Reframed The Podcast

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/44hbA0a▶ About This Episode:Director and photographer Aidan Cullen joins Dylan Hahn to break down his commercial spot for Cosmos starring Odessa A'zion, and to discuss what makes certain performers impossible to look away from. Aidan shares insights from a decade of working with actors, musicians, and brands, including his creative collaborations with Odessa, Omar Apollo, Malcolm Todd, and more. They talk about directing talent, building creative chemistry, shooting on film, creative direction, the realities of "overnight success," and why consistency matters more than inspiration. Aidan also shares lessons from founding Nova, working with some of the biggest names in entertainment, and the mindset that helped him build a career across photography, directing, and entrepreneurship.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/4o2SN1D▶ About This Episode:DP Adam Bentel joins Dylan Hahn to break down KFC’s “Eat the Rules” campaign, directed by Zee Ntuli. Adam shares how the team turned a single abandoned community center into a surreal party world using practical effects, lasers, dancers, mirrors, confetti, and a lot of experimentation. They get into collaborative scouting, shooting at 250fps on the Alexa 35, building atmosphere with practical effects, lens choices, and how giving talented people room to play led to some of the spot’s most memorable moments.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/3PajnJv▶ About This Episode: Director Rick Darge joins Dylan Hahn to break down his wildly absurd Popeyes “Chicken Chicken Chicken” campaign. It's a musical commercial built around one word, one weird idea, and a ton of meticulous prep. Rick walks through the entire process of directing a big budget commercial, from casting actors who can sing, navigating UK food advertising laws to solving VFX problems on the fly and keeping a set calm under pressure. They get into comedy theory, agency collaboration, lens choices, actor auditions, production company culture, and why the best comedy commercial work often comes from committing fully to one strange idea.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/3QFEmUS▶ About This Episode:Director Leon Liehr joins Dylan Hahn to break down a spec commercial featuring Headspace that was made as a student project. Leon shares how a small team used location choices, practical effects, and VFX to create the illusion of ceilings closing in, all within a three-day shoot. They talk through previs, lighting strategy, in-camera solutions, and the process of aligning a spec piece closely enough to a real brand that it gets their attention.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/3ODQSU9▶ About This Episode:Director Morgan Le Faucheur joins Dylan Hahn to break down his cycling campaign and the detailed process behind creating a high-end commercial look with limited resources. Morgan explains how he developed the treatment, pitched the idea in person, and used a combination of moto crane, drone, handheld camera, and practical lighting to build a strong black and white visual language. They discuss multiplying riders with subtle VFX, mixing stabilized and imperfect movement to preserve energy, and even capturing product shots using an iPhone with the Blackmagic app. The conversation also explores the balance between craft and new tools like AI, and why strong ideas still matter most when trying to stand out as an independent filmmaker.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/4v2Bn8H▶ About This Episode:Director Oscar Hudson joins Dylan Hahn to break down his Coinbase campaign created for the Oscars, a project that builds a believable video game world almost entirely through practical techniques. Oscar explains how the team translated digital logic into physical design using printed textures, flattened costumes, miniature environments, and carefully controlled camera movement to create an uncanny game-like reality in camera. They discuss the isometric camera language, materials testing process, choreography inspired by NPC movement, and how simple physical solutions helped achieve complex visual ideas without relying heavily on CG.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/478c22O▶ About This Episode:Cinematographer Patrick Pickler joins Dylan Hahn to break down his North Face commercial, shot high up in the mountains on glaciers near France. They go shot-by-shot through the film, explaining what was actually filmed on location versus what was built later in a studio. Patrick shares how they carried full camera setups up the mountain, shot on 35mm in extreme weather, and used tools like thermal cameras, miniatures, and motion control to pull off specific shots, all in pursuit of images that could only exist somewhere between the real world and something imagined.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/3N30Du9▶ About This Episode:Director Salomon Ligthelm joins Dylan Hahn to break down his Super Bowl campaign for He Gets Us — and the 64-page treatment that won him the job. Solomon shares how he approached five distinct films in one ambitious shoot, discovered the campaign’s linchpin in vintage consumerist audio, and built clear creative rule sets to navigate scale, faith, excess, and restraint. It’s a conversation about protecting set culture, analog craft in an AI world, and why cool imagery isn’t enough if it doesn’t move you.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/4cAPriN▶ About This Episode:Directors Folkert Verdoorn and Simon Becks join Dylan Hahn to break down the chaotic, cartoon-fueled world of A$AP Rocky’s “PUNK ROCKY” music video. From fake suburban backlots and prosthetic eyes that sing, to breaking windows and car crashes they unpack collaborating with Rocky as a third director, casting wildly exaggerated characters (including Winona Ryder), pulling off ambitious long takes under pressure, all in the pursuit of building a fully realized world that runs on its own strange logic.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/4q1EJoA▶ About This Episode:Cinematographer Oren Soffer joins Dylan Hahn to break down the first narrative project shot on Fujifilm’s new GFX Eterna 55. Instead of showcasing the camera's abilities in ideal conditions, the team embraced harsh light, tight spaces, minimal crew, and a production pipeline designed to truly stress-test the camera. They dive into large sensor techniques, lens coverage, mixing spherical and anamorphic formats, shaping light through subtraction, and how a 70mm close-up can feel both intimate and epic. Along the way, Oren shares his philosophy on lens testing, working fast without losing control, and why, despite all the tech, cameras themselves might be the most overrated part of filmmaking.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/49EJ9vB▶ About This Episode:Director Zee Ntuli joins Dylan Hahn to break down his visually hypnotic commercial for Audemars Piguet. They unpack why the project was treated like a visual palindrome, how analog philosophy guided every creative decision, and what it really took to shoot a dancer suspended over a corrosive salt lake. Zee walks through the balance of real-world capture and heavy VFX, the collaboration with the production company Monumental, and the importance of creating space on set for intuition, emotion, and play.

▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/3Y122n4▶ About This Episode:Dylan Hahn sits down with BSC cinematographer Ben Spence to unpack the craft behind Waitrose’s four-minute Christmas film - a rom-com-inspired commercial shaped by classic references and real-world constraints. They break down camera and lens choices (Alexa 35, Zeiss Supreme Primes), using diffusion, backlight, and warm-cool color contrast to create emotional texture, plus practical techniques like shooting dusk in daylight with CTB, building soft moonlight from oversized inflatable LEDs, and lighting for three cameras at once. The conversation also touches on fast schedules, VFX support, evolving viewing habits, and why creative compromise is often what keeps the work sharp.

▶ About This Episode:Director Jackson Tisi sits down with Dylan Hahn to break down the making of New Era’s "Weather It All" - an ambitious commercial that brings blizzards, heat waves, and full-on football grit inside a studio. Jackson shares how he and DP Zoë Simone-Yi built entire sets from scratch, from a handmade bar soaked in practical rain to a miniature football field lit like a living storm system. They get into snow chemistry, set design that feels like real locations, destructive practical gags, and how a tiny miscommunication in VFX turned into one of the spot’s most iconic moments. Along the way, Jackson opens up about pitching at a high level, collaborating with editors and composers like lifelong friends, and fighting to keep the creative process as playful as it was when he started.▶ About The Reframed Podcast:“Reframed” is a filmmaker podcast that poses fresh and insightful questions to filmmakers. It offers a compelling look behind the scenes, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of the film industry and the creative minds that drive it.▶ Find Inspiration and develop your ideas with Frame Set:https://go.frameset.app/48r9zBx