections really helped sell the gag. That set was by far the biggest thing we’ve done on the show in all three seasons. We had roughly a week and a half pre-rig [to construct the set], then we had a pre-light for that which took a day. Safety was obviously a real concern and it needed to be able to look like it was extremely difficult [for the Metaloid Maniac] to climb the wall, which it was. We had a lot of stunt harnesses working and cables rigged, but I was really happy with the way it turned out.